Ex-McKinsey Leader Laura London Partners with Spexalink to Tackle the Burnout Pushing 70% of Executives to Quit

Something is breaking at the top of organizations. In a recent Deloitte study, 70 percent of C-suite executives said they had seriously considered quitting for a role that would better support their wellbeing. Across broader research, roughly 56 percent of leaders now report being burned out, a figure that has climbed year over year. The people responsible for steering companies through the most demanding period in recent memory are, quietly, running on empty.

The instinctive response, do less, slow down, rest more, misses what is actually happening. That is the argument of Laura London, a former McKinsey associate partner who now coaches senior leaders on sustainable performance.

“High achievers are not going to simply work less. That is not who they are, and telling them to is not useful,” London says. “The real issue is that constant acceleration and relentless expectation slowly erode a leader’s capacity, until their own biology starts working against them. The fix is not doing less. It is learning to lead in a way that is actually sustainable.”

From McKinsey to the coaching room

Laura spent more than 20 years in corporate roles before founding her own practice, including over seven years at McKinsey and Company, where she rose to associate partner and senior expert in the firm’s People and Organizational Performance practice. There she launched leadership solutions used across the firm’s clients and led its Leadership Academy. Earlier, she held roles at Singularity University, the technology accelerator based in NASA’s research park, and across education and organizational change.

What she saw repeatedly, in her clients and eventually in herself, was a pattern that traditional performance advice failed to address. Capable, driven leaders moved from one accomplishment to the next while quietly questioning whether the pace was sustainable. Intensity that once drove success eventually pushed the nervous system into a chronic state of high alert, producing anxiety, cognitive decline, emotional exhaustion, and eventually burnout.

“Despite outward success, I saw firsthand how pressure and relentless expectations can slowly reduce our leadership capacity and disconnect us from our purpose, our energy, and the people who matter most,” London says.

A method built on behavioral science

Laura’s approach blends two things that rarely sit together: the performance-improvement rigor of her consulting background, and nervous-system science. The premise is that sustained performance in a high-pressure, AI-accelerated environment is not a matter of willpower. It depends on a leader’s ability to regulate their energy, pace themselves, and create the internal conditions for clarity and resilience.

Her work centers on three shifts. From achievement to awareness, slowing down long enough to understand the motivations, patterns, and fears driving behavior. From pushing to pacing, learning to regulate energy so intensity does not tip into chronic depletion. And from striving to thriving, designing the conditions for results that are meaningful and sustainable rather than exhausting. She works with leaders through executive and team coaching, group accelerators, and retreats at her base in the Sierra Nevada.

The evidence increasingly supports treating burnout as a leadership-performance issue rather than a personal failing. Research suggests a majority of burnout cases can be resolved through structured leadership coaching, and that burned-out leaders drive measurably lower team productivity and higher turnover. How a leader manages their own capacity has direct consequences for the organization around them.

A platform built around experienced practitioners

Laura is partnering with Spexalink, a global executive coaching matchmaking platform founded by entrepreneur Ajay Tambe. The platform connects senior leaders with coaches who have held the roles they advise on, working through referral partners including executive search firms, HR consultancies, and talent advisors to support leaders during high-stakes transitions.

“Laura represents exactly what we built Spexalink around,” says Ajay Tambe. “She is not offering wellness advice from the outside. She spent two decades inside high-pressure environments, including McKinsey, and she brings real rigor to a problem most people treat as soft. Sustainable performance is one of the defining leadership challenges of the AI era, and she understands it from the inside.”

The platform is headquartered in Mumbai with operations across the United States, United Kingdom, UAE, India, Singapore, Australia, and Canada.

As artificial intelligence compresses timelines and raises expectations, the pressure on senior leaders is unlikely to ease. The organizations that thrive, London argues, will be the ones whose leaders can sustain clarity and judgment over time, rather than burning through their best people in pursuit of short-term intensity.

For London, closing that gap is the point of the work.

“When leaders stop trying to do everything and please everyone, and instead design the conditions for lasting results, something changes,” London says. “Success starts to feel meaningful and aligned again, rather than something you are barely surviving. That is a better way to lead, and it is also a more effective one.”

Laura London is the founder and CEO of Calocedrus Partners and a former associate partner at McKinsey and Company, where she spent more than seven years in the People and Organizational Performance practice. An ICF Associate Certified Coach and Leadership Circle certified practitioner, she coaches ambitious leaders in high-pressure environments to build sustainable performance, blending performance improvement and nervous-system science through executive and team coaching, group accelerators, and retreats at her Sierra Nevada base. She holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a BS from Cornell University.

Spexalink is a global executive coaching matchmaking platform connecting senior leaders with experienced practitioner coaches. Founded by Ajay Tambe, the platform works with executive search firms, HR consultancies, private equity talent partners, family offices, and fractional CXO agencies to support leaders during high-stakes transitions. Spexalink is headquartered in Mumbai with operations across the United States, United Kingdom, UAE, India, Singapore, Australia, and Canada. Learn more at spexalink.com.