40% of Leaders Are Thinking About Quitting. This is Why.

DDI's Global Leadership Forecast shared some alarming stats this year that I keep coming back to:

• 40% of leaders are actively considering quitting their roles, fueled by burnout and high stress
• 71% of leaders now report increased stress, creating a "conscious unbossing" trend.

Not retiring. Not transitioning. Stepping back because the cognitive load they are carrying has become unsustainable.

That's not a leadership crisis. That's a systems crisis.

LEADERSHIP REFRAME

Leaders don't burn out because leadership is hard. They burn out because they never built the system that would let them lead without carrying everything.

The work keeps routing back. The decisions keep landing on their desk. The team keeps waiting for permission. And the leader keeps believing they're the only one who can hold it.

They're not. But no one ever proved it to them — because the structure to prove it was never built.

The founders who break this pattern have three things in common: they stopped equating their busyness with their value, they built structure that made delegation safe instead of just recommended, and they got support that operated at their level.

That is the work we do.

NOTICE THIS WEEK

Notice how you feel on Sunday evening. Is there a low-grade dread about the week ahead — a mental inventory of everything you personally need to move?

That feeling is your data. It tells you how much of the organization is still running through you instead of around you.

TRY THIS: WATCH THE REPLAY

If you missed our April 17th Masterclass, we covered the leading bottleneck patterns, the research, and what it actually takes to break the cycle.

And if you're ready to talk about what senior-level executive support looks like for your firm — let's have that conversation.

Committed to helping you lead with less,

Emily