
Leman Tech Leadership Podcast · 2026-04-28 · 12 min
▶︎ #155 | The Burnout Nobody Talks About: What Happens When You, the Leader, Are Running on Empty In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska turns the burnout conversation inward: toward the person who is most often the last to receive support, the last to admit they're struggling, and the first to keep showing up with a plan. The leaders themselves. Alex opens by naming what leader burnout actually looks like, and how it's almost the inverse of what you'd expect. Where a burned-out engineer goes quiet and withdraws, a burned-out leader often becomes hyperactive: over-communicating, micromanaging, taking on more instead of less, all while privately running on fumes. The performance of being fine is one of the most energy-expensive things a leader can do. Using the Process Communication Model® (PCM®) from the CQ Leadership Method, Alex explains the concept of the distress sequence - the specific, predictable way each personality type's communication collapses under sustained stress. The over-controlling leader who finds fault with everything. The one who stops making decisions and leaves the team in a vacuum.