By Faye Bonomo, founder of Brightwork Leadership · October 9, 2026
The short answer
Spend the morning looking at burnout as a system problem, running the retention math on your own numbers and learning the early signs. Spend the afternoon on a live kill-list and on building in real recovery. Then end with 2 or 3 commitments per leader, each with an owner and a date, and a private debrief for the sponsor.
Who should be in the room
An intact leadership team, meaning the executives and senior people-leaders who actually control the workload, the priorities and how the team runs. Up to about 12 people keeps it a working session instead of an audience.
It's the wrong agenda for a mixed all-hands or a 100-person kickoff, because the exercises only work with the people who can change how the work is set up, the people who DESIGN the load. If the wider group needs to hear the message too, give them a 45-minute talk and run this day with the leaders.
Before the day
- A 30-minute call with the sponsor to agree on what the day should change, and to gather a few numbers for the retention math, like how many people are in scope, a rough average salary for the roles you'd hate to lose, and any recent resignations you wish hadn't happened.
- An optional short pre-read, like The Quiet Burnout brief.
- No homework. Your leaders are already overloaded, which is kind of the whole point.
- A "no laptops during the working blocks" rule, agreed to ahead of time by the most senior person in the room.
The agenda
Here's a sample full day, 8:30 to 4:30. It moves in 4 steps: see the problem as a system, learn to spot it early, take real work OFF real plates, and leave with commitments that have owners.
| Time | Segment | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 | Open | Why we're here, and the one ground rule: we're talking about how the work is set up, not about who's tough enough. |
| 8:45 | The system view | Why the best people burn out quietly, and why it's a system problem, not a willpower problem. Then the retention math, run on your own numbers: what it costs to replace someone, the checked-out year before a resignation, and what a resignation tells everyone who's still carrying the load. |
| 10:00 | The 4 causes | How the work is designed, how clear the priorities are, whether people ever really get to recover, and whether anyone is watching for the early signs. Each leader places their own team against the 4. |
| 10:30 | Break | |
| 10:45 | Early signs | What burnout looks like in a dependable high performer months before the resignation letter, and why "no complaints" is actually a risk. Then the 3-question audit, run live on the room's own teams. |
| 12:00 | Lunch | Out of the room and away from email. |
| 12:45 | The kill-list | Naming, out loud, the low-value work everyone already knows shouldn't exist, and deciding what stops. This is the heart of the day (more on it below). |
| 2:15 | Break | |
| 2:30 | Building in real recovery | What it looks like when rest is built into how the team runs, like coverage plans, response-time expectations and real off-switches, instead of being left up to each person's willpower. |
| 3:30 | Commitments | Each leader writes down 2 or 3 commitments they chose, reads them to the room, and names the date they'll report back. |
| 4:15 | Close | What we decided, who owns what, and when we'll check in. |
| 4:30 | Sponsor debrief | A private conversation with the sponsor about where the team is, where the risk seems to be concentrated, and whether deeper work makes sense. |
Only have a half day? Keep the system view, the 3-question audit and the kill-list, and move the recovery piece to a follow-up meeting. Just don't cut the commitments, because they're what makes the day actually count.
How to run the kill-list
Most organizations have a very disciplined process for starting work and no process at all for stopping it. The kill-list is that missing process, and it's usually the hardest and most valuable hour of the day, because removing work means someone has to give something up in front of their peers.
- List the recurring work. Each leader writes down the reports, meetings, approvals and "temporary" tasks that land on their team every week or month.
- Ask who it's really for. For each one, who uses it, what decision does it help make, and what would actually happen if it stopped next week?
- Sort it into kill, shrink or hand back. Stop it completely, do it less often or smaller, or give it back to whoever really needs it.
- Pick from the top. The room chooses the items that take the most time and give the least value. Go for real hours, not symbolic gestures.
- Give each one an owner and a date. Someone tells the people affected, and the most senior person in the room backs it up publicly.
Expect some pushback at step 5. That's completely normal, and it's actually the point where the day starts to pay off.
What leaders leave with
- A shared language, with the whole leadership team seeing burnout as a system problem instead of something to fix with perks.
- The 3-question audit, ready to use with their own teams the next morning.
- A started kill-list, with the low-value work named out loud, which is the hardest step.
- 2 or 3 commitments per leader that they chose themselves, wrote down, and said in front of their peers.
Common mistakes
- Turning it into a resilience day. Breathing exercises and a wellness talk support the individual but leave the workload exactly where it was, and leaders notice.
- Inviting the whole company. The working sessions need the people who design the load.
- Ending without owners. A list of insights with no names and dates usually turns into a forgotten slide by Thursday.
- Letting the most senior person stay quiet during the kill-list. If they don't give something up, nobody else will either.
- No follow-up. Put a 30-minute check-in on the calendar for 30 days out before anyone leaves the room.
I've designed and facilitated workshops for my whole career, and the commitments at the end are the one piece I'd never cut. They're what turns a good conversation into something that's still happening a month later.
Run it yourself, or bring us in
You're very welcome to run this agenda with your own team! If you'd rather have an outside facilitator, someone with no stake in the politics who can push a little harder on the kill-list, Brightwork runs it as The Quiet Burnout Workshop. It's one full day, on-site or virtual, for up to about 12 leaders, including the private sponsor debrief, for $7,500, with no travel cost for on-sites in Colorado.
And if you'd like the day to start from your own data instead of general patterns, run Brightwork's Detect or the Burnout & Retention Audit first, so the morning opens with your own teams' results on the screen. Either way, one well-run day can take real work off real plates, and your team will feel the difference.
Common questions
How long should a leadership workshop on burnout be?
A full day works best. It gives you enough time for the system view and the early signs in the morning, and a real working session on the kill-list and recovery in the afternoon. A half day can work too, as long as you keep the kill-list and the commitments.
Who should attend?
An intact leadership team of up to about 12 people, the executives and senior people-leaders who control the workload, the priorities and how the team runs. It isn't designed for a mixed all-hands.
Can it run virtually?
Yes. It runs as a structured full day with real breaks and the same exercises. Being on-site does make the afternoon working sessions stronger, though.
What is a kill-list?
It's a short, public list of low-value recurring work that a team agrees to stop, shrink or hand back, each with an owner and a date. It's the practical version of what the research keeps finding, that taking work away does more than adding support on top of it.
Written by Faye Bonomo, founder of Brightwork Leadership. Published October 9, 2026 · Last reviewed October 9, 2026. Brightwork's work is organizational, never clinical: nothing here is medical advice.