Ask a manager who on their team they’re worried about in terms of burnout, and they’ll often name the person who’s visibly struggling: missing deadlines, calling in sick, snapping in meetings.
As a psychiatrist, I’d ask about someone else entirely.
The one who never complains, never misses a day, always says yes.
They may be calm on the surface but paddling hard underneath.
Here’s the uncomfortable pattern from three decades of clinical work: the people who appear to be coping best are often the ones most at risk.
Burnout in high performers is frequently invisible right up until it isn’t, because everything that’s driving it looks, from the outside, like excellence. The long hours look like commitment. The constant availability looks like dedication. The refusal to ask for help looks like competence.
Researchers sometimes call this functional burnout: a person still performing, still delivering, while running on empty.
There’s no visible signal for anyone to respond to, so nobody responds, and the person reads the silence as confirmation that they should keep going.
And the kicker from last week’s edition applies double here: these are usually people with strong emotional suppression habits. The better someone is at performing “I’m fine,” the longer the problem stays hidden, and the further along things are by the time it surfaces.
What helps? Proactive checking, not reactive.
The healthiest workplaces I’ve seen don’t wait for someone to put their hand up, because the people most at risk are the least likely to put their hand up. Instead, someone senior checks in on the quiet ones, deliberately and regularly, especially after heavy periods of work.
Not “are you okay?”, which invites “I’m fine.”
Something more specific: “that was a brutal month, let’s work out how to lighten your load this month.”
That tells the person something the silence never could: that someone noticed.
Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.
Next week: Resilience redefined. It isn’t pushing through, and the difference matters.
Dr Jo turns this thinking into keynotes for conferences and leadership teams.
