# The business case for taking burnout seriously

- **Episode:** [20](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/20.md) (2023-01-10)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** burnout, business-case, productivity
- **Time:** 50:39–53:43 (start 3039s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/20?t=3039](https://truthliesandwork.com/20?t=3039)

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[50:39] Leanne Elliott: But when I look back, it's, I was in abject denial that I was I was having physical symptoms, so I was having quite a lot of rashes and headaches. I was barely sleeping. I'd lost quite a lot of weight. Anyone who sort of showed any concern to me, I'd just tell them that they didn't understand corporate law and basically told them to get lost. And it was actually— I was flying to— I was living in Amsterdam and I was flying to the city of Nantes in France to visit my brother because he was living there. And I'd worked till really late, jumped into a taxi, sped to the airport. I don't remember anything about the flight. I just remember arriving at the arrivals hall in Nantes and laying eyes on my brother and collapsing to the floor. And I started crying and I couldn't stop. And it took my body giving way underneath me for me to acknowledge that there was something wrong
[51:36] Al Elliott: Wow
[51:38] Leanne Elliott: And over that weekend with my brother, I talked, you know, I said, I'm miserable and I've been miserable for a while. We talked about what my options were. And when I went back to Amsterdam, I spoke to the partner that I was working for and started that journey of acknowledging what I was going through. And I was very privileged to be in a position where I could leave that job. And so I quit and left probably about 5 months after that point. I was also very lucky to be in the Netherlands where There's healthcare legislation and infrastructure around burnout that exists there. But it was, you know, I think full recovery took probably a couple of years after that for me to really get to a place where it's very difficult to compare because I really felt like quite a new version of myself, a much more authentic and happier version of myself. But it's, you know, I see it a lot with the clients that I work with in my coaching. and people that I speak to, that it is something where we really want to just be back. We want to be full of energy and using our incredible capacities to the best that we can. And it can be a very frustrating and slow process of healing, which is probably one of the reasons that my mission is to, you know, to really embed wellbeing at work so that the word burnout becomes redundant. What I find really interesting about all of our experts and their experiences of burnout is the acknowledgement that this took many years to go through a full recovery, and that it has a very real and potential impact on your long-term health. Burnout isn't stress. Burnout isn't a bad day. Burnout isn't not being able to hack hustle culture. Burnout is, is a significant issue that we need to deal with within our organisations. It's as simple as that. I, I don't think we could have asked any more of our experts to put it so beautifully why burnout is important. And as business leaders, as business owners, why we have a responsibility to prevent people from hitting rock bottom