Leading through Loneliness: Personal Reflections on Surviving Burnout

Abstract

If you’ve spent any amount of time leading in an academic library, you already know: This
work will stretch you, inspire you, break your heart, and—on the worst days—make
you wonder why you ever signed up for it. And that is perfectly OK to say out loud.
Most leadership literature still treats exhaustion as a personal failing. But leadership itself
can be emotionally draining.1 When you layer on the realities of higher education today—
shrinking budgets, workforce reductions, political tension, intensified scrutiny toward
diversity, equity, and