This Type Of Employee Is The Most Likely To Burn Out At Work

When you’re a middle manager, the pressure comes from all sides.

You’re going to be held accountable for carrying out executives’ marching orders, but unlike senior leaders, you’re the one who has to directly sell leadership’s vision to your team.

“Middle managers often have limited authority, yet they are held accountable for achieving results,” said Jenny Fernandez, an executive and leadership consultant. “This creates a feeling of being trapped between conflicting demands.”

In toxic situations, middle managers become the buffer between bad management and frustrated, anxious employees.

“They are tasked with managing up and are responsible for delivering business goals that may be unrealistic due to external factors” like economic downturns and intense competition, as well as internal challenges like hiring freezes, budget cuts or reorganizations, Fernandez said.

Autumn Maison said that she experienced these types of demands firsthand as a middle manager at a major tech company. Maison recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, she felt a pressure to make sure her direct reports were productive at a difficult time, while also managing up the expectations from leadership.

“I was getting increasingly frustrated, because it felt like every step that I was taking in every single decision I was making was the wrong one,” she said. “It was always this endless sort of building of frustration and angst, because it felt like I was just constantly letting people down.”

Eventually, Maison hit her limit and said she became completely exhausted. She took six weeks of medical leave from work for her anxiety.

“The tension I had been holding on to and all the adrenaline that had been keeping me through that period, it all hit