Question 1

Who is this coaching for?

Accepted Answer

Executive coaching for burnout is for senior professionals, founders, and high-responsibility roles where the cost of disengagement is high and the standard 'take some time off' advice does not fit the realities of the position. Most clients I see are not yet in clinical depression but are running on dwindling reserves, sleeping poorly, dreading the work they used to love, and not sure how to recover without stepping back from responsibilities they cannot easily reduce.

Question 2

What kind of burnout do you work with?

Accepted Answer

The pattern I see most often in Hong Kong's executive layer is chronic over-functioning burnout: high competence, high demand, no off switch, a slowly narrowing identity outside work, and a creeping sense of resentment or numbness toward work that used to feel meaningful. Founder burnout and decision-fatigue burnout have similar profiles. Caregiver burnout in parents of high-needs children is also common and gets a tailored version of the same work.

Question 3

How is this different from therapy?

Accepted Answer

Burnout sits at the boundary between clinical and performance work. If the picture has crossed into depression, panic, or trauma, I treat it as therapy. If it has not, I treat it as a recovery and recalibration project: workload audit, sleep and energy systems, values clarification, and rebuilding the parts of life that have quietly compressed under the work demands. Many clients sit somewhere on the boundary and the work uses both approaches.

Question 4

Do you have experience working with high-performing adults?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A substantial part of my adult caseload is senior executives, founders, lawyers, finance professionals, and clinicians, mostly across Hong Kong's professional layer. I have logged over 17,000 clinical hours across 12 years in this market. The frameworks I use (ACT, CBT, performance psychology) translate well into language and pacing that high-performing adults find usable rather than patronising.

Question 5

What does a session look like?

Accepted Answer

Sessions run 50 minutes and are heavily practical. Early sessions establish what you are actually carrying (workload, decisions, emotional load, sleep, recovery), where the leaks are, and what specific changes are realistic given the constraints of your role. Later sessions work through implementation: difficult conversations, boundary changes, schedule restructuring, and the internal narrative that often blocks recovery in high achievers. I do not believe in long-term coaching relationships for their own sake. Most engagements run three to six months.

Question 6

How do I know it's working?

Accepted Answer

We agree on concrete markers in the first two sessions: sleep quality, weekend recovery, energy at specific times of day, dread levels around specific work tasks, and whether your non-work life is regaining bandwidth. We track these over time. If the markers are not moving within six weeks, we change the approach rather than continue. Subjective improvement matters, but I want it backed by observable change.

Question 7

And if I don't have time for this?

Accepted Answer

This is usually the first signal that the work is needed. Senior professionals who are not burning out can almost always find 50 minutes a week for something that matters. Genuine inability to find that time is usually evidence that boundaries, delegation, or workload distribution need attention, which is exactly what we will work on. Sessions are available outside standard hours and online, which removes most of the logistical objections.

Executive Coaching for Burnout