Is Your Boss Accidentally Creating Burnout?

Ever felt like your boss is unintentionally making your life a living nightmare? 

In this episode, we get into how leadership habits and structural systems fuel burnout. Discover why it's not about you being weak, but about navigating and managing the power dynamics at play. 

Learn strategies to protect your sanity, communicate effectively, and regain your energy in a chaotic work environment. 

Check out the detailed show notes (https://tarakermiet.com/podcast/) and leave your thoughts or questions about today's topic.

Need a little more balance and a lot more badass in your life? Check out my 1:1 coaching sessions designed to help you tackle your biggest challenges, manage stress, and create a personalized plan for success. Your first 30-minute session is free! Visit tarakermiet.com to get started. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: Recognizing Toxic Boss Behaviors
• 1:38 Understanding the Root Causes of Burnout
• 2:26 How Leadership Habits Contribute to Burnout
• 8:52 Identifying Common Toxic Boss Types
• 13:42 Strategies for Managing Up
• 18:10 Protecting Your Energy and Setting Boundaries
• 22:13 Embracing Agency and Emotional Boundaries
• 24:51 Conclusion: Leading Yourself Out of Burnout

Transcript

[00:00:00] Let's be honest, most of us have worked for someone who made us question if we were actually losing it. You know the type, you've got the boss who piles it on right before you're supposed to log off, the one who ghosts you for a week, and then suddenly swoops in with some quick feedback that somehow changes everything.

Or the leader who swears they care about wellbeing, but still praises everyone in the company who answers emails at midnight like they're saving the company single handedly. And if you've ever worked for that kind of boss, you've probably had that moment sitting there late at night, staring at your laptop thinking, what is wrong with me?

Why can't I handle this like everyone else seems to, am I not resilient enough? And let me stop you right there. No friend, you are not the problem. Most burnout, as we know, doesn't come from weak people who can't hack it. It comes from systems, structures, [00:01:00] and leadership habits that quietly drain you over time.

It's death by a thousand. Small decisions basically missed one-on-ones, unclear expectations over commitments that just roll downhill, and those urgent projects that never should have been urgent in the first place. And the kicker, most of the time your boss doesn't even realize they're doing it. They're not sitting there scheming about how to make your life miserable.

They're probably overwhelmed too, but when leadership gets sloppy, scared, or stretched too thin, it trickles down and you end up carrying the emotional and operational load they were supposed to hold. So today we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna unpack how your boss might be unintentionally fueling your burnout, how those patterns show up even in good managers, and more importantly, how you can protect yourself, communicate effectively, and manage up without losing your sanity or your job.

Because yes, burnout happens [00:02:00] at work, but recovery starts with learning how to navigate the power dynamics that created it in the first place. And I'll tell you right now, this isn't about pretending that your boss will suddenly transform into Brene Brown overnight. It's about learning how to lead yourself in an environment that might not be leading you well, and that's what keeps you grounded, clear and balanced, even when the people above you aren't most bad.

Leadership isn't malicious, it's unaware, and maybe even a little bit naive. Your boss probably didn't wake up this morning thinking, how can I make Tara's life miserable? They woke up thinking, how do I keep this department afloat? And when people start leading from fear, scarcity, or even pressure, everything shifts.

And that's usually shifting downhill. Now here's how it happens. They say yes to everything because they don't wanna look like the bottleneck. They take on every request from above because [00:03:00] they're terrified of being seen as uncooperative. They stop making real decisions because making the wrong one feels much riskier than making none at all.

So instead, they spin in endless checking in meetings and last minute pivots that wreck. Everyone else is weak. And because control feels safer than uncertainty, they start micromanaging. They tighten their grip on the details, but the tighter they squeeze, the more chaos they create. Suddenly you're not just doing your job, you're doing theirs too.

You're writing the reports, interpreting their emails, anticipating what they might want before they even decide what that is. That's what accidental burnout looks like in real life. It's not usually one dramatic event. It's the slow creep of workload confusion and invisible emotional labor. You end up doing three jobs, getting credit for half of one, and wondering why your body feels like it's in [00:04:00] permanent fight or flight.

And it's not just exhaustion either. It's hypervigilance too. You start scanning for tone shifts and emails. You rehearse your responses before meetings. You second guess simple decisions because the rules keep changing. That's your nervous system trying to survive in an unpredictable environment. When your boss's anxiety becomes the organizing principle of your workday, it hijacks your energy.

You start working not for the results, but for relief, trying to prevent the next flare up or disappointment. And that's how capable, ambitious people end up burned out, even while still performing at a high level on paper. So if you've been beating yourself up for not handling it better, I want you to take a breath and just remind yourself that you're reacting normally to an abnormal situation.

One where the leadership behaviors around you are signaling danger when all you wanna do is do good work and go home with a little energy left. [00:05:00] All right, so let's pull the curtain back for a minute, because what's really happening underneath all that exhaustion and irritability isn't just you being stressed out.

It's your system running on fumes. When you feel burned out, it's because the equation between what's being asked of you and what you actually have to give has gone completely sideways. Too many demands, not enough resources, and in higher ed, we called this having a good balance of challenge and support.

And the part most people miss, is that your boss holds the biggest levers in that equation. They decide what counts as urgent. They control how predictable your day is or isn't, and they determine whether you have space to do deep work or whether you spend all day reacting to fires that didn't even start in your department.

They also decide how much autonomy you get. Do they trust you to run with things or do they make you wait for approvals like you're a kid asking to borrow the car keys?

And over time that power imbalance starts to mess with your [00:06:00] nervous system. You stop feeling in control, so you start over-functioning to compensate. You say yes faster, you triple check your work. You anticipate every possible reaction just to stay one step ahead. Your body is essentially trying to find safety in a place that keeps moving the goalposts.

And what's wild is that burnout doesn't always come from long hours. We know this. It comes from inher. That mental whiplash that happens when what's said doesn't line up with what's rewarded like when your boss says family first, but still celebrates the person who skips their kids' recital to hit a deadline, or when they talk about psychological safety.

But you see what happens when someone actually disagrees in a meeting. You start to realize it's not the work itself that's exhausting necessarily. It's constantly trying to make sense of what matters this week. That lack of clarity creates tension that you can feel in your shoulders, in your sleep, even how quickly you snap at the people you love.[00:07:00] 

Your brain stays on alert because it's trying to survive a system that feels unpredictable, and unpredictability is one of the fastest ways to drain human energy faster than workload or long hours. What you need here is clearer expectations. You need steadier communication and a leader who doesn't mistake chaos for urgency.

And when you understand that, you stop personalizing the burnout so much, you stop thinking, I can't handle this, and start seeing no one could thrive under these conditions. And that shift right there is the beginning of getting your power back. Now let's talk about these patterns, because once you can name them like I always say, then you can stop taking them so personally and do something about them.

Have you ever noticed how certain boss behaviors just tend to repeat themselves, like a bad rerun? The faces may change, the titles may change, but the energy is usually the same. That's because leadership stress tends to leak in [00:08:00] pretty predictable ways, and when you can spot those patterns early, you can start responding with strategy.

Let's start with a fire hose boss. This is the one who treats priorities like a game of dodge ball. They're just lobbing them at whoever's in closest range. Everything's urgent, everything's top priority, and somehow nothing ever gets finished. They genuinely think that they're being helpful by keeping things moving, but really they're drowning everyone in noise.

If you've ever ended a meeting thinking, cool, I have 15 number one priorities. Now you've met the fire hose and you know what I'm talking about. Then there's the micromanager. We're all familiar with this. They don't always mean to drive you insane. They just confuse control with competence. Their anxiety tells them, if I know every detail, nothing will go wrong.

But the irony is that level of control actually creates mistakes because it kills trust, autonomy, and creativity. [00:09:00] Micromanagers think they're preventing fires when really they're pouring gasoline on the ones that they started. Next up is the ghost boss. You know, the one who disappears when you need direction, but then magically reappears the minute that you've made some progress, usually to question every decision you've made.

They vanish in the planning phase and then show up right before launch, asking for small tweaks that aren't usually small at all, and you're standing there trying not to lose your freaking mind because now you've gotta redo three weeks of work usually on a Friday afternoon. Not only is that poor communication, but it's also poor containment.

They're afraid of being wrong, so they hover at the edges until it's safe to jump in. Then there's the people pleaser leader. They wanna be liked so badly that they can't say no to upper leadership, to other departments, to clients. So they say yes to everything and then hand [00:10:00] you the fallout. You're left managing a workload built on other people's lack of boundaries.

And what's usually tough about this is that they'll praise you for stepping up, which keeps you stuck in the same dynamic. It's validation bait, and sometimes it works. And finally, the conflict avoider, they want peace at all costs, which means real issues never get addressed. Performance problems go unchecked.

Accountability goes out the window and the high performers start carrying the team. You know that feeling of, if I don't do it, no one else will. That's what happens when avoidance masquerades as calm. Leadership. All of these patterns come from the same root, and that root is fear. It may be fear of being wrong or fear of being seen as difficult, maybe fear of failure, rejection, or losing control.

But at the end of the day, it's just fear. And when fear is running the show, it trickles down as [00:11:00] overwork, inconsistency, and anxiety. The key is learning to see it for what it is. When your boss starts spiraling, you can think, okay, this isn't about me. They're reacting to their own pressure. That small shift in perspective is huge because it creates some of that emotional distance.

It lets you stay steady instead of getting swept up in their storm. Because if you can identify the pattern, then you can tailor your approach. You manage the fire hose boss with prioritization. You manage the micromanager with structured updates. You manage the ghost boss by clarifying checkpoints before they disappear again.

And you manage the people pleaser by putting decisions in writing so that something, anything sticks. None of these are perfect solutions, but they do keep you from being collateral damage in someone else's stress response. And that's the real skill here, because you can't change who your boss is, but you can change the way that you engage with them.

And that shift is the difference [00:12:00] between surviving a bad manager and being slowly broken down by one. But most of us are never really taught how to manage up. We're told to communicate better or to be proactive, but no one explains how to do that when your boss is reactive, inconsistent, or downright draining.

So let's start there, because managing up isn't about kissing ass or over-functioning to keep the peace. It's about stabilizing the system so that you don't get pulled into the shit storm. When your boss is operating from fear or pressure, your goal is to bring clarity where there's confusion and then calm where there's urgency.

But that doesn't mean that you take on their emotions, it just means you start designing how you communicate. So let me give you an example. Say your boss loves to throw last minute projects at you. You can feel your anxiety spike every time their name pops up on your inbox because you know it's another quick favor.

Instead of immediately saying yes [00:13:00] or panicking about how you'll fit it in, pause it and reframe it like this. Absolutely. I can help with that. Here's what's currently on my plate this week. Here's what would need to shift to make room for this. Which one should I prioritize? That question does a few things.

It forces them to choose instead of just piling things on, it reframes the dynamic from, I can't handle this to, I'm making a strategic trade off. And it puts the responsibility for that decision back where it belongs with them. That's managing up. It's not about being difficult, it's about introducing logic into a relationship that's gotten emotional.

When your boss is leading from stress, they're not thinking long term. They're just trying to relieve the pressure valve in the moment. Your job is to slow that reaction down. You're saying, Hey, I get this is important. Let's just make sure we do it right, not rushed. Here's another tactic that works wonders.

Proactive updates. If your boss tends to [00:14:00] micromanage, don't wait for them to hover, beat them to it. Send short structured updates that say, here's what's done, here's what's next, and here's where I might need some input from you. That's it. Clean, confident, and contained. You are signaling that you've got this without saying it out loud, and what usually happens is the micromanaging starts to taper off a little.

Not because they suddenly trust you, but because they stop feeling the need to control what they can already see. But managing up is also about anticipation. Think about your boss's biggest anxiety trigger because they all have one. Maybe it's deadlines, maybe it's looking bad in front of their own boss.

Maybe it's uncertainty, whatever it is. Once you identify that pressure point, you can communicate in a way that reduces it without taking it on as your own. If your boss freaks out about visibility, you make visibility easy. If they panic about timelines, [00:15:00] you bring options early. Say something like, we can hit the date if we scale down the scope, or we can keep the full scope.

If we push the timeline, what feels right for you? You're guiding the conversation back to reason. Now, it's also important to realize that managing up doesn't mean fixing your boss. It means protecting your energy while maintaining your influence. It is basically leadership. Without the title, it's saying that you see how this system runs and you're going to run your part of it with intention.

And yes, that's harder than just venting about how bad they are, how much they suck, and how terrible of a situation you're in. But it's also a hell of a lot more effective because once you start managing up from clarity, you stop being reactive. You stop waiting for them to set the tone, and you start walking into meetings with a calm, grounded energy that quietly says, I'm not here to absorb your shit.

I'm here to get shit done. And that energy shift creates a 100% noticeable [00:16:00] difference. You become the person who can hold steady when everyone else is spiraling, and that's effective And strategic leadership. Even if you never get the title, you're practicing it every time you choose discernment over reactivity.

So no, you can't control your boss, but you can absolutely control how you engage with them. You can design how information flows, how expectations are set, and how decisions are made. And when you do that, you stop being at the mercy of their stress patterns and start leading from your own sense of stability.

Now, the reality is that we still need to talk about protecting your energy in real time because this is where a lot of people lose it. You can communicate boundaries all day. But if your body is still in fight or flight, you'll default to over-functioning. So step one is learning to co-regulate instead of absorb.

When your boss is spinning out, your nervous system wants to match their energy. Instead, slow your tone, slow [00:17:00] your breathing, and ask a grounding question. Can we pause for 30 seconds to decide what's truly urgent here? You'd be amazed at how many meetings you can recenter with one calm sentence or question.

Another tactic. Track your own load signals. Notice when you start rereading emails making small mistakes or feeling irrationally irritated. That's a sign of cognitive overload. And when you see it happening, use micro resets like stepping outside, drinking water, changing your posture. And getting sunlight.

It sounds small, but biologically, those actions regulate cortisol faster than powering through, and that's what keeps your brain capable of discernment instead of spiraling into frustration. Now, sometimes it's not just your boss, it's the whole damn ecosystem that you're operating in. You can have the most emotionally intelligent, [00:18:00] well-intentioned leader in the world, but if the system itself rewards exhaustion.

They're swimming upstream just like you are. If the culture celebrates endurance over empathy, consistency over creativity or output over integrity. Burnout isn't just a byproduct, it's the business model. That's when you have to stop asking what's wrong with me and start asking what's wrong around me.

And here's where this gets tricky, because you can love your boss and still be burned out by the system that they and you work in. You can have a supportive manager who's doing their best, but if they're caught between executive demands, endless cost cutting and unrealistic KPIs, their support can only go so far.

That's why you've gotta look at the patterns, not just the people. Ask yourself, is this just a bad week or is this a pattern that's baked into how this place operates? Is this an isolated [00:19:00] management issue or is it a reflection of the company's values in action? Because if it's a culture problem, you're not going to fix it by working harder or being nicer, you'll just burn yourself out trying to prove your worth in a system that's designed to consume it.

That's when you shift into what I call systems thinking. You stop looking for the perfect message or the perfect moment to get through to your boss, and instead you start assessing your influence zones. Where can you make small, meaningful changes that actually give you breathing room? Maybe you can redesign small parts of your role, delegate something, simplify something, or automate tasks that aren't actually moving the needle.

Maybe you can advocate for clearer priorities or realistic deadlines, not necessarily as rebellion, but as a way to protect sustainability for the whole team. And maybe if those things don't change, if every quarter still feels like crisis management, you start asking the harder question, [00:20:00] is this culture still compatible with my values?

Because sometimes managing up also means managing your exit plan. And listen, I get it. Times are tough. It's not always realistic to walk out tomorrow, but even naming the possibility gives you back a sense of agency. It reminds you that you're not trapped. You still have choices. Even if those choices unfold over some time, the more you zoom out and see the system for what it is, the less you internalize its dysfunction as your fault, and you stop trying to fix what was never yours to fix.

Okay, now I wanna get into this concept of agency a little bit further. Agency doesn't mean control. You can't control your boss. We've talked about this. You can't control the company culture, and you certainly can't control surprise reorgs, layoffs or the latest urgent project that comes down from the top.[00:21:00] 

But you can control how you respond, how you structure your day. How you prioritize your energy and what you give meaning to, and that's not woo woo mindset talk. That's neuroscience. When you reclaim small choices, your nervous system starts to regulate again. Your brain moves out of that threat mode and back into problem solving mode.

You literally rebuild your capacity for clarity. So let's make this practical. If your boss constantly interrupts your focus. Agency might look like scheduling deep work blocks on your calendar, those non-negotiable times where you mute notifications and you guard your energy like it's gold. If your company worships busyness, agency might look like intentionally slowing down your pace, not to slack off, but to work strategically instead of reactively.

If your role feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole agency might look like deciding, hey. I'm gonna finish one thing completely today. Instead of [00:22:00] dabbling in 10, half started tasks that leave you feeling empty, each small act of choice tells your body, I'm steering again. And that's the shift that starts to pull you out of burnout's.

Gravitational pull agency is also about emotional boundaries. You can't stop your boss from panicking, but you can stop matching their panic. When they come in with that all hands on deck energy, your power move is to stay grounded. Take a breath before you respond. Speak slower than you feel and ask one clarifying question instead of 20 anxious ones.

Because calm people hold power, not the loudest, not the busiest, the calmest. They create clarity simply by refusing to mirror chaos. That's what I mean by the energy of agency. It is that grounded quiet confidence that says, I can't fix everything, but I can choose how I move through it. And when you start leading yourself that way, it changes how people interact with you.

Your boss stops seeing you [00:23:00] as just another overwhelmed employee and starts seeing you as someone who brings stability. Your peers start mirroring your pace instead of your panic, and you become the emotional thermostat in the room instead of the thermometer. Listen, we throw around the word burnout, like it's an individual flaw.

Like if you just managed your time better or got more sleep, or learned to set boundaries, everything would magically fix itself. And don't get me wrong, we absolutely play a role in our burnout, but you're still operating within a system, so we have to consider that as well. That's why this isn't just about fixing yourself.

It's about learning to see the system for what it is and choosing how you wanna move through it. Because once you start recognizing the patterns, those fear-based decision making, the false urgency, the inconsistent leadership, you stop internalizing it. You stop taking every reaction or unreasonable ask as a reflection of your ability or worth, and you start seeing it as [00:24:00] data.

And data gives you options, gives you room to pause before saying yes. 

It gives you the language to negotiate priorities instead of apologizing for having them, and it gives you the clarity to decide what's fixable, what's tolerable, and what's no longer aligned. So if your boss is accidentally creating burnout, remember that you can hold compassion for them without surrendering your boundaries.

You can understand the system without absorbing its dysfunction, and you can stay professional without abandoning yourself in the process. Ultimately. That's what I mean when I think of being balanced and badass. It's not about being perfectly calm or endlessly patient. It's more about having the discernment to choose where your energy goes, even when the environment doesn't make it easy.

Because you can't always fix the people above you, but you can stop letting them break the person that you are becoming. So take this week to look at your work life through that lens, and hopefully it'll help you to start leading [00:25:00] yourself out of burnout and back into balance.

Take care, friend.