Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations: Jess Pettitt Interviews Me About Mismatch
47m | Oct 11, 2026Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
"I just, for the first time, realized that I'm not actually in a toxic workplace. I'm just in a bad match." From an email a coaching client sent me.
For almost three years, a woman in one of our UNFRIED coaching cohorts kept calling her workplace toxic. Then she listened to my episode on what "toxic" actually means according to the research, and she sent me that email. Nothing about her job changed that weekend. What changed was the story. The blame and the finger pointing dropped, and a much more useful question showed up: where's the mismatch?
That question is the whole book. Burnout isn't a personal failure, and it isn't always a bad company. It's a symptom of a mismatch between a person and the place they work, and it's not the only symptom. My new book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, comes out October 27, 2026, and this week my friend Jess Pettitt, Hall of Fame speaker and author of Doing Good Better, turns the mic around and interviews me about it.
We talk about how a book about burnout stopped being about burnout, the cold email that turned into a book deal, why somebody could have built me a utopian workplace and I still would have burnt out, and the Mismatch Index I built so organizations can find the gap without ever weaponizing the results. We also get into why there are zero books on how to be a better employee, why leaders are being told to act like therapists, what it would look like to stop top-downing and start middling out, and why the one page I'd keep from the whole book is about interoception. (Yes, pee when you need to pee.)
Key Topics Covered:
- How a book about burnout became a book about mismatch, and why mismatch underlies all of our people problems
- The cold email that turned into a book deal, after I'd self-published my first book
- Burnout as a party of one: when you're the solopreneur and also the boss you should be blaming
- Why a utopian workplace wouldn't have saved me, and how the coping mechanisms that made me successful (hello, hyper-independence) turned on me
- Burnout, attrition, disengagement and quiet quitting as symptoms of the same mismatch
- The Mismatch Index: an assessment that shows which part of the gap is systemic, which part is leadership, and which part is you, and why companies only ever see aggregate results
- Why we default to blame, and why every book on the shelf is about being a better leader and none are about being a better employee
- What the fraud triangle and whistleblowers taught me about why good people go against the grain
- Leaders are being told to be therapists, and the case for middling out instead of top-downing
- The four behaviors that make a workplace actually toxic (ostracism, bullying, harassment and incivility), and why you should get out if you're being harmed
- How to hire without building mismatch into your team, starting with your own leadership training and a real fit tool instead of your gut
- The paper plate exercise, interoception, and the story behind the matches on the cover
Quotes:
"I'm the boss that I should be blaming." (07:36 | Cait Donovan)
"Somebody could have created a utopian workplace for me and I would have burnt out anyway." (08:51 | Cait Donovan)
"I started this book about burnout and now it's not about burnout anymore. It's about mismatch, and mismatch underlies all of our people problems." (13:43 | Cait Donovan)
"The company will never get the individual results. They only get aggregate results, because I will not allow this tool to be weaponized in any way, shape or form." (15:28 | Cait Donovan)
"You're decorating it, not fixing it." (17:30 | Jess Pettitt)
"Every single book I came across was how to make a better leader. There were zero books, not one book on how to be a better employee." (19:59 | Cait Donovan)
"Why are we always top-downing? Why can't we middle out?" (27:16 | Cait Donovan)
In this episode, we mentioned...
Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by Cait Donovan (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
The Bouncebackability Factor, by Cait Donovan
Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change, by Jessica Pettitt
Christina Maslach, Wilmar Schaufeli and Michael Leiter's research on burnout and the six areas of mismatch
Justin Patton, the trust guy
The Predictive Index
The fraud triangle
The 4 Behaviors of A Toxic Workplace, a #straightfromcait episode
Toxic or Just a Bad Fit? How to Tell the Difference at Work, with Leanne Elliott
Burnout Is Not Your Fault, It's a Mismatch: An Early Look at My New Book (FRIED #365)
Can You Burn Out in a Good Workplace? (FRIED #363)
#straightfromcait: Coping Mechanisms and Burnout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (FRIED #2)
Connect with Jess Pettitt
Jess Pettitt, CSP, CPAE, is a leadership and crisis communications keynote speaker and advisor. She started out as a university administrator by day and a stand-up comic by night in New York City's comedy clubs, and has spent 20+ years working with more than 1,400 organizations and half a million audience members. In 2026 she was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame. Her newest book is Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change.
Website: https://jesspettitt.com
Take the 6-question advisory survey: https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-survey
Book: Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change
Connect with Cait
Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): annick@caitdonovan.com
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Watch the 3-min sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you lead a team that looks great on paper and is still burning out, this is for you.
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations.
Podcast production and show notes by Starlin Media: https://starlinmedia.com
