In theory, she leads the way she values. In practice, when the day piles up, she defaults to fixing. She picks up the wrench. She solves what is in front of her, often in a way that is quicker than coaching someone through it. And because she is skilled and experienced, her fixes work. What the fix does not do is build the capacity of the person who brought her the problem.

Most leaders do not avoid difficult conversations because they do not care. They avoid them because they care too much — about the relationship, about getting it wrong. And yet avoidance does not serve anyone. The key is not to push through the discomfort. It is to understand what makes a feedback conversation one that an educator can genuinely stay open to.

The burnout conversation in leadership tends to focus on individual resilience, sleep, self-care, and boundaries. What gets less attention is the structural and cultural picture. The decisions that land with no support. The policy changes that arrive on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. The sense that the system expects extraordinary capacity while providing ordinary support. That picture needs talking about.

The numbers are hard to argue with. The sector is losing people. But beneath the statistics sits a question that does not get asked often enough: what is it about the experience of working in early childhood that is making people leave? The answer points back, repeatedly, to leadership culture. And that is something that can change.

When an educator starts to disengage — going through the motions, pulling back from conversation, seeming present but somewhere else entirely — it is tempting to read it as a motivation problem. The neuroscience suggests something different. Disengagement is not usually a choice. It is a neurological response to an environment that is not meeting a fundamental human need.

A role shaped by whoever happens to be in it ends up absorbing everything the service has not had the conversation about yet. Curriculum questions. Interpersonal repair. Conversations that should have happened six months ago. Over a term, it shapes how the role feels from the inside, and the person holding it is rarely the one who gets to describe what just happened.