EP 101: Burnout and Toxic Culture: What to Do When It’s Affecting You or Your Team
Description
Burnout can take root fast when company culture overlooks early warning signs, and Cait Donovan offers insight into how leaders can spot and address it before it damages the entire organization.
Sarah Lockwood speaks with Cait, the host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast and the founder of BurnBOLD, about what burnout looks like in real time and why it often signals deeper issues inside a company. How can a leader tell when a team is just under pressure versus when something is fundamentally off? Which behaviors start small but slowly erode trust and workplace wellness until they create a toxic culture?
Cait explains why leaders must deal with their own burnout first because when a leader is running on empty, the strain spreads. From there, she walks through ways to identify whether the problem lies in a single pocket of the organization or across the culture as a whole, and how to respond in each case. She shares approaches that shift the tone of a workplace, like starting “positive gossip” to strengthen psychological safety or aligning the company’s stated values with what actually happens day to day.
This episode looks at personal habits such as perfectionism, people-pleasing, hyper-independence that often come from old patterns and quietly shape relationships and performance at work. Cait shows how becoming aware of these tendencies can help leaders change the environment for themselves and their teams. She offers a thoughtful and detailed look at how burnout develops, what fuels a toxic culture, and how workplace wellness can be protected through intentional choices in leadership and company culture.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Real Costs of Burnout
01:31 WHO Definition and Key Signs of Burnout
02:46 Individual Burnout vs. Cultural Problems
04:07 How Leaders Should Address Burnout
06:10 Four Indicators of a Toxic Workplace
08:42 Effective Interventions to Reduce Burnout
09:20 Building Trust Through Positive Gossip
11:30 Aligning Company Values With Culture
12:44 Burnout Risk Factors and Protection Factors
16:42 Why Leaders Must Address Their Own Burnout First
21:16 Hidden Patterns That Increase Burnout Risk
26:39 Case Study: Reducing Urgency to Boost Productivity
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