Executives are burning out, just like their employees—and they don't know how to handle it, management experts say

Four years ago, Aaron Littles burned out.

Littles was a chief operating officer at a health tech company during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, working 80 to 90 hours per week as his employer grew to 600 employees, up from 75, he says. When the owner of the company, who was eyeing retirement, raised the prospect of a promotion, Littles’ shoulders slumped, he says. His marriage was already “on the brink” due to his demanding schedule, and “I was like, wait, you want me to do [even] more work?”

Instead, the company started an executive search for a replacement COO, and “that’s when I truly recognized that I was spent,” Littles says. He moved into a “much more manageable” chief transformation role, worked with an executive coach and spent about three months working remotely from Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains while trying to recover, he says. Today, he’s the CEO of two Tampa, Florida-based health care staffing companies, PDTXperts and DayOne Staffing.

Many workers don’t tend to sympathize with stressed-out executives, whose jobs often come with hefty paychecks and other privileges. But, perhaps unexpectedly, executive-level burnout is rising. Seventy-one percent of leaders reported increased levels of stress in leadership consultancy Development Dimensions International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 report, up from 63% in 2022. The firm surveyed 10,796 first-level, mid-level, senior-level and C-suite leaders worldwide.