What to Do When Your Senior Role Feels Totally Unsustainable

Summary:

Many senior leaders are quietly reaching the same conclusion: the top jobs they’ve spent decades working toward no longer feel sustainable. In recent years, the go-to advice for addressing executive burnout has been to encourage leaders to build greater resilience. But resilience—the ability to adapt to adversity—breaks down when adversity becomes the norm. Exhausted executives need a new blueprint. Here are concrete strategies for how to realign your role with your own strengths, purpose, and energy.

Leslie*, an ambitious biotech CTO, stepped into her role brimming with excitement. She was ready to modernize core systems and supercharge her company’s research capabilities. But 18 months later, after nonstop firefighting and pressure to deliver transformation faster than the organization could absorb it, she confided to her coach (Darcy) that instead of feeling triumphant, she was considering giving up on the work and retiring early.

She’s not alone. Many senior leaders are quietly reaching the same conclusion: the top jobs they’ve spent decades working toward no longer feel sustainable. Deloitte reports that nearly 70% of C-suite executives are seriously considering leaving their roles for the sake of their well-being. Gartner found that more than half expect to exit within two years, and over a quarter are considering leaving within six months. When this happens, organizations lose institutional knowledge, continuity, strategic agility, and cultural stability. Retention isn’t just an HR issue—it’s a performance risk.

In recent years, the go-to advice for addressing executive burnout has been to encourage leaders to build greater resilience. But resilience—the ability to adapt to adversity—breaks down when adversity becomes the norm. Exhausted executives don’t need stronger armor. They need a different battle plan.

In our coaching work with executives, we’ve found that leaders who think their only option is quitting have another choice: a way to reset their daily actions so they can stay without suffering or sacrifice. They need a blueprint for realigning their role with their own strengths, purpose, and energy. We call this blueprint a Personal Retention Plan.

Why a Personal Retention Plan Matters

In many organizations, senior-level retention planning has been left to the CHRO, sometimes with support from the CEO or board. But in our experience, the top executives aren’t always aware of how frequently their key leaders are considering departure. Plus, an organization’s top leaders may not openly communicate their concerns out of fear of appearing unable to handle the role, or simply out of hope that “things will calm down soon” (and they seldom do).

That’s why we advise any executive considering an early departure to first create their own Personal Retention Plan (PRP). A Personal Retention Plan is a simple, self-created blueprint for redesigning your role, relationships, and expectations in ways to help you stay and succeed without burning out.

How to Create Your Personal Retention Plan

You can design your own Personal Retention Plan in three steps. Once complete, this plan can be shared with key stakeholders, such as a board or C-Suite member. It can also be a point of discussion with peers or teams. At its baseline, though, the plan is intended to reset your own priorities so it only really needs to be seen by one person: you.

1. Understand what the role really requires. Many executive roles were built for a different era—one that prized endurance, constant availability, and heroic individualism. While technology and workforce expectations have evolved, those outdated norms persist at the top. The result? A structural mismatch between what an executive role demands and what a human being can sustainably supply.

These questions help you step out of the current footprint of the role and see it not as it has been, but as it needs to be now. For example, Saul, a rising commercial leader, was hesitant to be considered for his company’s CMO role. He admired the current CMO, Jonathan, but dreaded the idea of replicating his lifestyle. “I couldn’t do what Jonathan does,” Saul admitted. “He’s on the road three weeks a month and works 24/7. With my kids in school sports, I couldn’t do that. Correction—I don’t want to do that.” Saul’s assumption that he could not step into the next role made him believe it was time to leave.

But when he began developing a Personal Retention Plan in partnership with his coach, he realized the reality of the role didn’t require the same amount of travel Jonathan enjoyed. He saw more clearly where the work could morph to fit his own strengths, boundaries, and leadership style rather than mimic the one in place now. Saul decided to stay and raise his hand for the promotion.

2. Conduct an internal inventory. Once you clarify what the role truly requires, the next step is understanding what you require. That starts with taking an internal inventory to articulate your own key drivers. To get started, ask yourself these questions:

On a scale of 1–10, how much do I personally care about the core problem this role solves?
How am I uniquely positioned to solve it?
What energizes me in my work?
What drains me consistently?
Where is my “superpower space”—the work I do at my highest value and best use? What percentage of time am I currently spending in that space?

This inventory helps you be brutally honest with yourself about the intersection of your work and life needs. It reveals where your strengths and values align—or conflict—to help you see the key pain points that are often muddled in our minds.

3. Document your next steps. After understanding the true needs of the role and the person, the PRP helps you translate your new insights into clearer thoughts and actions. Core statements to complete at this stage include:

What matters most to me is…
What I want to keep the same about my role is…
What I need to let go of is…
The relationships I need to reset are…
The expectations I need to reset are…
The person I need to be to make this work is…

After completing this exercise, leaders often discover they don’t need to step down; they need to step back and redesign just a few key areas of their worklife. What they often find is that small changes make a big difference.

For example, a biotech executive working with Tony realized her greatest value lay in mentoring scientists and connecting work to the company’s purpose. She reimagined her role as “Chief Meaning Officer,” quietly restructuring her calendar to support opportunities for people development and deeper communication. She didn’t announce the shift. Instead, she made small changes to where she spent her time, and her energy returned.

After completing his PRP, another executive who claimed he had “no time” ran a month-long experiment: blocking one morning a week for strategic planning. The result surprised him—when he was less constantly available, fewer last-minute emergencies arose. He’s kept the practice ever since, as it strengthens both his sustainability and his team’s effectiveness.

These weren’t career pivots or job changes. They involved intentional, thoughtful shifts in how the leader redefined and reset the role, tailored to their needs and wants.

. . .

Today’s complex organizations cannot afford to lose their strongest leaders because roles have become unsustainable, and individual leaders need more options than struggling, sacrifice, or early retirement. A Personal Retention Plan offers a way forward. With it, leaders can rethink and redesign their work, creating conditions where they can stay, grow, and contribute for the long-term. As executive roles continue to evolve in complexity, PRPs can become as essential as annual performance plans, providing structure that keeps leaders grounded and organizations stable.

* All names have been changed.

Explore AAPL Membership benefits.