We love resilient people.

They keep going.

They show up when things are difficult. They adjust. They figure things out. They carry the team when somebody has to.

And because they keep managing, we assume they are okay.

I have been thinking about that word lately: resilience.

At what point does resilience stop being something we admire and become something we take advantage of?

There is a difference between helping people become stronger and continually giving strong people more to carry.

In the workplace, we talk a lot about burnout. We introduce wellness programs. We encourage people to take care of themselves. We tell them to create boundaries, manage stress and become more resilient.

But leadership also has to ask a harder question:

What are people being asked to be resilient against?

Sometimes the problem isn’t that employees need better coping skills.

Sometimes the workload is unreasonable.

Sometimes expectations aren’t clear.

Sometimes people have adapted so many times that adaptation itself has become exhausting.

And sometimes your strongest employee has become the person everyone depends on precisely because they rarely complain.

That is where leaders need to pay attention.

A person can be highly capable and still be tired.

They can be dependable and still need support.

They can love their work and still recognize that something about the way the work is being done is no longer sustainable.

Good leadership shouldn’t wait for good people to break before asking what they need.

Resilience matters. I believe deeply in it.

But sustainable leadership isn’t about discovering how much a person can endure.

It is about creating an environment where people can perform, grow, contribute and still have enough of themselves left when the workday is over.

Maybe that is the question leaders should carry into the coming week:

Are my people thriving because of the environment we’ve created, or have they simply become very good at surviving it?

~ Priscilla Sombe