People don’t just burn out from work — they burn out from how work feels between people.
Resilience and wellbeing are often discussed in terms of workload or personal capacity. But in practice, they are shaped more quietly through the experience of the working day itself.
This shows up in familiar ways, even if they are not always easy to define. Teams that are not necessarily overworked, but feel consistently tired. Days filled with interaction, yet low on connection or collaboration that requires more effort than it should.
Much of this comes from the quality of everyday exchanges and the sense that more energy is being spent navigating interactions than focusing on the work itself. Over time, this creates a quieter form of depletion. Not a single moment of overload, but a steady erosion of energy through constant interactional effort — the need to repair misunderstandings or simply get alignment.
This is when resilience begins to weaken, not because people cannot cope with pressure, but because the experience of working together becomes progressively more draining.
