Most senior product leaders are one promotion away from losing the passion that made them successful.
In over 100 leadership coaching sessions, I’ve seen the same shift: more meetings, less making.
Here’s how to break that cycle.
When I was a first-time founder learning about venture capital, I dove into pre-money and post-money valuations, cap tables, and more.
I expected to learn about money, not mental health, and that disconnect taught me something deeper about success.
I stumbled on a blog post from a well-known VC describing their battle with depression.
Naive me wondered: How could someone so successful feel that way?
Years later, I realized the same quiet slide happens to product leaders, not from lack of skill, but from the slow erosion of what made the work joyful.
Success is often when burnout hits.
The higher you go, you do more of what drains you and less of what fueled you.
Ironically, what once gave you energy vanishes from your calendar.
For example:
- The product manager who loved solving user problems now spends most days in stakeholder meetings.
- The technical founder who thrived on elegant architecture now manages roadmap politics.
- The design leader who loved crafting beautiful experiences now optimizes team processes and reviews others’ work.
What made you great becomes what you must give up.
This progression happens in predictable stages that most leaders don’t see coming.
Stage 1: Passion-Driven Contributor Directly impacting products and users, learning daily, and seeing a clear line from effort to results.
Stage 2: Success-Driven Drift More meetings, less making.
Your output is now the team’s, not yours.
The distance from the work that excited you grows.
Stage 3: The Passion Crisis You’re going through the motions.
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Success feels hollow.
You start wondering why you’re here at all.
When leaders burn out, teams feel it
Back when I read that VC’s blog post, I didn’t realize: when leaders lose passion, it’s not just personal.
Teams notice.
The energy that once sparked breakthroughs gets replaced by professional competence, producing incremental results.
A disengaged leader approves safe ideas instead of bold bets, slowly trading innovation for predictability.
The question isn’t how to recapture early-career excitement. That’s gone.
The real question: how do you evolve your relationship with work so senior leadership is fulfilling in new ways?
The Three Renewal Systems Framework
I used to think burnout was a personal failure.
It turns out, it’s a systems failure.
Most leaders burn out because they lack systems to renew what originally energized them.
That’s why a first leadership role feels thrilling, and the second… draining.
Sustainable passion needs three interconnected renewal systems
Impact Renewal: Staying Connected to Meaningful Outcomes
The Problem: As you rise, you get further from the problems you’re solving.
You see reports instead of real user struggles.
The Solution:
- User Immersion Rituals: Monthly sessions where you personally observe customer interactions. One VP said a single customer call rekindled more drive than a quarter’s worth of OKR reviews.
- Impact Archaeology: Log real problems your team solved. A design lead’s “win wall” displays photos and quotes from users whose lives changed because of her team.
- Outcome Storytelling: Regularly share how your work drives change. One CTO ends every all-hands with a 60-second user story.
Warning Sign: You can explain your roadmap but not why it matters to real people.
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Growth Renewal: Personal Learning That Energizes
The Problem: Senior roles often mean repeating what you know, at scale.
The learning curve flattens and boredom creeps in.
The Solution:
- Adjacent Learning: Explore related skills (e.g., how AI could reshape your work). A product manager’s AI experiment cut PRD creation time in half.
- Teaching to Learn: Mentor, write, or speak. An engineering leader mastered a concept only after teaching it to interns.
- Reverse Mentoring: Learn from junior talent ahead in key areas. My teenage daughter helped craft my social media strategy.
Warning Sign: You feel stuck repeating patterns you’ve already mastered.
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Creation Renewal: Making Something Tangible
The Problem: Leadership work is often invisible and abstract.
You influence and coordinate but rarely build.
The Solution:
- Prototype Fridays: Monthly hands-on work on product, tools, or ideas. A CTO’s one-day prototype became a core tool still in use two years later.
- Framework Building: Document approaches that outlast your role. One product leader’s prioritization framework spread to five teams without her in the room.
- Content Creation: Write, speak, or build tools that capture your insights. A design director’s blog posts became the company’s onboarding material.
Warning Sign: You miss the satisfaction of creating something with your own hands and mind.
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How Renewal Systems Reinforce Each Other
- Sharing impact stories strengthens teaching, reinforcing growth and connection.
- Learning new skills gives fresh perspectives on user problems, deepening impact.
- Building frameworks enables others to achieve better results, amplifying impact through creation.
- Teaching others about meaningful outcomes turns your insights into lasting systems, blending growth and creation.
Key Insight: You don’t have to choose between leadership and passion.
Design your role to include all three renewal systems: impact, growth, and creation, and let them fuel each other.
You don’t have to trade creativity for coordination.
But staying fueled requires intention and infrastructure.
Self Assessment
Burnout is predictable. So is renewal.
Which renewal system is most depleted in your current role?
Which will you build this week?
Don’t wait until that next promotion to find out what’s gone missing. Build your renewal systems now.
Key Takeaways
✅ Success creates distance from what energized you. Career advancement systematically removes leaders from the hands-on work that sparked passion.
✅ Burnout is a systems problem, not a personal failure. Most leaders lack intentional systems for impact, growth, and creation.
✅ Leadership and passion don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Renewal systems restore fulfillment while maintaining leadership effectiveness.
Up Next
Next week, we will tackle combining passionate vision with performance execution to create breakthrough results.
Remember, energy and passion are contagious, but so are disengagement and burnout.
The systems you build to sustain your passion ripple through your team and culture.
I’d love to hear what you’re putting in place. Reply and let me know.
Keep investing in yourself,
Andrea
P.S. Found this helpful? Forward this to a leader who’s trying to build a breakthrough team.
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