Most leaders have heard some version of it by now.
“People just don’t have the same resilience anymore.”
“Everyone seems so sensitive.”
“Why does everything feel so heavy for people now?”
I understand why leaders say these things. From where they sit, they may see more emotion, less capacity, more hesitation, more signs of strain than they remember seeing in years past.
But I believe many are naming the wrong problem.
What I see in so many organizations is not fragility. Not lack of motivation.
It is depletion.
After years of constant change, blurred boundaries, chronic urgency, hybrid complexity, social strain, and now the mounting pressure to absorb AI and adapt yet again, many people are simply running with too little in reserve. They are still showing up. Still trying. Still producing in many cases. But they are doing so with drained reservoirs of meaning, connection, agency, and renewal.
That matters tremendously. Across your whole organization.
Because when we mislabel depletion as fragility, we tend to respond in all the wrong ways. We reach for tougher talk instead of better design. We increase pressure when what is actually needed is replenishment. We assume people need thicker skin when they may really need clearer priorities, more meaningful connection to the work, healthier boundaries, and a work experience that gives something back.
Human beings are not machines – nor do we want them to be. And organizations cannot keep operating as though human energy is endlessly extractable without consequence.
When Energy Out Greatly Exceeds Energy In
One of the core lenses in my work is that we must start paying much closer attention to the relationship between Energy Out and Energy In.
Energy Out includes the demands people are carrying: workload, pressure, ambiguity, emotional labor, rapid change, unclear expectations, meeting overload, organizational politics, and the invisible tax of having to constantly recalibrate. Managing all the demands of their “whole human” life.
Energy In is what replenishes and restores: meaning, recognition, agency, trust, growth, belonging, healthy relationships, recovery, and the felt experience that one’s contribution matters. Making space and accommodating the needs of that whole human.
When Energy Out chronically exceeds Energy In, people begin to dim.
Not always dramatically at first.
Sometimes it shows up quietly. A flattening of enthusiasm. Less discretionary effort. Less creativity. More resignation. More emotional brittleness. More internal withdrawal. A sense that people are doing what is required, but not bringing the vitality, conviction, or spaciousness that once made them more fully alive in the work.
This is one of the reasons I often say that leaders must become better stewards of human energy.
If you ran your company on a battery you never charged, you would not be surprised when it failed.
Yet many organizations do exactly that with people.
They keep drawing down energy while underinvesting in what restores it, then wonder why burnout rises, commitment falls, and work begins to feel heavier than it should.
What Depletion Looks Like in the Modes of Engagement
Through the lens of the 15 Modes of Engagement (based on my original research), depletion does not always look like collapse. Often, it shows up in more subtle but still consequential ways.
You may see people in a Wanting More but Comfortable mode. They are not miserable enough to leave immediately, but not energized enough to fully invest. They have settled into a kind of quiet resignation. There is more potential in them than your culture is currently accessing.
You may see people in Conflicted Fit. Some parts of the role or culture still work for them, but many do not. They feel torn. They can still function, but the internal friction is costly. A meaningful portion of their energy is going toward managing the disconnect.
You may see people in Diminished Esteem. They begin to feel they are failing themselves, underutilizing their gifts, or drifting too far from the person they hoped to be in their work. This is not just an engagement issue. It is an erosion of vitality and self-regard.
These are not merely attitudinal states. They are major traffic signals.
Signals that something in the lived experience of work is asking too much while returning too little.
Signals that the organization may be over-relying on loyalty, conscientiousness, or fear to sustain output.
Signals that people are not fragile. They are undernourished in the very places that allow human beings to stay resilient, creative, connected, and well.
A Different Diagnosis Changes the Response
We recently worked with a medium-sized services organization whose leaders were deeply frustrated.
They had offered flexibility. They had improved benefits. They believed they were trying to meet the needs of their workforce. And yet burnout was still present across key parts of the organization. Energy was flat. Patience was thinning. Managers were weary. Employees were still signaling strain and disconnect.
Their question, in essence, was: Why are people still burning out if we have already given them so much?
That is such an important leadership question. And one we hear all the time.
We began with a Gusto Diagnostic, including an Energy In / Energy Out audit, to look beyond assumptions and understand the lived reality of the culture.
What emerged was clarifying.
On the Energy Out side, people were carrying perpetual stretch goals, unprioritized work, constant context-switching, and heavy meeting load. Expectations had accumulated faster than they had been refined. Too many initiatives were treated as urgent. Very little was being taken off the table.
On the Energy In side, the picture was much thinner than leaders realized. Recognition was inconsistent. Development conversations were infrequent. Purpose was assumed rather than actively connected to everyday work. Agency was uneven, and more often unawakened. People were being asked to give a great deal, but the culture was not intentionally restoring the energy required to sustain that contribution.
That changed the diagnosis.
The issue was not that employees lacked grit. It was not that they were too sensitive. And it was not that a few wellness offerings would somehow solve the problem.
The deeper issue was imbalance.
The culture, and thus the underlying operating system it propelled, was asking for more energy than it was designed to renew.
Once the leaders could see that clearly, their response improved.
They clarified priorities. They reduced non-essential work. They addressed meeting overload. They increased the quality and frequency of recognition. They reconnected teams more deliberately to the purpose of the work and the difference it made. They gave managers more language and responsibility for paying attention to human energy and the whole human lives it was connected to, not just output.
In time, burnout indicators began to fall.
Not because the work disappeared. Or got smaller.
But because the organization became more honest about what it was taking from people and more intentional about what it was giving back.
The Leadership Work of Replenishment
This is why I continue to press leaders to think more operationally about burnout and human energy.
Burnout is not only a personal wellbeing issue. It is often an organizational design issue. A leadership issue. A meaning issue. A priorities issue. A culture issue.
If the way work is structured consistently drains people faster than it restores them, no amount of encouragement to “take care of yourself” will fully solve the problem.
People do have responsibility for their own boundaries and wellbeing, of course. But leaders and organizations have responsibility for the conditions they create.
Are people clear on what matters most?
Are they able to connect their work to something meaningful?
Do they feel seen, valued, and developed?
Do they have voice and agency?
Is recovery possible, or is constant urgency the norm?
Are we designing work in a way that unleashes human energy, or quietly depletes it?
These are never superficial questions. They are operational questions.
And in this era, they are strategic questions. Imperative questions.
Because if human energy is the lifeforce of performance, then leaders cannot afford to treat it as incidental.
Two Questions Worth Pondering
As you reflect on your own organization, I invite you to sit with these questions:
Where in my organization am I expecting people to give more energy than the culture ever returns?
And:
If I asked my team what truly replenishes their energy at work, would I know the answer?
The answers may reveal more than any engagement score alone can tell you.
A Practical Place to Begin: The Gusto Diagnostic
If you sense depletion in your culture but are not fully sure where it is coming from, the Gusto Diagnostic is designed to help you see more clearly.
It includes a structured look at Energy In and Energy Out across your organization so you can identify where human energy is being unintentionally drained, where meaning and replenishment are too thin, and where the most important opportunities for restoration and revitalization lie.
This is not about adding performative perks.
It is about understanding the lived experience of work in your organization and beginning to reshape it with greater consciousness, coherence, and care.
Because your people are not problems to be pushed harder.
They are human beings whose energy is either being renewed by the system they work in or depleted by it.
And leaders who learn to tell the difference are far better equipped to build the kind of culture people can thrive in—and the kind of organization that can truly perform over time.
