Why cognitive overload is pushing even high performers towards burnout

Greater Cambridge-based mental resilience expert Bukky Gray works with organisations on one of the quieter problems shaping modern workplaces: cognitive overload.

As employers ask people to move faster, process more information and adapt to constant change, Gray argues that resilience cannot be left to individual willpower alone. Work design, leadership behaviour and recovery all shape how people think, perform and cope under pressure.

In this interview with The Diversity and Inclusion Speakers Agency, Gray discusses how organisations can spot overload earlier, why resilience needs to be built into the way teams work, and what leaders can do to protect performance without pushing people past their limits.

Question 1. What should organisations measure when traditional culture metrics only show what has already happened?

Bukky Gray: “Most organisations measure culture through lagging indicators. We tend to measure engagement scores, Net Promoter Scores and retention rates. They all have value, but they measure what has already happened, rather than what is currently happening.

“The data has value, but it is incomplete. It often misses the underlying human system that helps us at work: how we think, how we feel, how we relate and how we make decisions on a day-to-day basis.

“With the acceleration of work we have seen in the last 10 years, we need to look at the human capacity that supports organisational outcomes and drives performance.

“For us, that means looking at cognitive capacity within the organisation. This speaks to clarity of focus, decision-making and having the headspace to think, because organisations are asking more and more from us.

“We should also be measuring emotional capacity within the workplace: our ability to self-regulate, resilience and relational capacity, which is our ability to build genuine relationships at work through trust and collaboration. Those are the things that enable us to perform the way organisations expect us to perform.

“Technical capacity matters too. With technical capacity, we trust that people like me, HR people, have already done our job and brought people into organisations who know what they are doing. This is about being able to apply your capability under pressure.

“We also live in a world where we are stripping out some of our humanity, so the moral and ethical side still needs to stay relevant. We are not talking about personal values here, but the ability to make sound judgement, and judgement with integrity, under constraint.

“If you measure all of this, the things we try to measure through culture and lagging indicators will naturally follow, because we have created space within the workplace.”

Question 2. How should leaders understand burnout as a predictable signal of organisational design?

Bukky Gray: “Over the years, burnout has been framed as an individual problem. After the pandemic, or during the pandemic, it felt like the height of resilience training, resilience talk and resilience books. We often treat burnout as something to be managed through better habits, time off or sleep.

“Those are all things we need to do as human beings to get back to equilibrium. But when you step back and look at organisations, burnout is predictable.

“It happens when we are consistently expected to do more without recovery. There is the always-on culture. We have mobile phones. I was having a chat with a colleague yesterday and I was saying I remember those days when you signed off work at 5:00, 6:00 or 7:00 and did not touch anything until you came back.

“Now we are always on. There is demand for our attention, our emotions and our relationships. Everything feels unrelenting, and the organisation is asking for sustained high performance.

“We are not machines. Some of these conditions make it impossible for us not to burn out: unclear priorities, constantly switching context and decisions without boundaries. All of these things erode cognitive clarity, emotional regulation, trust and relationships within organisations.

“Then we say someone is burnt out.

“The question we should be asking is: what are we repeatedly asking people to sustain that the system is not supporting?

“We should see burnout as a signal rather than a personal failure. If HR information is showing more burnout in the organisation, the conversation should shift to redesigning work and understanding what is causing burnout.”

Question 3. Which pressures are most limiting performance in today’s workforce?

Bukky Gray: “The first is cognitive overload. We are being asked to process more information, make more decisions and deal with contexts that keep changing quickly. All of this increases error and decreases clarity.

“The second is emotional strain. No man is an island. We do not live in an island. There is political uncertainty, and there is something we do not talk about enough in the workplace, which is emotional labour: how much people are giving and how that narrows their ability to respond effectively to what we ask of them.

“The third is relational breakdown. As HR professionals, this is something we all struggle with. Misalignment, low psychological safety and reduced trust make collaboration slower, harder and more fragile.

“These three pressures, cognitive overload, emotional strain and relational breakdown, are interrelated. They create a system where even the highest performers begin to struggle.

“We cannot forget that high performers also have things happening outside of the workplace that affect how they show up. When we layer all of these pressures inside the organisation, then we wonder why our high performers are struggling.”

Question 4. What shift do you want leaders to make after hearing you speak?

Bukky Gray: “Fundamentally, I want people to take away that what we are seeing in organisations is not just a human problem.

“We often start with assumptions and expectations. We say it is because someone is this or that. But there is a real human system failing under the pressure we are placing on people.

“The solution is not AI. It could be part of the solution. It is not more automation. It is a human-centred approach to how we support people.

“I want leaders to leave with a shift in perspective. It is time for us to stop optimising for outcomes alone and strengthen the people who make performance possible.

“If we shift our thinking, performance, culture and fantastic results will follow.”

This exclusive interview with Bukky Gray was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.