CEO burnout: The ‘dirty little secret’ among business top brass
By Charlotte Lytton
For Sancar Sahin, a chicken masala was the last straw.
He had come home one Friday night, exhausted from another week “working every hour under the sun” as head of marketing for a software company, and placed an order for dinner.
Instead of requesting two meals, it transpired he had ordered two pieces of dry chicken – and their arrival “ruined my evening”, he reflects.
Burnout is a kind of “bone-deep exhaustion” that can leave you overwhelmed and lacking motivation at work.Credit: iStock
“In my mind, I was telling myself, you’re an idiot, you can’t do anything right. If you can’t even do this, then how can you go and lead for a VC-backed company?”
It was, he realises now, “a very disproportionate response to the mistake I had made”. But mentally fried from the pressure that came with his £100,000 ($162,000)-plus salary, “that’s the kind of cycle you get into”.
‘Pitfalls of being a high achiever’
Sahin was one of a growing number battling the “dirty little secret” among business top brass: chief executive burnout.
According to data from Challenger Gray & Christmas, in the first quarter of 2024, chief executive departures in the United States hit record levels. Last year, 19 died while in their roles. In a Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence survey, 75 per cent said they were seriously considering throwing in the towel to get better wellbeing support.
All the while, the cost to individuals and the economy swells: burnout is a £28 billion-a-year problem in Britain, with money primarily being haemorrhaged via days lost to stress, fatigue and poor mental health.
An AXA Mind Health study showed that 21 per cent of British adults are in emotional distress. This comes as no surprise to 41-year-old Sahin, who “felt like any moment I wasn’t working, I wasn’t doing enough”.
He had convinced himself that his salary and senior role meant the suffering came with the territory – but he now sees this mindset as a common trap those at the top fall into.
‘It is fair to say that there is a mental health crisis in the boardroom.’
Jan Gerber, Paracelsus Recovery chief executive
“Perfectionism, being a high achiever – these kinds of traits make great chief executives, but they are also the things that can chip away at your mental health.”
The things that push people to the top of their game are “also the traits that can bring them down”, he says.
After the chicken incident, Sahin’s partner suggested he seek help. He began trying to find a therapist, “but found the whole process to be complicated, old-fashioned and generally offputting”.
He was then connected with Javier Suarez by a mutual contact, who recognised the parallels in both their experiences. Suarez was a co-founder of what was then the world’s fastest-growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, who had taken just 12 hours of paternity leave and developed paralysing anxiety due to workload stress.
Together, they set up Oliva, a platform designed to connect employees to personalised mental health help, which raised £4.3 million in its third funding round last year. At the same time, a clutch of retreats for broken C-suite workers have sprung up.
The SHA Wellness Clinic last year launched its Leaders’ Performance program – a seven-day intensive reset for “optimal physical and mental performance”. At Paracelsus Recovery, a £100,000-a-week addiction clinic, there has been a 30 per cent rise in executive clients over the past 12 months.
“Chief executive burnout is becoming more commonplace,” says Jan Gerber, Paracelsus’ chief.
Part of this may be down to growing stakes: FTSE 100 chief executives now earn 109 times the average UK salary, compared to 79 times in 2020.
“It is fair to say that there is a mental health crisis in the boardroom, and companies are not investing as they should in something that could prove exceptionally damaging to their business.”
The chief executive disease
While employee wellbeing drives have become a common post-pandemic fixture, those at the top are often not only overlooked but in need of help the most.
“We know that chief executives and company executives are more vulnerable than others,” Gerber says, particularly as “adrenaline junkies and those on the narcissism spectrum are more likely to climb the corporate ladder quickly”.
Bipolar disorder, which typically entails manic periods with flashes of creative genius, “is so common among the people we see that we call it ‘the chief executive disease’.
“Self-medicating with alcohol, prescription or illegal drugs often follows for those battling boardroom-induced demons,” he adds. “Burnout can easily spiral into a more serious problem.”
Both male and female executives are caught up in the burnout crisis, though their issues manifest differently.
At the Dawn Wellness and Rehab Centre in Thailand, where a third of clients are from Britain, “high-functioning male clients are typically from a corporate background and are more prone to self-medicate with substances”, explains Helen Wells, its clinical director.
“Our high-functioning female clients, on the other hand, are mostly entrepreneurs, juggling many roles – chief executive, wife, mum, mentor … and they tend to reach out to us only after they have reached a state of crisis that has developed far beyond burnout, where they have now developed a major depression disorder, high anxiety, panic attacks and more.”
‘I had a heart attack – at 35 years old’
In 2019, Abdullah Boulad started The Balance, a luxury rehab clinic in Mallorca, “because I wanted to be part of the solution”, he says.
He had been earning a seven-figure salary helming his own venture capital consultancy firm, sleeping poorly and barely making time to eat lunch, when his wife fell down the stairs at seven months pregnant. She was rushed into surgery.
“The year after my son’s birth was a never-ending cycle of stress. I could not balance work with my personal life.”
Things came to a head one night when ruminating on the amount on his plate: then just 35 years old, Boulad had a heart attack.
A couple of days after he was hospitalised, he was told he could go home. But he began asking himself questions: “What led to this? What can I do differently? Will this happen again?
“You’re afraid about that. That’s why I needed to understand for myself what led to the heart attack.”
He got a series of certifications in health and wellbeing and “learned everything I wish I had known when I was working”. He set up his clinic in Spain because “the sun is the cheapest form of burnout therapy”.
Boulad says client numbers have doubled since COVID-19, with individuals spanning finance, investment and tech industries. But he notes that burnt-out chief executives seem to be getting younger.
Perfect storm for burnout
“Being young … not knowing your personal values, not knowing what gives you energy, what takes away energy – if you mix all of that together, it’s a recipe for burnout,” Sahin says. “It’s the perfect storm.”
Social media can make things worse, he says, “telling us that if you’re not hugely rich, successful in business, you don’t have a million followers, then you basically don’t exist”.
Sahin welcomes companies taking employees’ mental health more seriously, but says that commitment is key. Many organisations founded in the post-COVID-19 wellbeing rush “were just set up as money-making machines, not actually solutions to help people get better and businesses perform better”.
Such businesses and the companies that began “panic buying” their services without assessing the potential impact on staff could only ever be a “Band-Aid” to a growing problem, he says.
Boulad agrees and warns that although awareness of the impact of work on mental health is growing, chief executives must no longer consider themselves immune. Executives “need to realise [the effects of the pressure] for themselves”.
“I don’t see enough recognition in that field, unfortunately,” Boulad says.
The Telegraph, London
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.