Why Middle Managers Burn Out in Silence — and What Organizations Keep Getting Wrong
By, Naina
The middle layer of most organizations is quietly breaking. Not because the people in it aren't capable — but because the system surrounding them was never actually designed to support them.
In this episode of Systems Check, I sat down with Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins — human skills facilitator at Learn It and doctoral researcher who spent years interviewing middle managers about their lived experiences — to talk about what her research actually found, why the burnout hiding in that layer is so hard to see, and what one practical tool can help any high achiever start to draw a real line between work and the rest of their life.
What the research actually found
Mickey's doctoral research focused on how middle managers develop self-efficacy — their belief in their own ability to get the job done. What she found wasn't a confidence problem. It was a structural one, with two consistent culprits across every organization she studied.
The first was a near-total lack of meaningful professional development. Entry-level employees get onboarding and training. Senior executives get leadership academies. Middle managers get the same compliance training as everyone else — and an implicit assumption that if they made it to that level, they must already know how to do the job. They don't. Nobody taught them.
The second was the absence of quality supervision and coaching from above. Many people end up in senior leadership roles not because they're exceptional coaches, but because someone above them moved on. Suddenly they're responsible for a team — and a team's team — with no real framework for how to actually lead people. The result is either micromanagement or abandonment. Neither works.
"Middle managers are constantly in the push-pull — the person above them wants things five minutes ago, the people below them want things five minutes ago — and yet there are no real formalized venues for their learning and development."
— Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins
The loneliness factor nobody talks about
We hear "it's lonely at the top" constantly. What we don't hear nearly enough is that it's lonely in the middle too — and in a very specific way.
When someone gets promoted to manager, the people who were their peers become their direct reports. The team they belonged to disappears. They're now expected to operate as a team of one — making decisions, absorbing pressure from above and below, without the casual collegiality of "hey, how are you handling this?" or someone to decompress with after a hard day. That isolation is one of the most underrecognized contributors to middle manager burnout, and it compounds fast.
What role confusion does to self-efficacy
One of the most damaging patterns Mickey described — and one I've seen repeatedly in my own work with tech and corporate professionals — is what happens when autonomy gets given and then quietly taken back. A manager is told: this is your domain, these are your decisions. And then one day, without much explanation, a senior leader overrides something. Just once. But that's enough.
What follows isn't just frustration. It's a corrosive internal spiral: Do I actually have authority here? Was that a one-time thing or a pattern? Am I capable of making the right calls? Mickey calls this role confusion — and its impact on self-efficacy is significant. Once that internal radio station starts playing, it affects every aspect of the role.
This is one of the patterns I work through directly with clients in burnout recovery therapy — because by the time someone lands in a therapist's office, the self-doubt has often been running for months or years underneath an outwardly high-functioning surface.
The busy Olympics — and what's waiting on the other side
Mickey has a phrase I want every tech professional to sit with: the busy Olympics. It's the culture of performative overwork — the late Slack messages, the back-to-back calendar worn like a badge, the one-upsmanship of who stayed online longest. Everyone's competing for a gold medal nobody actually wants.
The problem isn't busyness itself. It's that organizations reward it — and then act surprised when people burn out. If a manager is staying until midnight and being praised for dedication, the system is reinforcing the behavior. The individual isn't failing. The feedback loop is broken.
"On the other side of winning the busy Olympics is a pit of pain. And a lot of individuals — and organizations — are focused on the outcome so hard that they don't see they're already sliding into it."
— Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins
The difference between efficiency and effectiveness
Efficiency is getting as much done as possible with the least wasted effort. It measures speed and volume.
Effectiveness is doing things that actually move toward a meaningful goal. It measures value creation.
Most burnout prevention programs optimize for efficiency. What actually prevents burnout is building for effectiveness — and knowing the difference.
The delegation trap — and how high performers fall into it
Mickey shared a story about a manager who was outperforming on paper and quietly burning out. When he finally watched recordings of his own meetings, he realized he'd been answering every question — and had inadvertently trained his team to need him for everything. His own productivity was the bottleneck.
The reason most managers struggle to delegate, she argues, isn't laziness or lack of awareness. It's that we ask the wrong question. We ask what can I delegate — and never get to why we're holding on in the first place. The answer to that why is almost always about control, quality anxiety, or identity. And until you address the why, delegation stays theoretical.
"You have to let go to grow. The best leaders don't operate in the weeds — they sit up in the trees, watching, coming down when necessary, and going back up."
— Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins
One thing you can do this week: the shutdown sequence
Mickey's most practical offering in this episode is a 15–30 minute end-of-day practice she calls the shutdown sequence. She's been running it strictly for over three years and credits it with being a genuine game-changer — not just for productivity, but for the ability to actually leave work at work.
The shutdown sequence — 5 steps, 15–30 minutes
Calendar look ahead. Review what's coming tomorrow so your morning brain doesn't waste time orienting itself.
Name your first five actions. In order. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So tomorrow you sit down and go.
Identify your three priorities. Not to-dos — priorities. The big things that need forward movement tomorrow.
Set the scene. Open the files, set up the tabs, tidy the workspace. So nothing slows you down at the start.
Mind-body reset. 3–10 minutes of breathing, meditation, music, or mantras. A real transition from work self to full-person self.
It won't be seamless — especially if you work from home and your commute is twelve steps up the stairs. But it creates stepping stones instead of a hard wall between work and everything else. And for anyone whose Slack notifications are still running in the background of dinner, that matters.
"It was never about working harder. It was about working inside a system that was never designed to support the people running it."
— Naina, Systems Check Host
Find Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins on LinkedIn or at learnit.com/mickey — including a 45-day free trial of LearnIt workshops for you and up to 20 teammates.
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Systems Check: The Human Operating System for Ambition & Burnout with Naina — “Burned Out in the Middle” with Dr. Mickey Fitch-Collins. Systems Check is hosted by Naina, LCSW and former tech startup insider. New episodes drop monthly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.