If You’re Burned Out, Your Team Will Be Too

You cannot preach boundaries if you do not have them.

It is 4:45 on a Wednesday. The meeting could easily spill over, but you close your laptop instead. “Let’s stop here and pick it up tomorrow,” you say, smiling. A few heads tilt in surprise. You stand, grab your coat, and mention you are taking your kid to soccer practice.

Someone on your team mutters, “Lucky,” but they are smiling too. They have just seen you leave without apology. That matters more than you think.

You were not always like this. There were years when you stayed long after the lights dimmed, when you sent 11 p.m. emails just to get them off your plate. You told people to take time for themselves but rewarded the ones who never did. Your pace became their pace, and you did not realize it until you looked around and saw tired faces everywhere.

Now, you do it differently. You write your working hours into your calendar so anyone can see them. If you do work late, you schedule your emails to send in the morning. You turn down extra meetings without spinning excuses. You take real lunch breaks, and you talk about the hike you went on last Saturday, not the 14 hours you worked last Friday.

And it is changing things. People are stepping away for midday walks without guilt. They are taking days off without a flood of apologies. You end meetings early when you can, and you thank people for leaving on time. Nobody is perfect, but you can feel the culture tilting toward something lighter, something that lasts.

You do not tell them to set boundaries anymore. You just show them yours. And they follow.