Burnout Recovery
The podcast for slightly dented medics, execs and professionals seeking massive success, strong leadership and fulfilment. Weekly tips and techniques for high-achieving Type A professionals to beat burnout and restore outstanding leadership, performance and ease at work. Podcast hosted by Master Burnout Coach Dex Randall.
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Burnout Recovery
Ep#176 The Unreconstructed Type A Burning Out
You know that guy who’s brilliant—but hard to work with? The one who gets results but leaves a trail of tension behind him?
Maybe you’ve worked with him.
Maybe you’ve been him.
Let's explore:
- What makes driven professionals spiral into burnout
- The real origins of the “Type A” personality label (spoiler: cardiologists, not psychologists)
- Why your brilliance might be getting in your way
- And most importantly: what the “after” version of a high-performing Type A looks and feels like
Think Sherlock Holmes. Or for my American friends, think House M.D.
Hyper-competent. Obsessed. Burned out.
There’s a better way to be excellent—without losing your edge.
Show Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership Podcast where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.
[00:00:22] Hello my friends. Welcome to this week's episode on the Unreconstructed Type A Burning Out. And if you enjoy this episode, please share it with your friends and rate or review the podcast because this is how we can all reach out and help more stressed out professionals. So today, let's start here. You know that guy who's technically brilliant, but nobody wants to work with him? The one who gets results but burns a few bridges. Maybe you were him or maybe you are.
[00:00:56] Lately I've been thinking about Sherlock Holmes, the fictional London detective with genius powers of observation and deduction, solving crimes that baffle Scotland Yard. But he's also hypermanic, obsessive, a cocaine addict and a loner.
[00:01:16] Naturally gifted, yes, but also irascible, impatient and intolerant. The stereotypical touchy detective. Brilliant, but burning out. And for my American friends, think House MD. Equally obsessive, equally isolated. Equally heading for trouble.
[00:01:38] This kind of personality- sharp, driven, intense- is the kind I loosely group under the banner of Type A.
[00:01:47] It's the kind that ends up in burnout.
[00:01:50] So how does that happen? Here's a quick aside you might find interesting. The whole Type A personality theory was developed in the 1950s by two cardiologists, Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. They noticed that their waiting room chairs were wearing out only on the arms and the front edges of the seat. Patients weren't sitting back. They were perched forward, tense. And that observation led to an eight and a half year study exploring the anxious behaviors of their patients and the link to heart disease. And they used questions like "Do you feel guilty if you use spare time to relax?" "Do you generally move, walk and eat rapidly?" They define Type A as anyone aggressively involved in a chronic incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if necessary against the opposing efforts of other people or things.
[00:02:55] AKA, your classic hard-driven professional.
[00:02:59] Now, that rather unsympathetic portrait has been softened over the years, because underneath most Type A folks are wonderful, talented, thoughtful people. So today I want to offer something helpful, a look at the before and after of the Type A personality when it meets burnout and transforms.
[00:03:24] Because if that sounds like you, there is a way forward. A way to keep being you -sharp, driven, excellent- but to do it with much more ease, connection, and joy.
[00:03:35] So let's take a before and after look at some of the situations my clients found themselves in and how they elevated their results by reframing their Type A assets.
[00:03:47] Here's an example of moving from emotional reactivity and burnout to emotional maturity.
[00:03:55] A recent client, a school principal, was preparing for a high stakes panel interview. He had a voice tremor that flared up under anxiety, and he felt ashamed of it. He worried he'd be judged unfairly, despite being highly qualified and deeply aligned with the school's needs, that inner tension was making his nerves worse.
[00:04:17] Our coaching goal was to help him present himself with calm, grounded confidence. We focused not on fixing the tremor, but on anchoring him in the real abundant value he brought to the role.
[00:04:32] He got the job.
[00:04:33] The next example jumps from relational crisis to leadership presence.
[00:04:40] One of my hospital physician clients was tasked with presenting a new pay and hour structure to his extensive team. He was panicked, dreading their reactions, the pushback, the disappointed faces. He didn't want to bulldoze them, but he also didn't know how to face the tension.
[00:05:00] Through our coaching, he came to see that he wasn't responsible for the changes. But he was responsible for how he showed up. Together, we prepared him to explain the new conditions clearly and honestly, and to listen quietly and respectfully to his team's feedback. He realized that his compassion here was a form of leadership, not weakness.
[00:05:23] He ran the meeting. It went pretty well. His team saw that he was with them, even if he couldn't change the policy. And that made all the difference.
[00:05:35] Now let's look at transforming self-led work patterns through leadership evolution.
[00:05:43] In the cut and thrust of Big Four consulting, my client felt that he had to prove himself at every turn, but he was stuck.
[00:05:51] His team wasn't stepping up and he couldn't stop taking over to do it right. He micromanaged, monitoring messages 24-7 and panicked at the thought of missing a deadline. Exhausted and anxious, he'd often snap at his team for mistakes that embarrassed him. He felt like he was losing control.
[00:06:13] But letting go wasn't as hard as he feared.
[00:06:17] He started by resetting expectations with his big ticket clients, giving himself just enough breathing room to lead rather than react. And that space allowed him to work with his team- with them, not against them. They rose to the challenge. Capability grew, and for the first time, he found himself enjoying the role of mentor, guiding others into senior positions instead of carrying the whole load himself.
[00:06:45] Here's another example. Let's rework the critical inner life into a renewed, more expansive identity.
[00:06:54] So another client, a college admissions consultant and CEO, was dreading signing a new five year lease on his premises. He felt exhausted, stuck, and ready to walk away. As the bottleneck of the business, he believed he was letting everyone down -his team, his students, and their parents.
[00:07:15] Much of his time was spent editing student essays, a task made even harder by his dyslexia.
[00:07:22] He didn't need to work harder, he needed a reset.
[00:07:25] So together we carved a path forward. He replaced underperforming admin staff, hired a sharp-eyed editor, and recruited new consultants who were a better fit. And when we crunched the numbers, he saw that being more generous with commissions wasn't a cost, it was a growth strategy.
[00:07:46] Within six months, his business had transformed from a burden into a vehicle for renewed energy and purpose. Morale climbed, ideas flowed, success blossomed. And for the first time in years, he felt excited, not pressured to lead.
[00:08:03] Despite what we've been taught as self-driven A players, technical excellence can only take us so far. The internal cost of staying unreconstructed is loneliness, exhaustion, and shallow victories.
[00:08:18] The five dimensions of reconstruction, for a Type A who wants to go higher, are:
[00:08:24] Number one, moving from fear-driven control to a grounded confidence.
[00:08:31] So the before behaviors would be being hyper alert, reactive, rigid thinking, fearful, defensive, impatient.
[00:08:40] And the transformative approach is to become calm, responsive, adaptive, self-assured, open-minded, and patient.
[00:08:50] So here's how that looks: You used to grip everything tightly, because it felt like the only way to succeed, but now you trust yourself.
[00:09:00] You can pivot, delegate, breathe. And you're not fragile anymore.
[00:09:05] So that's one.
[00:09:06] Two is moving from shame-based isolation to trust and connection.
[00:09:12] This is a huge one. So before you might be a little bit suspicious, perhaps antagonistic, judgmental, even manipulative, and you might hoard talent to yourself.
[00:09:23] Whereas after the transformation, you'll be much more deeply engaged, trusting, supportive, candidly honest, collaborative, and willing to mentor others.
[00:09:36] So how that looks: You were the lone wolf. Now you're the trusted leader others gravitate towards. Relationships aren't a drain anymore, they're your reward.
[00:09:46] And the third transformative element is going from self-attack to self-compassion.
[00:09:54] So before you might be very self-critical, intolerant, resentful, complaining, a bit snarly.
[00:10:02] After the transformation, you'll be self approving, benevolent, celebratory, championing people, and more gracious in your interactions.
[00:10:12] So you once believed self-criticism was the price of excellence, but actually it was burning you out.
[00:10:20] Now you fuel yourself with kindness and achieve more because of it.
[00:10:24] And the fourth one is going from short-term survival to long-term purpose. Because burnout happens when you're living on adrenaline, whereas purpose runs a lot deeper.
[00:10:35] So before you might be hedonistic, overwhelmed, procrastinating, focused on the past and your limitations.
[00:10:43] Whereas after transformation, you'll be more self-nourishing, quietly organized, meeting deadlines, more future focused and possibility oriented.
[00:10:53] So you used to chase relief from the pain. Now you're building instead something meaningful.
[00:11:00] You've moved from escape to engagement.
[00:11:03] And number five, you're moving from me centric to we centric leadership. Because true power is being a multiplier, not a martyr.
[00:11:13] So before you might be self-centered, quick to take offense, greedy, focused on your own results and a detractor from communal work.
[00:11:24] Whereas afterwards, you'll be more altruistic, unaffected by opinions, generous, focused on team success and that multiplier.
[00:11:34] So you were a high performer. Of course you were, but not a great leader.
[00:11:39] Now you lift others and your results are 10 times better than they were.
[00:11:44] So there are some pointers to the reconstruction of the juicy goodness of you as a Type A into a form that is more palatable to you and to other people.
[00:11:55] So you will continue being you, only better and happier.
[00:11:59] So how does that all happen?
[00:12:01] Let's look at the stages of that reconstruction, because this is the core of burnout recovery coaching, the journey that you can take.
[00:12:09] Step one, wake up to the cost of burnout.
[00:12:13] Most of you listening will already be in this phase: exhausted, demoralized, anxious, little bit over it.
[00:12:20] Your relationships outside work may also be a bit constrained or conflicted and lacking in joy.
[00:12:27] It's important to know that this is just a jump off point.
[00:12:32] Sadly, it has to be painful enough to cause you to make the leap. And for a Type A, that means it's very, very painful.
[00:12:41] But once you leap, everything gets easier pretty quickly.
[00:12:45] And notice, if you're going to make this leap, this transformative journey away from burnout, your ego will want you to stay stuck- because that's how it controls you. It controls you through your pain. So if your ego tells you that this transformative process won't work, I think use your own judgment, really.
[00:13:04] You probably can tell for yourself. But if my client's successes are anything to go by, you can safely ignore your ego and get cracking.
[00:13:12] So step one, you need to have awareness that there's a problem, that you're ready to change.
[00:13:17] Step two is you need to learn emotional safety. So that's self-regulation, nervous system regulation, self-trust.
[00:13:26] Because when good people come to me, squashed a little bit flat in burnout, they first need to create safety.
[00:13:33] Has this been lacking recently for you? Ask yourself? 'cause it probably has, particularly if you're burning out. There's an element of self-neglect in burnout, where we don't protect ourselves the way that we need to.
[00:13:47] People in burnout push themselves very hard and often do neglect important elements that would've kept them going. So let's restore safety because no-one can function properly, let alone grow, when they feel unsafe, out of control, ignored, devalued, demoralized, even bullied, whatever's happening for you that's taking your energy.
[00:14:12] But luckily, all the emotional safety you ever need is hidden inside you, and I will teach you how to reconnect with it, regulate your nervous system, soothe your bruised emotions, and create basic trust in yourself and do something that I call championing yourself. Really start having your own back more deeply.
[00:14:33] So step two is to establish a safe core from which you can transform.
[00:14:39] Step three, practice new responses in those little micro moments where things are going wrong.
[00:14:45] This is where the real reconstruction begins. So you've laid the foundations of safety, and now you start swapping out old, unhealthy, unhelpful habits for new ones. One habit at a time, one day at a time. And we use, of course, neuroplasticity for this. I will teach you all the specific techniques to do that.
[00:15:07] And one of the first habits to rewire is self-criticism, which saps more energy and motivation than you might think. If you are living in the shadow of disapproval, do you think it's time for some sun?
[00:15:18] So step three, it's really rewiring your brain and the process takes hold pretty quickly and builds strength and momentum week on week.
[00:15:28] And step four, once you have changed your habits for the better, and you are on a new footing, it's time to reconstruct your identity into a more powerful self-definition. The Unconstructed you was brilliant, no doubt, but it came with some challenges.
[00:15:50] As you become aware of new and more favorable ways of being, you will adopt and practice them.
[00:15:56] The vision for your future self will start to come alive. To be clear, it's not about becoming someone else. It's about taking all of your best qualities, such as discipline, standards, drive, and rebuilding on a foundation of emotional intelligence and connection.
[00:16:14] So step five, rebuild your identity.
[00:16:18] And this is why it's such a transformation. You will move forward in that identity to create more powerful success in your future.
[00:16:27] If you are that Type A running on fumes, this is not your downfall, it's the kickstart of your transformation. It's just the trigger. The reconstructed version of you isn't weaker, he or she is wiser, more effective, and finally free.
[00:16:44] So if you'd like to begin that transformation, come and talk to me first. Let me know what's not working for you right now and we can make a plan to fix it.
[00:16:54] You can book an appointment@dexrandall.com.
[00:16:59] That is the joyous news that I have for you today. Thank you for listening.
[00:17:02] Do not stay stuck! Catch you next time with more burnout-healing ideas.
