There is a specific leadership compliment that often hides a serious problem.
“You’re incredibly resilient.”
We say it when someone has managed another difficult period. Another restructure. Another absence. Another operational crisis. And the leader just keeps going. They solve it. They step in. They absorb the pressure.
Then we call them resilient.
But I often wonder whether we are using the word resilience when what we actually mean is: “You have become exceptionally good at carrying too much.”
The Pressure on UK Leaders is Real
Look, let’s not pretend the pressure isn’t genuine. New data from Zellis provides a stark snapshot of the reality for UK organisations this summer.
- 48% of UK organisations said summer 2026 was more challenging than usual in terms of workforce disruption.
- 41% reported increased workloads, stress, burnout, or sickness absence.
- And critically, 38% said managers or senior leaders had stepped in to cover frontline, junior or operational work.
When organisations are dealing with leave, vacancies, and stretched staffing, that flexibility is entirely understandable. Sometimes leaders do need to step in.
The problem is when exceptional behaviour quietly becomes the permanent operating model.
When Stepping In Becomes the Default
Consider this scenario. A team member is struggling, so you help. A colleague is absent, you cover. A deadline is at risk, you stay late. Someone hasn’t completed something properly, you redo it.
None of those decisions look unreasonable. In fact, they look like excellent leadership.
But add them together over weeks and months, and something else happens. You become the person who everything flows through. You become the person everyone comes to.
Eventually, your immense capability becomes your team’s dependency.
The Identity Underneath the Behaviour
This is where the leadership conversation gets genuinely interesting.
Over-responsibility is rarely caused by poor delegation skills. More often, it is fundamentally tied to identity.
The leader thinks:
- “If I’m the leader, I should be able to handle it.”
- “I can’t let standards drop.”
- “If I don’t step in, who will?”
These beliefs come from a good place. Commitment. High standards. Care. But good intentions can still create highly dysfunctional leadership patterns.
Your September Leadership Intelligence briefing captures this beautifully. It poses a question that I think every experienced leader needs to ask themselves:
What are you carrying because the situation requires it? And what are you carrying because your identity as a leader tells you that you should?
Management Behaviour Changes the Work
There is another vital piece of empirical evidence here. Research from Bayes Business School recently drew a direct link between management quality and work intensity.
The research found that work intensity was significantly higher under poorer line managers, while higher perceived manager quality was actually associated with lower work intensity.
That is an important reminder. Leadership behaviour isn’t just about whether employees “like” their manager. It directly influences how work itself is experienced. How effectively is work organised? Are problems escalated unnecessarily? Do people feel trusted to make decisions? Or does everything eventually land back on your desk?
When we talk about leadership confidence, we can’t just focus on the leader’s internal feelings. We have to look at the operational system their behaviour creates.
The Confident Leader Doesn’t Carry Everything
This can be incredibly counterintuitive for high-performers. We often think confidence means: “I’ve got this.”
But sometimes the more confident leadership response is: “You’ve got this.”
It means allowing another person to own the problem. It means having the difficult conversation rather than avoiding it. And, crucially, sometimes it means watching something take longer than it would if you just did it yourself.
That last one is particularly difficult. But delegation isn’t simply handing over tasks. It requires trust, and trust requires a tolerance for imperfection.
A Practical Exercise: The Responsibility Audit
Take 15 minutes at the end of this week. Write down everything you personally carried. Then categorise each item into three buckets:
1. Mine: I genuinely needed to own this.
2. Shared: I needed to contribute, but someone else could have carried part of it.
3. Not mine: I took responsibility because I felt I should.
Look carefully at that third category. Don’t judge yourself, just get curious. What made you take it on? Was it guilt? Habit? High standards? Or simply because nobody else had been given explicit permission to own it?
That single answer tells you much more than a generic corporate resilience score ever could.
Leadership Confidence Under Pressure
This is what leadership confidence under pressure actually looks like. It is not about being fearless, permanently certain, or the strongest person in the room.
It is the ability to trust your judgement, use your voice, set boundaries, and act under uncertainty.
As the September Leadership Intelligence briefing notes, the true opportunity is building the inner authority to lead clearly through pressure and self-doubt. Because the answer to increasing pressure cannot always be: “Try harder.”
Sometimes it has to be: “Lead differently.”
Think about everything you’re carrying right now. What would happen if you stopped proving that you could carry it all? What space might that create for you to actually lead?
Your Next Step
If you are a senior leader feeling the weight of over-responsibility — or quietly wondering whether your resilience is becoming a liability — let’s talk.
Book a free 20-minute leadership conversation and let’s figure out what you’re actually carrying, and what you could put down.
Ute Thomas is a former Regional Director at Lidl and ILM Level 7 certified executive coach. She works with senior leaders on the challenges that logic alone can’t solve.
