Your workplace might not be toxic. It might just be missing the biology lesson that explains why everyone keeps behaving badly.

Work burnout is rarely one person's failure, and this conversation makes that case clearly. Occupational psychologist and Truth, Lies, and Work co-host Leanne Elliott joins Cait to untangle what actually makes a toxic work environment, and what we keep getting wrong when we try to fix it. Before culture initiatives and values workshops, there are psychosocial risk factors: the concrete, measurable conditions that quietly drive stress and erode workplace culture and wellbeing. Cait pushes back from the body, pointing out that biology can make a bonded team reject a new hire without anyone realizing it, and that childhood trauma can permanently rewire how someone reads neutral feedback. Leanne doesn't argue. She acknowledges the limits of what organizational psychology can change and makes the case for cross-disciplinary collaboration as the only honest path forward.

One of the more useful reframes here is the difference between a toxic work environment and a bad fit. Real toxicity is behavioral. Workplace incivility rarely looks like explosive conflict. It looks like withheld information and subtle undermining that compounds quietly until mental health and psychological safety have eroded completely. Frequency is what turns friction into toxicity, and self awareness is what makes it possible to catch before it spreads.

The conversation gets pointed on manager training and workplace burnout. Managers have the single largest documented impact on employee health and performance, receive almost no formal training, and remain the first target when things go wrong. Work burnout and employee behavior are treated as individual failures rather than systemic ones, and that framing lets organizations off the hook. The future of work depends on whether organizations are willing to teach pro-social skills to everyone from day one, not just the people who end up with direct reports. That's not a small idea. It just hasn't been treated like one.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction: Building a Top Global Business Podcast

06:02 The Role of Occupational Psychology in Workplace Wellbeing

11:52 Psychosocial Risk Factors and Organizational Culture

17:59 Toxic Work Environment or Bad Fit? How to Tell the Difference

24:07 What Workplace Incivility Actually Looks Like

36:48 Manager Training, Burnout, and Who Carries the Burden

45:00 Self-Awareness at Work and the Power of Feedback

Connect with Leanne Elliott: 

https://oblonghq.com/

https://truthliesandwork.com/

https://www.instagram.com/truthlieswork/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetleanne/

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

If you're a leader who's exhausted, this one's for you. Cait Donovan, host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast has spent over a decade coaching leaders through burnout — and the pattern is clear: expectations have skyrocketed, but support hasn't followed. In this episode, she draws on real stories, her upcoming book *The Match Move*, and 10+ years of field research to break down exactly what belongs on a leader's plate and what doesn't.

Key Topics Covered

- Why leaders are burning out at unprecedented rates and why it's not their fault

- The growing gap between what leaders are expected to be and what they're actually supported to do

- Why burnout and stress are biologically contagious and what it means when leaders hit their limit

- A real story about a manager who said "no" and changed an employee's entire understanding of leadership

- The four things leaders ARE genuinely responsible for: workload, clarity, resources, and culture

- The things leaders are NOT responsible for: being a therapist, life coach, nutritionist, or sleep consultant

- The "match/mismatch" framework from the upcoming book *The Match Move*

- Why working on your own alignment isn't selfish, it's true leadership

If you're in a leadership role and you're running on empty, this episode is your permission to stop carrying what was never yours to carry. Host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast has worked with over 60 companies — Fortune 500s, nonprofits, startups — and coached hundreds of leaders and teams through burnout. In almost 350 episodes, one pattern has emerged above all others: we are asking leaders to do the impossible, and then wondering why they're breaking.

In this episode, she maps out the dangerous gap between rising leadership expectations and stagnant organizational support — and explains why that gap is the single biggest driver of leader burnout today. You'll learn exactly which responsibilities belong to leaders and which don't, hear a powerful real-world story about a manager who modeled healthy boundaries, and be introduced to the "match/mismatch" framework from her upcoming book, *The Match Move*.

Whether you're a senior executive or a first-time manager, this episode will change how you think about leadership, capacity, and burnout culture.

If you could use this type of support for your leaders, book a call with Cait today:

https://caitdonovan.as.me/inquiry

Cait is available for keynotes, leadership retreats, offsites, nonprofit conferences, workshops, ongoing advisory work and more.

Workplace burnout makes a lot more sense when you stop blaming generations for the survival strategies they were trained to carry.

Kristin Scroggin, founder of genWHY Communications and a leading voice on generational communication in the workplace, joins Cait for a candid conversation about workplace burnout, generational conflict, and what happens when the career you worked so hard to build starts taking more than it gives back.

This conversation gets to the uncomfortable heart of burnout at work: success can look impressive from the outside and still feel impossible to sustain from the inside. Kristin’s story shows how resentment, exhaustion, decision fatigue, and disconnection can become burnout symptoms long before someone is willing to name what is happening. What changes when resentment becomes information instead of shame? What becomes possible when you stop treating capacity like a personal failure?

Cait and Kristin also look at workplace burnout through the larger forces shaping today’s teams. Generational conflict, employee burnout, leadership burnout, and workplace culture are all tied to the same bigger question: are we building work systems that people can actually survive?

With Kristin’s humor and research as the guide, this episode challenges leaders to think differently about Gen X burnout, millennial managers, Gen Z in the workplace, and the future of work. The real leadership reset starts when organizations stop asking why people are disengaged and start paying attention to what their behavior is trying to tell them.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Generational Conflict in the Workplace

03:05 Burned Out at Work: Kristin’s Breaking Point

06:04 The Burnout and Resentment Journal

11:51 When Success Turns Into Burnout

21:07 Why Different Generations Clash at Work

32:24 Leadership Burnout and People Manager Burnout

40:06 The Leadership Pipeline Crisis Ahead

Connect with Kristin Scroggin:

http://www.genwhy.com

http://www.instagram.com/genwhycommunications

http://www.linkedin.com/kristinscroggin

https://share.google/zdHigxST7Ltqwrc4Z

Connect with Cait:

https://caitdonovan.com/resentment-journal 

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Autonomy can be the silent mismatch that drains a team long before anyone names burnout.

Leadership and autonomy are often treated as simple: give people more freedom and they will do better work. Cait Donovan offers a more useful frame. Autonomy works when it matches the person, the role, and the responsibility in front of them. When there is an autonomy mismatch at work, the result can look like poor performance, low employee engagement, or workplace stress that has gone unnamed for too long.

This episode looks at autonomy and burnout through three practical lenses: time autonomy in the workplace, decision-making autonomy in leadership, and process autonomy at work. Does someone need more control over their schedule? Are they ready to make bigger decisions and carry the accountability that comes with them? Do they need clearer systems, or do rigid processes make their work harder?

Cait makes the case that employee autonomy needs are not the same from person to person. For leaders, the work is to notice the difference before autonomy and workplace stress start to affect trust, energy, and team performance. What would change if leaders treated autonomy as a matching conversation instead of a perk?

Episode Breakdown:

03:12 Types of Autonomy: Time, Decision-Making, and Process

05:55 The Importance of Matching Autonomy Needs

09:11 Reducing Friction and Chronic Stress in Workplaces

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Portfolio careers may be one of the smartest paths to financial stability in the future of work. In this episode, Cait Donovan talks with Ilana Golan about why the old career model feels less secure than it once did and why more people are questioning the idea that one company or one title can carry their whole professional identity. As the future of work keeps shifting, this conversation offers a grounded look at what it takes to build resilience, authority, and choice.

Cait and Ilana unpack the deeper tension underneath career change, especially for people facing workplace burnout. What happens when the role that once defined you starts to drain you? How do you rebuild when your energy is low and your sense of possibility has narrowed? They explore how portfolio careers can create more flexibility, more confidence, and a stronger foundation for long-term stability.

This episode also looks at identity, reinvention, and the value of small experiments that help you test what fits before you make a major leap. Cait and Ilana talk about community, adaptability, and why building your own economy may be one of the most practical responses to the future of work. If you have felt stuck, overextended, or unsure what comes next, this conversation offers a fresh and realistic way to think about career growth, burnout recovery, and what becomes possible when you stop treating your work life as a single-track path.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Portfolio Careers and the Future of Work

06:11 Barriers to Portfolio Careers and Burnout Recovery

20:13 Career Resilience, Adaptability, and Financial Stability

25:54 How to Create Your Own Economy

37:05 Career Experiments, Uncertainty, and Reinvention

49:04 How to Build a Portfolio Career That Fits Your Life

Links

http://www.leapacademy.com/cait 

Follow Ilana on Instagram 

Connect with Ilana on LinkedIn 

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Your body has been warning you about burnout, bad hires, and misalignment long before your brain caught up.

This episode looks at leadership burnout through the lens of interoception, or your ability to notice and respond to signals from your own body. Cait Donovan explains why leadership burnout often feels sudden even though stress has been building for a long time, and why many leaders miss the early signs until they hit a wall.

The conversation connects workplace burnout, self-trust, and emotional regulation in a way that feels both practical and deeply human. Cait explores how early life experiences can shape the way leaders relate to stress, interpret other people, and move through pressure without realizing how disconnected they have become from themselves. That insight opens up a more honest conversation about burnout, decision-making, and the hidden patterns that shape culture and performance.

What makes this episode especially useful is how actionable it is. Cait shows how small daily choices can help rebuild trust with your body, strengthen self-awareness, and improve the way you lead. In a future of work that asks more people to lead with clarity, steadiness, and empathy, this episode makes the case that leadership burnout is not only about workload. It is also about whether you can hear your own signals early enough to respond.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why Interoception Matters for Leadership and Decision-Making

06:05 Childhood Trauma, Burnout, and Leadership Behavior

11:59 Practical Ways to Build Interoception and Emotional Regulation

14:51 Human-Centered Leadership in the Age of AI

Links

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Talent does not disappear on its own; it erodes when people feel unsafe, unseen and mismatched to the work meant to bring out their best.

Aoife O’Brien joins Cait Donovan for a thoughtful conversation about what helps people thrive at work and what quietly pulls them under. At the center is psychological safety and the way it shapes workplace culture from the inside out. When people do not trust the environment around them, how can they speak honestly, share ideas, or stay fully invested in the work?

They also dig into values alignment, autonomy, and the daily frustrations that often point to deeper unmet needs. Along the way, the conversation opens up a bigger question about workplace burnout and employee burnout. What happens when the values on the wall do not match the reality people live? How much stress is created when people are asked to perform in systems that do not fit how they work best?

This episode also brings real compassion to leadership. It speaks to leadership burnout and executive burnout with honesty, while asking what kind of support leaders need if they are expected to create healthy teams. For anyone thinking about talent, trust, and the future of work, this is a grounded conversation about the conditions people need in order to do their best work and stay well while doing it.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction to Thriving Talent

03:01 Practical Leadership and Workplace Culture

09:13 Psychological Safety at Work

14:56 Workplace Values Alignment and Burnout

39:57 Self-Determination Theory, Autonomy at Work, and Employee Motivation

45:22 Strengths, Capabilities, and Team Dynamics

51:08 Leadership Development and Burnout Challenges

Connect with Aoife O'Brien:

https://happieratwork.ie

https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien

https://www.thrivingtalentbook.com

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

When leadership turns into a transaction, culture starts to starve. 

Workplace culture is at the center of this conversation as Cait Donovan sits down with organizational psychology expert Chris Pineda about leadership development, psychological safety at work, and the deeper forces that shape how people relate, respond, and grow inside organizations. Chris makes the case that organizational health is built through trust, purpose, and accountability, not just policies, titles, or polished values statements. He looks at how leaders influence employee experience every day and why organizational design has more impact on culture than many teams realize.

Together, Cait and Chris explore what happens when people stop waiting for someone else to fix the environment and start paying closer attention to the energy, ownership, and honesty they bring into the room. The conversation connects workplace culture to the human side of change and asks bigger questions about how teams create safety, how leaders earn trust, and what kind of leadership supports lasting growth. It is a thoughtful look at workplace culture, leadership development, psychological safety at work, organizational health, employee experience, and organizational design through a lens that feels practical, grounded, and deeply human.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Transformational Leadership and Workplace Culture

06:12 The Seven Conditions of Transformation

12:06 Purpose, Meaning, and Suffering

17:48 Trust, Safety, and Leadership

41:26 Resistance, Accountability, and Change

54:03 Personal Change and Organizational Transformation

Connect with Chris Pineda:

Groundwork Leadership's Website

Follow Chris on Instagram

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout rarely begins with the job alone because the habits that once kept you safe may be the very ones quietly wearing you down at work.

Cait Donovan takes a clear-eyed look at burnout at work and the way workplace culture can either reinforce it or help interrupt it. This conversation explores how perfectionism, people pleasing, and unclear personal values can fuel employee burnout long before someone fully realizes what is happening. Cait connects personal coping strategies to the broader systems people work inside, offering a thoughtful perspective on culture and burnout without reducing the issue to simple blame. What happens when being helpful turns into overfunctioning? When do high standards stop serving you? And how often does organizational mismatch keep people stuck in roles or environments that quietly wear them down?

Throughout the episode, Cait shows how burnout at work is shaped by both internal habits and external expectations. She also touches on the importance of psychological safety at work, especially in environments where people feel pressure to perform, please, or prove themselves. The result is a grounded conversation about self-awareness, boundaries, and the small shifts that can support healthier teams. For anyone thinking more deeply about burnout at work, this episode offers a practical and human look at what needs to change.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Burnout at Work Starts With More Than the Job

03:18 How Perfectionism Fuels Burnout at Work

10:08 People Pleasing at Work and Team Health

14:01 Small Disappointments and Healthier Boundaries

16:47 Core Values, Organizational Mismatch, and Wellbeing

21:49 Small Shifts That Change Workplace Culture

Listen to the Top-down Burnout Factors episode: https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/ep/8f9138c3-86b4-42ea-a62f-b55955456d19

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout recovery begins with one honest moment of self-awareness and the willingness to make a single small shift that your exhausted brain can actually sustain.

Burnout at work often builds quietly until one day you realize the pace, pressure, and expectations are no longer sustainable. In this conversation, Cait Donovan speaks with clinical psychologist Dr. Rachel Goldman about burnout at work and the subtle signals people ignore before they reach their breaking point. Many people assume recovery requires a massive life overhaul. Dr. Rachel explains why small shifts can interrupt workplace burnout patterns, support resilience at work, and help restore clarity, and energy.

Dr. Rachel shares one of her own burnout stories from early in her career and reflects on how organizational mismatch can slowly drain motivation and confidence. When roles, values, and systems stop aligning, workplace stress increases and employee burnout becomes almost inevitable. Their discussion examines how burnout culture often rewards overwork and perfectionism while discouraging people from using the tools and support that could actually help them recover. Over time, these patterns shape the overall employee experience and can even contribute to deeper organizational burnout when stress goes unaddressed.

The conversation also focuses on practical burnout prevention. Instead of chasing dramatic change, Cait and Dr. Rachel highlight small behavioral tweaks that build resilience and create momentum in burnout recovery. These shifts strengthen resilience at work, challenge rigid thinking patterns, and help people respond to workplace stress before it escalates into deeper workplace burnout.

If you have experienced burnout at work or want to better understand employee burnout and burnout culture, this episode offers grounded insight and realistic strategies for building resilience and moving forward without overwhelming yourself.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Burnout Recovery Begins With One Small Shift

01:25 Dr. Rachel Goldman’s Personal Burnout Story

05:54 Recognizing Misalignment at Work and Early Burnout Signs

10:44 Small Tweaks That Drive Real Behavior Change

20:15 Growth Mindset and Resilience in Burnout Recovery

27:33 Why Using Tools and Support Is Not Cheating

40:46 Building Your Personal Stress Management Toolbox

47:55 One Small Action That Starts Burnout Recovery

Connect with Dr. Rachel Goldman:

https://www.drrachelnyc.com

https://www.instagram.com/drrachelnyc/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-goldman-phd/

https://whenlifehappensbook.com/

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Why does workplace wellness still feel risky for leaders even when the data proves it works?

Burnout at work is widely acknowledged as a growing challenge, yet many organizations still hesitate to address it openly. Cait Donovan examines the tension beneath that hesitation and the complicated reality leaders face when they try to tackle employee burnout. Most leaders want healthier teams and stronger workplace culture, but conversations about workplace wellbeing can raise fears of blame, backlash, or initiatives that promise more than they deliver. In a crowded industry where trust is fragile, even well-intentioned workplace wellness efforts can feel like a gamble.

Cait offers a different perspective on burnout at work, one that moves away from blame and toward curiosity. Rather than framing burnout as a failure of leaders or employees, she explores it as a human pattern shaped by biology, history, and workplace dynamics. This shift opens the door for more honest conversations about employee burnout and the pressures people carry into their roles. What happens when organizations stop searching for someone to blame and start asking better questions about how work actually functions?

The conversation also challenges common approaches to workplace wellness that focus only on positivity. Employees experiencing burnout at work often carry fear, frustration, grief, or uncertainty into the workplace. Ignoring those emotions rarely builds trust. Acknowledging them can strengthen workplace culture and create space for real dialogue about workplace wellbeing.

Ultimately, the discussion points to a deeper issue facing many organizations today: trust. If leaders want to address burnout at work in meaningful ways, conversations about workplace wellness must feel safe, honest, and grounded in the realities of modern work.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Understanding Burnout and Its Stigma

02:49 The Business Case for Workplace Wellness Initiatives

06:14 The Risks of Hiring Wellness Speakers

11:55 Creating Psychological Safety in Wellness

14:57 A Blameless Approach to Burnout

18:10 How Burnout Conversations Shape Workplace Culture

Links

https://talkadot.com/s/caitdonovan

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm