June 1, 2025

Read Time - 4 minutes

Burnout is everywhere in higher education today.

If you’re leading a program, department, or school—you’re seeing it:

Late-night emails from your most dedicated faculty.

Staff who feel like they can’t ever fully disconnect.

Talented people quietly stepping back from leadership or service—simply because they’re exhausted.

And yet when burnout surfaces, the typical institutional response is to promote individual resilience: a wellness seminar, a mindfulness workshop, or the occasional “mental health day.”

The problem is this:

If most of your faculty and staff are struggling, the issue isn’t individual—it’s systemic.

And as leaders, it’s the systems and expectations we create—whether intentionally or not—that shape whether burnout takes hold.

Why This Matters to Academic Leaders

Most academic leaders I talk to genuinely want to build a healthier culture.

We promote work-life balance. We encourage well-being initiatives. We tell colleagues to take care of themselves.

But here’s the disconnect: if your team consistently sees leadership emails at 10 p.m., weekend work expectations creeping into conversations, or “urgent” projects launched without regard for existing workloads—the underlying message is clear:

• The system expects 24/7 availability.

• Personal boundaries aren’t really protected here.

• Saying no isn’t safe.

In other words: your leadership systems signal your values far more than your slogans do.

That’s why addressing burnout takes more than better “resources.” It requires adjusting how you lead—and how you structure the work itself.

Why Most Burnout Solutions Fail

Most burnout fixes in higher ed miss the mark because they focus on individuals when the root problem is systemic.

It’s easy to offer self-care tips or host a mindfulness session (and it makes us feeling like we’re doing something!). But those approaches don’t address why people are exhausted in the first place.

After the seminar, your team still returns to the same conditions:

• Unclear boundaries around availability

• Unchecked meeting overload

• Growing workloads without protections for scope or priorities

And if they don’t see leadership modeling different behaviors—or if daily systems remain unchanged—burnout will persist, no matter how many wellness events you offer. (Side note—I’m a fan of wellness sessions, but they shouldn’t replace the deeper conversations we need to have about the systemic issues driving burnout.)

A Better Approach: Build Boundaries into Your Leadership Systems

Here’s the shift: 

Instead of chasing one-off burnout solutions, design leadership systems that naturally create and protect healthy boundaries.

When the way your team operates changes, their experience of the culture changes too.

This doesn’t require sweeping reforms. In fact, small system shifts—implemented consistently—send powerful signals about what is valued and what is protected.

Here are four leadership systems you can implement to begin shifting your team’s experience:

1. Reset Email Culture

   Start by setting clear expectations for email behavior. A simple place to start: avoid sending messages after normal business hours or on weekends. If you need to draft messages at night, use a scheduling tool so that they arrive during regular working hours. You can also clarify this expectation in writing. For example:

"To promote a healthier work culture, we encourage all faculty and staff to refrain from sending work-related communications (email, text, phone call, etc.) outside of regular office hours (8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. on weekdays). If working after hours, please use Outlook’s scheduling feature to delay email delivery."

The key is consistency. When leaders model these behaviors, the pressure to be “always on” begins to ease.

2. Clarify Availability Expectations

   Many academic teams operate with vague assumptions about when people are expected to be available—and when they are not. This creates unnecessary guilt and uncertainty around setting boundaries.

   Be explicit: define availability expectations for your team. Encourage the use of out-of-office messages. Promote protected time for non-teaching work and personal commitments.

   Then model respect for those boundaries in your own leadership practice.

   
   

3. Audit Meetings and Project Scope

   Meeting overload and scope creep are hidden drivers of burnout.

   As a leader, regularly audit your team’s recurring meetings:

   • Which ones can be eliminated?

   • Which can be shortened or shifted to asynchronous updates?

   Similarly, when launching new projects, be clear about scope: What is included—and what is not? Without this clarity, projects tend to expand beyond reasonable limits, draining your team’s bandwidth.

   
   

4. Account for Service in Workload Calculations

   Service work is one of the biggest contributors to hidden time pressure for faculty and staff.

   It’s worth asking: How is service truly accounted for in your workload expectations?

   You may not be able to make every assignment perfectly “fair,” but intentionally differentiating between high-intensity roles (e.g. chairing a major committee, mentoring graduate students, organizing large events) and lower-intensity service goes a long way in addressing hidden workload disparities—and burnout risk.

   
   

✅ Action Steps This Week

Don’t try to fix everything at once. Choose one leadership system from this list and begin implementing it this week. Be transparent with your team:

"I’m making this change because I want to build a healthier, more sustainable culture for us all."

Allow them to help you problem solve and when leaders model those shifts, culture changes.

And over time, your best people will not only stay—they’ll thrive.

Final Thoughts

You can’t seminar your way out of burnout.

If you want to protect your people, your leadership systems must reflect the values you profess.

Boundaries beat slogans and small, intentional system changes are often what drive the biggest cultural shifts.

Ready to Help Others?

We get better when we share what works. If this sparked a new idea for you, pass it along to a colleague you respect—it might help them too.

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Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:​

1.) Coaching for Academic Leaders: A focused 1:1 coaching experience for higher ed professionals who want to lead with clarity, build smarter systems, and stay centered on what matters most. I work with a limited number of clients each quarter to provide highly personalized, strategic support. Book an intro call.​

2.) Professional Development Workshops: Interactive sessions for faculty, staff, and leadership teams that help reduce conflict, streamline decision-making, and shift culture with smart systems. Virtual and in-person options available. Sessions tailored to your campus needs.

3.) Get the free guide: Lead by Design. Put an end to reactive leadership. Learn how to clarify decisions, streamline workflows, and surface expectations—so you can fix what’s broken and focus on what matters most.