The Leadership Work Nobody Trains For

Leadership today isn’t just about decisions. It’s about carrying complexity, emotion, and responsibility that rarely show up in the job description.

Simple question: Are we asking leaders to be and do too much?

In 2025, across industries, organizations asked more of their leaders than ever before, not just in output or execution, but in emotional presence, adaptability, and psychological support. Leaders today are expected to navigate change, stabilize teams, absorb anxiety, coach performance, manage well-being, and still deliver results.

And yet, most leadership development still focuses on what leaders do rather than what they carry.

The gap between expectations and preparation is no longer subtle. It’s structural.

1. Leadership Role Creep Is Now the Norm

Over the past five years, the leadership role has quietly expanded, without a corresponding redesign.

Managers today have 51% more direct reports than they did five years ago (Gartner, 2024–2025). At the same time, only 36% of leaders feel adequately trained to manage the “people side” of their role (DDI Global Leadership Forecast, 2025).

In practice, this means today’s leaders are expected to be:

• Subject matter experts

• Operators

• Coaches

• Conflict mediators

• Change agents

• Emotional regulators

Often simultaneously.

The result isn’t poor leadership, it’s overloaded leadership.

 

2. The Emotional and Psychological Load Has Shifted

Leadership has always involved people.

What’s changed is the depth of emotional responsibility leaders are now expected to hold.

In 2025:

• 60% of managers say supporting employee well-being is now a core part of their job, but only 27% feel confident in doing so well (Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 2025).

• Emotional labour is now cited as one of the top three stressors for people leaders, alongside performance pressure and change fatigue (McKinsey Organizational Health Index, 2025).

Leaders are absorbing:

• Burnout, they didn’t create

• Anxiety, they aren’t trained to treat

• Uncertainty they can’t fully resolve

And many are doing it quietly, without language, tools, or support.

 

3. Gen Z Is Changing What Leadership Requires

As Gen Z continues to enter and reshape the workforce, leadership expectations are shifting again — particularly around psychological safety and mental health.

According to Deloitte’s 2025 Global Gen Z & Millennial Survey:

• Gen Z employees are twice as likely as other generations to expect managers to support mental health, not just performance.

McKinsey’s 2025 research reinforces this:

• Psychological safety is the #1 driver of engagement for Gen Z, outranking compensation.

This doesn’t mean leaders need to become therapists.

It does mean leadership now requires:

• Emotional literacy

• Clear boundaries

• Consistent presence

• Systems that support safety, not just speed

Without redesign, this expectation gap becomes another invisible load leaders carry.

 

4. Change Capacity Depends on Leader Capacity

The cost of under-preparing leaders isn’t theoretical; it shows up most clearly during change.

Organizations with weak manager capability are 2.5× more likely to experience failed change initiatives (Prosci Change Management Benchmarking, 2025).

When leaders are stretched thin:

• Communication becomes inconsistent

• Trust erodes faster

• Resistance goes underground

• Change fatigue compounds

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it.

It fails when leaders aren’t supported to carry it.

 

5. The Problem Isn’t Leaders, It’s Design

Where we are is made unmistakably clear:

We haven’t failed leaders.

We’ve failed to design leadership for the work it now requires.

We’ve expanded expectations without clarifying accountability.

We’ve layered emotional responsibility onto operational roles.

We’ve treated resilience as an individual trait instead of an organizational outcome.

Leadership today isn’t just about vision or execution.

It’s about navigating complexity, holding tension, and creating stability for others—often without sufficient support themselves.

 

Designing Leadership for the Work It Actually Does

If there’s one clear lesson:

Leadership hasn’t failed; it’s been overloaded.

We’ve expanded expectations without redesigning the role.

We’ve asked leaders to absorb complexity without increasing support.

We’ve treated resilience as a personal trait rather than an organizational outcome.

At Sellar Strategic Advisory, our work focuses on helping organizations design leadership systems that match today’s reality, not yesterday’s job descriptions.

That means:

• Clarifying what leaders are truly accountable for

• Building manager capability for the human side of leadership

• Designing cultures where trust, clarity, and psychological safety are intentional — not assumed

• Preparing leaders to carry change without carrying it alone

Because leadership shouldn’t rely on heroics to work.

If your leaders are capable, committed, and quietly stretched, it may be time to redesign the system around them.

👉 Learn more about our Culture by Design approach or start a conversation at sellaradvisory.com