Burned Out and Managing Multiple Generations? What Leaders Get Wrong About Generational Conflict at Work with Kristin Scroggin

Workplace burnout makes a lot more sense when you stop blaming generations for the survival strategies they were trained to carry. Kristin Scroggin, founder of genWHY Communications and a leading voice on generational communication in the workplace, joins Cait for a candid conversation about workplace burnout, generational conflict, and what happens when the career you worked so hard to build starts taking more than it gives back. This conversation gets to the uncomfortable heart of burnout at work: success can look impressive from the outside and still feel impossible to sustain from the inside. Kristin’s story shows how resentment, exhaustion, decision fatigue, and disconnection can become burnout symptoms long before someone is willing to name what is happening. What changes when resentment becomes information instead of shame? What becomes possible when you stop treating capacity like a personal failure? Cait and Kristin also look at workplace burnout through the larger forces shaping today’s teams. Generational conflict, employee burnout, leadership burnout, and workplace culture are all tied to the same bigger question: are we building work systems that people can actually survive? With Kristin’s humor and research as the guide, this episode challenges leaders to think differently about Gen X burnout, millennial managers, Gen Z in the workplace, and the future of work. The real leadership reset starts when organizations stop asking why people are disengaged and start paying attention to what their behavior is trying to tell them. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Generational Conflict in the Workplace 03:05 Burned Out at Work: Kristin’s Breaking Point 06:04 The Burnout and Resentment Journal 11:51 When Success Turns Into Burnout 21:07 Why Different Generations Clash at Work 32:24 Leadership Burnout and People Manager Burnout 40:06 The Leadership Pipeline Crisis Ahead Connect with Kristin Scroggin: http://www.genwhy.com http://www.instagram.com/genwhycommunications http://www.linkedin.com/kristinscroggin https://share.google/zdHigxST7Ltqwrc4Z   Connect with Cait: https://caitdonovan.com/resentment-journal  Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mismatch, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.   To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025 Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

See All Episodes