22 Apr #325 – Integrity Idea 101: Banish the Burn
Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity®—actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities. You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)
INTEGRITY IDEA: Banish the Burn
Recently Fast Company published a series of articles on a growing crisis of manager “burnout”:
• “The ‘silent middle’: the burnout crisis quietly spreading through organizations.”
• “Burnt-out managers are destroying teams. These 5 daily habits reverse it.“
• “How to tell if a middle manager on your team is burning out.”
“Banish the Burn” is about a faithful leader putting in place practices to identify potential manager burn-out, understand its sources, care for managers experiencing burnout, and cultivate an organizational culture designed to minimize the causes of and proactively protect against burnout.
It recognizes that business as usual leads to work as usual, and one attribute of work as usual is that work becomes a burden rather than the blessing God intended. It also recognizes that unhealthy managers lead to disengaged workers, further contributing to the brokenness of work, workplaces, and workers.
Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization. Some are helpful ideas to consider as a faithful leader prayerfully discerns the best stewardship of the organization. Others may be important steps in the RENEW/RE-ALIGN/RE-IMAGINE/RESTORE process.
“Banish the Burn” is in the “necessary” category because it directly impacts the flourishing of employees and seeks to remedy the brokenness of work as usual.
The Manager “Burnout” Crisis
Burnout. One of the Fast Company articles defines “burnout” as:
An ongoing state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that occurs when we feel overwhelmed by too many demands, too few resources, and too little recovery time.
Wiley Workplace Intelligence reported that “2025 marked the year when workplace stress stopped being a temporary response to busy seasons and became an embedded part of the work experience.” Specifically, 95% of employees overall reported “significant stress” and 36% reported “severe stress”. Even more alarmingly, 47% of managers reported severe burnout.
One of the Fast Company authors, Graeme Cowan, appropriately observed, “This isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s an organizational one.”
Manager Burnout. In post #265 (Integrity Idea 022: Seek “Moses Managers”), we stressed the importance of good managers to employee engagement and flourishing, to the implementation and maintenance of a Re-Imagined Culture that reflects and reinforces a Re-Imagined Purpose and Re-Imagined Values, and to the flow of information and wisdom that permits faithful leaders to make the best decisions in the stewardship of the organization.
We noted that inattention to hiring, promotion and training can lead to bad managers who can undermine employee engagement and flourishing, create a toxic “Real Culture” that bears little resemblance to the organization’s desired culture, fail to recognize (or even punish) employees for exemplifying the organizations desired culture, fail to identify and correct workers undermining the organization’s desired culture, and build impregnable walls that prevent leaders from hearing the ideas and concerns of employees at all levels.
Gallup reports that businesses pick the wrong managers 82% of the time, which undoubtedly contributes to those managers feeling stress and experiencing burnout. But the benefits of good managers assume that they remain healthy managers. Even if an organization hires well, burnout can be an issue for good managers because they are good.
Another of the Fast Company articles refers to managers as the “Silent Middle.” Consider this insightful description by Angela Cox of how the pressure on “good” managers can increase in a business as usual culture that values performance toward profit:
[B]urnout does not always look like struggle. Often, it looks like competence. It looks like the person who always delivers. The one who volunteers to pick up the slack. The one answering work emails while watching their son’s nativity play, so they do not let anybody down. The one who says, “It’s fine, I’ll sort it.” The one who absorbs tension in the room so others do not have to . . .. This group is called the “Silent Middle”, made up of capable, conscientious professionals who are neither thriving nor in crisis . . ..They extend their hours without calling it overwork. They absorb unrealistic deadlines rather than risk being seen as difficult. They manage their reactions so they are perceived as composed, and they soften their opinions to maintain harmony. From a leadership perspective, this can look like resilience. Often, it is masking . . .. The Silent Middle often includes high-capability professionals who derive identity from contribution. They are proud of being reliable. This makes them more likely to overcommit, absorb ambiguity and protect others from friction. They become cultural shock absorbers.
Burnout can turn “good” managers into “bad” managers.
The Impact of Manager Burnout. As we noted back in post #084 (Re-Imagined Implementation–Culture and People), brokenness flows downward. Manager burnout directly shapes the work environment of those they supervise.
Gallup has concluded that managers account for 70% of the variance in worker engagement. We believe employee “engagement” is a helpful proxy for assessing whether work is perceived as a burden or a blessing. One of the Fast Company articles notes:
As emotional resilience breaks down, managers are more likely to react to mistakes and requests for assistance with anger and annoyance. They may be more likely to punish mistakes rather than use them as learning opportunities. These reactions are likely to create frustration among this manager’s direct reports.
“Banish the Burn” recognizes that faithfully stewarding an organization includes faithfully stewarding the people who make it up, and that stewardship of people made in the image of God requires a culture that facilitates people becoming more “fully human” by experiencing work as the blessing of flourishing God intended.
CONTINUUM: Practices
The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums. There is nothing inherently magic about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values, and a Re-Imagined Culture. The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.
Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan, and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.
“Banish the Burn” is on the Practices Continuum. It involves practices an organization can adopt to care for its employees, affirm its commitment to Biblical flourishing and the Biblical principles of Imago Dei, the Golden Rule and love your neighbor, reflect and reinforce a culture that prioritizes relationships, community, human dignity and flourishing, and the bigger WHYs of Humanizing People, Beautifying the World, and Glorifying God.
COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert
The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations—from Highly Covert to Highly Overt—that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.
Most Integrity Ideas have one place on the scale. Some can vary depending on how they are implemented. We identify “Banish the Burn” as Highly Covert (An action that would be taken by a secular company) because manager burnout is an issue that even a secular organization needs to address, albeit for reasons likely to be tied more to the impact on profit than the impact on people.
“Banish the Burn” can be moved toward the Overt end of the Continuum by, for example, explaining the Biblical principles that drive the faithful leader’s actions.
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees
When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community and Kingdom.
“Banish the Burn” principally serves employees. It serves managers directly, and it indirectly serves the employees they supervise.
This isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s an organizational one. (Graeme Cowan)
IMPLEMENTATION
“Banish the Burn” is caring for fellow humans for the right reasons—reflecting and reinforcing a culture that recognizes the Imago Dei in each person, lives out the Golden Rule and the commandment to love your neighbor, and prioritizes relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing.
It is caring for them not because burnout impacts productivity or profitability, but because burnout robs humans of the flourishing that God designed work to bring. Burnout reflects the brokenness of business as usual leading to the brokenness of work as usual.
Matthew 11:28-30 reinforces that the ultimate remedy for burnout is Jesus himself:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
However, Scripture is filled with references to, and examples of, burnout and anxiety.
• Psalm 127:1-2 warns, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”
• We see in Mark 6:31 how Jesus dealt with potential burnout of disciples:
And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.
• In 1 Kings 19:4-8, Elijah collapses under a broom tree after his Mt. Carmel triumph, wanting to die. God provides food, sleep, and then a quiet encounter.
• In Exodus 18:17-23, Jethro steps in to save Moses from burnout, urging him to delegate tasks to qualified managers.
• In many passages, Jesus and the apostles warn about being anxious and offers the solution of casting cares upon God (e.g., Matthew 6:25-34, 1 Peter 5:7, Philippians 4:6-7).
In describing “Banish the Burn”, we identified five aspects of implementation:
• Identify potential manager burnout.
• Understand its sources.
• Care for managers experiencing burnout.
• Cultivate an organizational culture designed to minimize the causes of burnout.
• Cultivate a culture designed to protect against burnout.
Many of our past posts, particularly Integrity Ideas, hold implementation ideas for each of these aspects.
Identify. Identifying managers who may be experiencing burnout starts with a faithful leader asking questions and listening with empathy. These are skills grounded in Biblical EQ, the topic of post #185 (Integrity Idea 030: Encourage “Biblical EQ”). One of the Fast Company articles is focused on identifying manager burnout.
It is paying attention to employees about how they are being treated by their managers. It includes asking managers questions not only about how they are doing, but also about how particular tasks and projects are going. Are they expressing frustration? Anger? Annoyance? It is observing drops in productivity as potential signals of an underlying human problem rather than an organizational problem.
It is much of what we explored in post #312 (Integrity Idea 093: Listen to the Silent Screams).
Understand. Understanding the sources of manager burnout requires more questions and more listening. It also requires the type of honest assessment of the organization’s “real” culture that we discussed in post #146 (Integrity Idea 014: Understand Your “Real” Culture) and post #237 (“Real” Culture Revisited).
Undertaking an honest assessment of the nature and health of the organization’s current culture requires an honest assessment of what employees experience to be the real WHY behind the organization’s purpose, values and culture. Regardless of what is communicated as an organization’s formal purpose and values, the human beings in the organization will manage and perform based on what they perceive to be the real purpose and real values.
This next step often requires courageous action, prayerfully trusting in God’s sovereignty and promises and taking what could be counter-cultural steps to bring the real culture back in alignment with biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.
Care. Listening empathetically (remember Biblical EQ), showing appreciation (Integrity Idea 042: Give “Horizontal” Thanks) and providing encouragement (Integrity Idea 094: Be a Barnabas) are three easy ways to care for someone who may be questioning their own ability to cope. The managers most prone to burnout are also likely to be the “glue” players we talked about in post #298 (Integrity Idea 085: Support the Supporters).
Beyond listening, appreciation, and encouragement, one of the most practical ways to care for a manager suffering from burnout is to encourage them to practice self-care. Self-care can be taking appropriate rests (Integrity Idea 025: Reward Rest), re-prioritizing family (Integrity Idea 034: Fortify Family), focusing on gratitude (Integrity Idea 071: Grow Gratitude) and taking advantage of the type of wellness resources described below under Cultivate to Protect.
One of the Fast Company articles is focused on ways to help those suffering burnout.
Cultivate to Minimize. Once the sources are understood, it becomes critical to address any of those sources that come from the organization’s culture. For example, it might be that knowledge and wisdom “walls” lead to managers not having the tools and information they need to do their job effectively and efficiently. We talked about the importance of tearing down “walls” in post # 198 (Integrity Idea 035: Tear Down Those Walls).
It might also be that managers do not have the training needed to flourish. In post #148 (Integrity Idea 016: Pick the Right “Peter Principle”), we noted that 1 Peter 5 calls people in more senior positions to mentor those under their supervision to help them be all God created them to be.
So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Peter 5:1-3)
Providing coaching and mentoring says “We care“, “You matter” and “We believe in you“, and those phrases capture the commandment to love your neighbor as well as the concept of Imago Dei. Hearing them is humanizing. Speaking them is humanizing. The impact can go far beyond work performance and organizational excellence.
Providing coaching and mentoring to employees is caring for not only the person being mentored or coached but also for all those under their care and supervision–it creates a domino effect of flourishing.
Cultivate to Protect. “Banish the Burn” is not only reactive—it is also proactive, embedding practices that protect managers from burnout before it takes hold. It is all the practices identified above under Care and Cultivate to Minimize that create a healthier culture—embedding practices of Biblical EQ, appreciation, and encouragement, implementing initiatives to encourage rest, strengthen families, grow gratitude, take down “walls,” and provide coaching and mentoring.
It is also implementing programs aimed at general employee wellness in order to encourage self-care and provide care. Rather than re-develop each of these here, we offer the following as a pointer back to prior posts in which they were treated more fully:
Integrity Idea 001: Hire a Chaplain
Integrity Idea 006: Provide Humanity Resources
Integrity Idea 023: Segregate Sacred Space
Integrity Idea 055: Nurture Nutrition
Integrity Idea 056: Fortify Fitness
In many ways, we could list all of our Integrity Ideas, because they are all aimed at cultivating an organizational culture aligned with how we believe God designed work as a source of flourishing. The five aspects of “Banish the Burn”–Identify, Understand, Care, Cultivate to Minimize and Cultivate to Protect are about caring. The question is what you are caring about.
A secular organization might do many of them because they ultimately care most about productivity and profitability. A faithful leader pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing should do them because they reflect and reinforce a culture that recognizes the Imago Dei in each person, lives out the Golden Rule and the commandment to love your neighbor, and prioritizes relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing.
If a manager—a human being in the Silent Middle—is experiencing burnout, “Banish the Burn” is simply the right thing to do—in the right way and for the right reasons.
A note to those in the Silent Middle. Much of this post is written for faithful leaders overseeing managers experiencing burnout. But it is equally relevant for those managers themselves—capable, conscientious, reliable, and quietly running out of reserves. If that is you, the stewardship case for self-care is not optional; it is Biblical.
You are an image-bearer of God. Your flourishing matters to Him, not merely your contribution. Recognizing burnout in yourself, taking needed rest without apology, and raising your hand rather than absorbing more ambiguity are not signs of weakness—they are acts of faithful stewardship of the person God created you to be. 1 Peter 5:7 applies as much to you as to those you supervise: “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): I don’t know if I ever experienced “burnout,” but I certainly understand and resonate with the description of the Silent Middle. As an associate at a large law firm, I always delivered, volunteered to pick up the slack, answered work e-mails promptly wherever I happened to be (once e-mail existed), absorbed unrealistic deadlines, managed reactions to appear composed, softened opinions to maintain harmony, derived identity from contributing, and was proud of being reliable. Perhaps I remained relatively healthy and happy not because of healthier habits in the office but because I didn’t have many (any?) competing interests (like family) at the time and I made the most of my time off. I always took my vacation time, and for the four summers when I was part of a house share in the Hamptons, I was always the first one out there on Friday nights (but also the only one out on a deck chair early Saturday and Sunday mornings working before anyone else woke up). My reward? I became a partner with a new set of stresses at work and a family. But my failure in properly prioritizing those competing commitments is a much longer story.
ESSENCE: Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.
INTEGRITY IDEA: Banish the Burn
Recently, Fast Company published a series of articles on a growing crisis of manager “burnout”. “Banish the Burn” is about a faithful leader putting in place practices to identify potential manager burnout, understand its sources, care for managers experiencing burnout, and cultivate an organizational culture designed to minimize the causes of and proactively protect against burnout. It recognizes that business as usual leads to work as usual—where work becomes a burden rather than the blessing God intended—and that unhealthy managers lead to disengaged workers, further contributing to the brokenness of work, workplaces and workers. It also recognizes that faithfully stewarding an organization includes stewarding the people who make it up, and that caring for people made in the image of God requires a culture that enables them to become more “fully human” by experiencing work as the blessing of flourishing God intended. Ultimately, “Banish the Burn” is caring for fellow humans for the right reasons–reflecting and reinforcing a culture that recognizes the Imago Dei in each person, lives out the Golden Rule and the commandment to love your neighbor, and prioritizes relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing.
COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): Practices
COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees
Copyright © 2026 Integrous LLC. Integriosity is a registered Service Mark of Integrous LLC.
Photo credit: Original image by Sydney Latham on Unsplash
(photo cropped)
No Comments