A Q&A with University of Niagara Falls Canada professor Melanie Sodka exploring practical strategies for building healthier workplace cultures.
Across industries, organizations are being forced to rethink a fundamental question: how much can people realistically carry, and for how long? Conversations about productivity, performance, and growth are increasingly giving way to deeper reflections on workplace capacity, the human limits that shape sustainable leadership and ultimately, long-term success.
When those limits are ignored, the result is often burnout. More than individual exhaustion, burnout reflects systems that ask for constant output without meaningful recovery. For Melanie Sodka, this isn’t just theory. It’s lived experience that has shaped her research, teaching, and writing on what it truly means to lead and work sustainability.
Her book, Diary of a Functioning Burnout: How to Honor Your Capacity and Balance Your Life, draws on personal experience to help readers redefine productivity and reclaim energy so they can build a balanced life.
An Assistant Professor in University of Niagara Falls Canada’s Master of Management program, Sodka recently expanded on what future leaders need to understand about capacity, culture, and sustainable performance as part of the Ink & Insights speaker series. She sat down with us to discuss how rethinking capacity is quickly becoming one of the defining leadership challenges of the modern workplace.
Some responses have been edited for clarity and length.
What inspired you to write a book about burnout?
Burnout isn’t something I studied from afar, it’s something I lived through repeatedly, often while achieving things I was proud of. I kept finding myself celebrated publicly while privately stretched paper-thin.
When I finally stepped back, I realized how many people were living the same contradiction: high performers with high exhaustion, people who looked “fine” but were functioning in burnout. Writing this book became a way to name what so many people were silently experiencing. I wanted to give language to what it feels like when your ambition collides with your humanity and offer tools to help people honour their capacity instead of pushing past it.
When conducting your research, were there any surprising findings that changed how you think about burnout?
One of the most surprising findings was how often burnout is misunderstood as an individual problem. Many think of it as something people should “fix” through better habits or stronger boundaries. But the research consistently shows that burnout is far more influenced by systems, structures, and unspoken norms than by individual behaviour.
I also discovered how much unprocessed grief, emotional labour, and chronic micro-stressors accumulate in ways people don’t recognize. Burnout rarely arrives in a dramatic collapse, it shows up in small cracks long before the breaking point. That insight fundamentally shaped how I approach capacity work today.
Which industries and/or jobs in Canada do you think are most prone to experiencing burnout? What are the consequences, both professionally and societally?
Across Canada, the highest burnout levels consistently show up in health care and caregiving, education, social services and non-profits, tech and knowledge work, and frontline service and hospitality roles. These are sectors where pressure is high, resources are low, and expectations are relentless.
The consequences ripple far beyond the workplace. Professionally, burnout reduces productivity, creativity, decision-making, and psychological safety. But societally, the cost is even higher: increased health care use, strained relationships, disengagement from communities, and a workforce that feels depleted rather than empowered. It becomes not just a workplace problem, but a cultural one.
What are some of the most common warning signs of burnout that individuals should be aware of, both in themselves and others?
Some of the earliest warning signs are subtle: persistent fatigue, even after rest; irritability and emotional volatility; procrastination or detachment from things you normally enjoy; feeling numb, cynical, or disconnected; difficulty focusing or making decisions; and a creeping sense that everything feels heavier than it should.
In others, it can look like withdrawing from social interactions, overworking to “keep up,” or saying “I’m fine” while clearly not being fine. Burnout isn’t always loud. It’s often quiet and internal.
What can employers and leaders do to ensure they are fostering a healthier workplace culture?
Leaders have far more influence than they realize. The most effective actions they can take include normalizing conversations about capacity, modeling boundaries instead of rewarding constant availability, regularly evaluating workload equity, and creating psychologically safe spaces where speaking up doesn’t come with consequences.
Performance reviews should also include capacity measures, not just productivity metrics. A healthier culture is built through practices, not perks.
What tips do you have for people who would like to be better at honouring their personal capacity? Do you have any personal anecdotes you could share?
Honouring your capacity starts by paying attention to the small cues: where you feel energized, where you feel drained, and what you consistently avoid.
Pause before saying yes. Ask whether a commitment aligns with your values, your energy, and your actual bandwidth. Notice “micro-fatigue moments” and rest before you crash. Build a practice of checking in with yourself, not just checking off tasks.
When I created the Good Grief Gala, I knew it would stretch me. But it added so much meaning and fulfillment that it actually replenished my capacity instead of draining it. It taught me that not all busyness is equal, some things fuel you, and some things deplete you.
How do you see the trend of “quiet cracking” fitting into the broader conversation about burnout, and what advice would you give to people who might be silently pushing themselves beyond their capacity?
Quiet cracking describes that invisible point when someone is still performing externally but breaking internally. It’s the stage before burnout becomes visible, where people are still functioning, still smiling, still producing, but slowly eroding on the inside.
This trend is a warning sign that self-silencing has become normalized. If you’re quietly cracking, the most courageous thing you can do is acknowledge it early. Pause. Name it. Ask for support before you hit your breaking point. You don’t have to wait until you’re “bad enough” to deserve help.
As a professor in the field of management, what lessons do you hope UNF students can take away when it comes to addressing burnout as future leaders?
I want my students to understand that leadership is not about managing task – it’s about managing capacity. The most effective leaders of the future will be the ones who recognize the human limits of the people they lead, create environments where rest and recovery are designed into the workflow, and build cultures that prioritize meaning, autonomy, and psychological safety.
Performance and wellbeing are not separate conversations. If students leave my classroom understanding that supporting capacity is not a “nice-to-have” but a strategic advantage, then they’ll be prepared to lead in a much healthier, more sustainable way.
As conversations around workplace wellbeing continue to evolve, Sodka’s message is clear: burnout is not a personal weakness, but a signal that calls for both individual awareness and systemic change. By reframing leadership as the management of human capacity rather than simply output, she challenges organizations and future leaders alike to build cultures where performance and wellbeing strengthen one another. Through her research, teaching, and writing, Sodka is helping redefine what sustainable success looks like at work, in leadership, and in life.
