As the CEO and Founder of Peeplcoach, Christine Khor spends her days helping leaders grow, adapt, and lead with empathy. But as she points out, there’s one group that’s quietly reaching breaking point — middle managers. Squeezed between performance targets, wellbeing responsibilities, and now the pressures of AI, they’re navigating more complexity than ever before.
Drawing on her own experience of burnout and years of executive coaching, Christine shares why traditional “wellness perks” miss the mark, how AI is amplifying rather than easing workloads, and what real leadership support should look like in today’s world.
You’ve said that middle managers are often caught in the middle of everything. What are the signs you look for that someone’s heading towards burnout?
There are a few things I look for in leaders when it comes to burn out, either manic behaviour such as rushing around, lack of prioritisation, feeling like everything is on them to fix to the opposite of “what’s the point as this it won’t make a difference”. Burnout occurs when we just don’t care anymore and, obviously, exhaustion. Other signs include poor or unusual decision making, an increase in mistakes, erratic moods and people feeling exhausted.
There’s a lot of talk about AI making work easier, but you’ve found it can sometimes do the opposite. How is this changing the work experience for middle managers?
I had one person tell me that AI has made their life so much more productive and has given them so many opportunities to do better that they are burnt as it highlighted to him how much more he could and “had” to do. AI made them feel overwhelmed!
For other managers AI is complex, scary, exhausting, confusing and a threat. Unfortunately, middle managers are often the most poorly trained when it comes to leadership development and through this significant cultural revolution to AI we, as leaders and managers, need to master the skill of managing the emotions, fears, opportunities and priorities for our teams and for ourselves.
What we are seeing with the organisations we partner with, and the individuals we coach, is that AI is adding more disruption, workload and stress not less. I am sure this will settle over time but at the moment it seems more difficult than easy.
You’ve shared that you’ve experienced burnout yourself. What helped you recover, and how did that time change the way you now lead?
There is no silver bullet to recovering from burnout or any other crisis or set back. For me I had to do the following:
- Acceptance: I had to “Get over myself” and let go of my pride and ego and accept that I was not performing and that I couldn’t just forget my issues and “ will” my way through it. I actually had to accept that my old methods were not going to work.
- Ask for help: I had to speak to my team, my family, my psychologist and ask for help. I also had to learn to accept help and feedback.
- Back to basics – Your body is the vehicle and infrastructure that allows you to perform so I had to start to look after myself – sleep, better food, exercise
- Cut out toxicity – I had to learn how to say no and cut out things that were impacting me – people, obligations, food and bad habits
- Prioritise – finally I had to be more diligent in prioritising my time and effort. Focusing the critical activities that were going to be impactful versus “nice to have”. Also accepting that sometimes 80% or even 51% was enough!
- Finally – laugh, love, go for a walk on the beach and watch a good rom com!
Many companies offer wellness perks like yoga or meditation apps, but you’ve said that’s not enough. What real change do you think makes the biggest difference?
Yoga and meditation are both great but they won’t fix systemic issues within an organisation. I am biased, and the research does show that great leadership at all levels, will do a lot to manage stress and burnout. Why?
Because great leaders know how to make tough decisions – even with limited information.
Will communicate clearly with a plan even if it is a difficult plan. They will know when to take control to give people confidence that there is a plan, but they also know when to empower their team to give them agency.
Will know how to prioritise and ensure that only the most important activities are resourced that align to the overall business vision. Will balance the need of people and team and the need to meet business goals and will ensure that their team members feel supported and safe.
Simply – great leaders will help overwhelmed employees focus on what is important, will direct them when they need direction, will let them go when they are confident and will always make them feel supported and safe.
As both a CEO and an executive coach, how do you protect your own energy and make sure you’re not giving from an empty cup?
There are a few things that help me protect myself. Age means that I have learnt the hard way (a few times) that if I don’t manage my energy I will collapse and that is not good for anyone.
People around me who will definitely “let me know” when I need to stop – particularly my husband, my Co-founder here at Peeplcoach and my friends. Hobbies – in the last few years I have taken up paddle boarding (I just got my new race board) and knitting … .I have just knitted my first jumper and finally, feeling grateful for the life I do have, not the life I don’t.
Looking ahead, what do you think needs to change about how we support and define the role of middle managers?
Again I am biased, but leadership development, coaching and mentoring are the key. Promoting technically strong and ambitious individuals into a leadership role without training and support is literally the definition of “sink or swim”, but when you are a leader and you sink you are taking other people down with you. We have all reported to that toxic leader and that is not great for anyone.
