The meeting runs for four hours. Elected officials reverse direction mid-budget cycle. A department head you have been mentoring for two years resigns. A personnel decision leaks before you have told your own team. You drive home, and someone asks how work is going. You say fine. That gap, between what you carry and what you say, is where burnout lives. Public sector leadership burnout doesn't announce itself. It accumulates — quietly, over time, under the weight of a role no