The wellbeing of leaders is under more pressure than it has ever been. Burnout is rising sharply across the workforce, with close to half of Australian workers reporting symptoms in the past year. But what is often less visible is how this pressure is concentrating within leadership roles. Leaders are not only experiencing the same workload, uncertainty, and fatigue as their teams – they are also responsible for managing it.
Recent data from the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey, drawing on data from over 9000 leaders, indicates leaders are experiencing reduced levels of happiness and life satisfaction, and critically, factors associated with poor work design are rated as the most problematic.
Leaders are struggling to meet the (often increasing) demands placed on them, and they are doing so without the capacity, control over resources, or the support required.
Increased Leadership Responsibilities
One of the contributors to this, somewhat ironically, are the recent changes to work health and safety legislation and in particular the introduction of more explicit duties around managing psychosocial risks. Leaders are now expected to identify psychosocial hazards, assess and manage associated risk, implement and review control measures, and engage in consultation and continuous improvement.
While these practices have always been part of what good leadership looks like, these recent reforms increase the likelihood of regulatory action where risks are not adequately managed.
This shift in compliance driven responsibility is often cited as an additional source of stress for leaders. But what is most concerning is that in many cases, responsibility has increased faster than capability and control.
The emerging pattern: responsibility without control
Against this background, a pattern is emerging which reveals that leaders are being harnessed with greater accountability for team wellbeing and psychological health and safety, heightened regulatory expectations and scrutiny, while also facing into increasingly workload complexity (i.e., hybrid work, constant change, competing priorities). At the same time, they are reporting limited time and resources to meaningfully address these risks, reduced autonomy over workload, staffing, and priorities, and a growing sense of exhaustion and depletion.
Importantly, this is not an individual wellbeing issues, it is a role design issue.
Leaders as the “shock absorbers” of the system
In practice, leaders often function as the point where organisational pressures converge. They frequently absorb strategic ambiguity from above, resource constraints and operational demands, and emotional strain and support needs from their teams.
When an organisation and its systems are under pressure, that pressure is rarely evenly distributed. Rather, it is primarily transmitted, and often amplified, through leadership roles. This helps explain why a significant proportion of reported psychosocial hazards (such as bullying or poor communication) are attributed to supervisors or managers. While this is often misinterpreted as a failure of leadership behaviour, it is generally more accurate to see it as a signal of system strain being expressed through leadership roles.
Why this matters now
The introduction of clearer psychosocial WHS obligations is a critical step forward. It reinforces that organisations have a duty to design work in ways that are psychologically safe. But it also raises an important question: Who is supporting the leaders tasked with managing these risks?
If leaders are expected to act as frontline risk controls (such as identifying early signs of strain, adjusting workloads, supporting recovery, and maintaining team functioning) then their own capacity becomes a central factor in whether these systems work.
When this capacity is stretch to breaking point, psychosocial risk management becomes reactive or compliance-driven, and the intent of the legislation is undermined by structural constraints.
A reframing: fixing the work, not just supporting the worker
The data suggests we need to move beyond viewing leader wellbeing as an individual resilience issue. Rather, leader wellbeing is an indicator of how well the system is functioning. Supporting leaders in this context is not just about training or awareness. It means designing roles with realistic spans of control and manageable demands, providing clarity on priorities and decision-making authority, embedding psychosocial risk management into planning, and ensuring leaders have access to practical levers to adjust work, not just expectations to manage it
Leaders are being asked to do more than ever – to deliver performance, support their people, and now actively manage psychosocial risk in line with regulatory expectations. This is a necessary evolution, but unless we also address the conditions under which leaders are operating, we risk placing an unsustainable burden on the very roles we are relying on to keep work safe.
Professor Brock Bastian
Brock is a professor of psychology and registered practicing psychologist with a keen interest in psychosocial determinates of mental health and behaviour.
