Why Even Great Coaches Miss Burnout
In the two years before my first Burnout I was coached by good coaches. Experienced coaches. Skilled coaches. Ethical coaches. People who genuinely cared about me and wanted to help.
And still, they missed my Burnout. And that matters, because it tells us something important, not about bad coaching, but about the limits of the lens we’ve been trained to use.
For a long time, I assumed that if Burnout was present, someone would say so. Or they would slow down. Or their performance would dip. Or they’d fall apart.
That’s what we’re taught to look for right as coaches?!?
But Burnout doesn’t usually arrive like that, in fact, Burnout hardly ever looks like that. Especially not in capable, driven, high-functioning people.
It hides.
It hides behind insight.
It hides in plain sight.
Behind compliance.
Behind “I know exactly what I need to do.”
Behind progress that looks convincing on the surface.
And coaches - good coaches - great coaches - are trained to work with exactly those signals.
Burnout doesn’t look like low performance.
One of the biggest reasons that Burnout gets missed is because it doesn’t look like failure, in fact, it often looks like the opposite, because clients still show up and they still engage, and they still reflect deeply and they still set goals and talk about values and agree to actions.
So we coach, liked we’ve been trained to do.
We ask better questions.
We refine the plan.
We explore mindset.
We assume capacity.
Because why wouldn’t we?
This is where great coaching skills can quietly work against us.
Burnout doesn’t remove intelligence or insight.
It removes capacity.
And if we don’t understand that difference, we can mistake cognitive engagement for readiness and we can push when the system (the brain and the body) is already overloaded.
When coaching works… until it doesn’t.
This was the point where something started to niggle for me, not just personally, but professionally. The more I talked about my own experience of Burnout, the more and more clients were coming to me who were functioning on the outside, but stuck underneath. They understood everything. They could articulate patterns beautifully. They could smash the goals and get things done, but nothing was shifting, not really.
The usual tools weren’t landing and not because they were the wrong tools, but because something else was in the room, and at first, I didn’t assume it was Burnout.
I assumed we needed to go deeper. Or try harder. Or be more precise.
That’s what good coaches do right?
But eventually, it became impossible to ignore the pattern.
This wasn’t a motivation issue.
It wasn’t resistance.
It wasn’t lack of insight.
It was exhaustion at a nervous system level.
And coaching alone - however skilled - wasn’t enough to spot that clearly.
The missing piece That Coaching Hadn’t taught ME.
The turning point for me was neuroscience and not because I wanted to become clinical, and not because I was looking for a new framework to add on (I’m not a fan of frameworks and boxes), but because it explained something coaching hadn’t been able to.
Burnout changes how the brain processes threat, effort, decision-making and safety.
It narrows capacity before it touches motivation.
It affects follow-through before it affects understanding. And once I understood that, a lot of things clicked into place for me (and not just the fact that neuroscience is now my favourite geek out topic).
But why clients could agree in session but couldn’t act afterwards and why “just one more push” backfired. Why insight didn’t translate into change and why my own Burnout had been missed, even by people who were doing their absolute best.
The issue wasn’t competence.
It was context.
Coaching isn’t broken — the lens is incomplete.
This is the part that matters.
I don’t believe coaching is the problem.
I believe coaching is powerful.
But I also believe that without a wider burnout lens - especially in the world we’re coaching in now - it’s incomplete.
Work has changed.
Pressure has changed.
Burnout is rising.
And our professional standards haven’t caught up quickly enough.
That doesn’t mean coaches are unsafe.
It means the work has evolved.
Burnout awareness isn’t about being cautious or soft or clinical.
It’s about precision.
About knowing when the tools we love will land - and when they won’t.
About spotting when capacity has gone, even if insight hasn’t.
About adapting our coaching before harm happens.
This isn’t about burnout clients — it’s about all clients.
Burnout-aware coaching doesn’t only benefit clients who are at Burnout. It benefits everyone. Because when you understand nervous system state, capacity, and load:
your questions get sharper
your pacing improves
your interventions land better
your coaching becomes safer and more effective across the board
Burnout-Informed coaching isn’t a niche, it’s a standard that’s emerging whether we like it or not.
A line the profession has to cross.
Great coaches miss Burnout because they were never trained to see it clearly.
I wasn’t.
Mine weren’t.
And many of the coaches I now train weren’t either.
That’s not a failure.
But it is a responsibility. Because once you know that burnout hides in plain sight, especially in capable people then you can’t unknow it. Raising coaching standards isn’t about tearing the profession down, it’s about making sure the work we care so deeply about actually matches the reality our clients are living in.
Burnout awareness doesn’t replace coaching.
It completes it.
Kelly
P.S How Burnout Aware is your coaching? Find out here