Sharon Olivier, Dr. Frederick Hölscher
August 20, 2026
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Traditional discussions about burnout focus primarily on workload, long hours, organizational restructuring, uncertainty, or poor management. These factors absolutely matter, but our new research into resilience through interviews with leaders suggests that something deeper is often taking place beneath the surface. This research takes an (eco)systemic approach – looking beyond individual symptoms to the wider context, and offering a framework for self-reflection and for leaders to cultivate the elements of our humanity that cannot be digitized.
We have observed that people do not always have control over what comes to them, but resilient people often develop the ability to manage what comes from them: the way they frame and reframe their responses, interpretations, boundaries, and internal narratives. Two people can experience the same pressure very differently. One may experience challenge, growth, and meaning. While another may slowly lose their energy, confidence, and even sense of self. Burnout is therefore not simply a workload problem, but also a meaning-making phenomenon.
The Three Selves Framework
We have developed the Three Selves Framework to explain our research findings. It proposes that well-being depends on maintaining a dynamic alignment between three dimensions of self. Burnout often emerges due to a destructive tension or misalignment between them.
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1. The Essential Self
The Essential Self represents our deeper nature: our strengths, values, creativity, purpose, curiosity, and the conditions under which we feel most alive.
Many participants described moments where they felt deeply energized when expressing these qualities, whether a gift for “bringing structure out of chaos” or empathy as one of their leadership strengths. One leader reflected: “Jazz helped me let go of control, it taught me to improvise again”. The Essential Self is often where people experience flow, meaning, and sustainable energy.
However, in many organizations this dimension slowly becomes suppressed as performance pressures increase. People begin performing according to expectations rather than expressing who they truly are. Over time, this disconnect becomes emotionally exhausting.
2. The Social Self
The Social Self is the adapted or edited self. It develops through family systems, schools, culture, professional norms, and organizational expectations. It reflects our deeply human need to belong.
The Social Self helps us function effectively in teams and organizations. However, adaptation can slowly become over-adaptation. Many participants described pressure to fit into environments that no longer aligned with who they really were.
Several participants described burnout as a gradual loss of self, with one reflecting: “My biggest fear is that I’m not able to be myself… that I become corrupt.” Another described how a highly controlling work environment following maternity leave left her feeling emotionally diminished: “I now had a micromanager, which made me feel even smaller and useless.”
Over time, the repeated need to over-adapt to organizational expectations created what many experienced as identity incoherence – a growing disconnect between who they felt they truly were and the roles they felt compelled to perform. As one participant explained: “I don’t recognize myself anymore… I just cannot be me at work.”
This disconnect from deeper strengths and values often results in emotional dissonance, the exhausting experience of continuously performing an inauthentic version of oneself.
3. The Ego Self
The Ego Self is perhaps the most misunderstood dimension. We do not view the ego as inherently bad. In healthy form, the ego provides identity, ambition, confidence, focus, and the ability to navigate risk and achievement. However, the ego also acts as protector. It develops coping strategies to avoid rejection, failure, shame, insignificance, or loss of control.
Many participants described how their internal world was dominated by what they called an “inner critic” – a harsh internal voice driven by perfectionism, fear, comparison, or the need to prove worth. One leader said: “I am my own worst enemy.” Another reflected: “That little voice said: ‘You’re going to be found out.’”
Several participants linked these patterns to early experiences of needing to prove themselves or avoid criticism. The problem is not the ego in itself, but when fear-driven ego narratives begin dominating the relationship between the Essential Self and the Social Self. As one participant described: “I was driven by fear, not joy or purpose.”
Burnout as misalignment
Incoherence between the three selves occurs when a person’s authentic values and strengths (Essential Self), social roles and expectations (Social Self), and inner narratives of fear, protection, or ambition (Ego Self) become disconnected or contradictory, creating inner fragmentation that undermines well-being, resilience, and effective leadership. Externally, the person may still appear successful. Internally, however, their energy gradually drains away.
A metaphor that emerged from our work is the difference between a burning log and a flowing fountain. Some people experience work like a burning log in a corporate fire. They keep producing heat and output, but slowly consume themselves in the process.
Others experience work more like a flowing fountain. They are connected to their source (Essential self), their sense of purpose and meaning, recognized for their unique contribution, and able to express more of who they truly are and to bring life wherever they “flow”. They still work hard, but their energy is regenerative rather than purely consumptive.
Leadership practices to prevent burnout
Leaders are key to shaping the culture of their team and organization, including creating conditions where people can “flow” and express more of their Essential Self. Here are five recommendations for leaders emerging from the research:
1. Help people work from strength rather than fear
Many people are performing from fear-driven ego narratives rather than from their deeper strengths. Leaders should therefore move beyond simply asking: “What are people delivering?”, and also ask: “What energizes them? What strengths come naturally to them? When do they come alive?”
2. Normalize healthy boundaries
Many high performers struggle to say no. Sometimes leaders need to protect a staff member from themselves, by highlighting that they are pushing themselves too hard. Leaders can model healthier norms by discouraging constant availability; recognizing sustainable performance rather than overwork; supporting recovery and renewal; and rewarding discernment, not only sacrifice. As one participant highlighted: “Empathy also means drawing boundaries.”
3. Prioritize psychological safety
Burnout intensifies in environments where people feel unsafe expressing struggle. To combat this, leaders should create cultures where people can speak openly about workload, ask for support, admit mistakes, and express concerns without fear of judgment.
Psychological safety is essential for creating the emotional conditions that allow people to remain adaptive, creative, and resilient under pressure. Leaders can learn to nurture conditions of psychological safety through coaching and other purposeful development initiatives.
4. Learn to work with the inner critic
Most leaders have an inner critic. This is not a problem in itself, unless it begins to dominate. Several participants found it helpful to externalize this inner voice. One called it their “black widow spider”. Another named it “Bob”. This creates distance between the observing self and the fear-driven narrative. Leaders who constantly attack themselves often unconsciously create similar emotional climates around others.
Likewise, leaders can help teams reframe failure and challenge as learning, experimentation, stretch, and growth. Naming these phases allows people to recognize mistakes as a legitimate part of work processes and, with reflection and feedback built in, grow from them.
5. Design roles around natural strengths
One of the strongest findings in our research was that many burnout cases reflected role misalignment rather than incompetence. Examples included: highly empathetic leaders carrying excessive emotional labor; collaborative people trapped in hyper-competitive environments; creative individuals overwhelmed by rigid bureaucracy; and introverted specialists forced into constant stakeholder engagement.
To avoid this, leaders should create space for teams to openly discuss and share feedback on topics such as:
Where are people chronically over-adapting?
What strengths remain underused?
How might we allocate/re-allocate roles to leverage natural strengths?
Which roles create energy and which deplete it?
With that insight, they can then review work allocation and processes. This does not mean eliminating challenge from roles, as growth often requires stretch, but sustainable stretch differs fundamentally from chronic identity suppression.
The role for the empathetic leader
Contrary to commonly held belief, burnout is not an individual weakness or a time management problem. This is an outdated view. Instead, it is often the consequence of prolonged misalignment between who people are, what they value, how they work, and the identities they feel forced to perform.
When the Essential Self, Social Self, and Ego Self remain in healthy tension and alignment, people are more likely to experience vitality, resilience, authenticity, and sustainable performance. Empathetic and sustainable leadership should therefore move from extracting more and more effort from people to purposefully creating systems where human energy renews and sustains itself.
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First published in the DLQ50 Hult Ashridge Executive Education Supplement, Ideas for Leaders.
Access the full publication for new insights from leadership experts, spanning burnout, global crises, the risk of over-optimization – and the human being advantage.
More on the Three Selves Framework
For more on the Three Selves Framework and Sharon’s research, watch her TEDx talk, Why high performers burn out: When who you are and what you do drift apart.
Meet the experts
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Sharon Olivier
Professor of Practice in Leadership & Management at Hult International Business School
As an organizational psychologist and with significant industry experience, Sharon researches, writes and facilitates experiential learning in topics around new leadership logics for the 21st century; leadership agility; polarity management; integrative thinking; engagement and motivation; cognitive diversity and psychological safety; and emotional resiliency.
She has established a record of accomplishment as accredited individual and team coach, inspirational speaker, and author of publications including Agile Leadership for Turbulent Times; The Role of the Ego in Servant Leadership; and Mindful Leadership.
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Dr. Frederick Hölscher
Associate Professor at Hult International Business School
He brings a unique blend of deep academic grounding and global corporate insight to his research, spanning over 20 years as both a sociologist in academia and an international industry consultant.
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