Leadership is understood as that ability by an individual or organization to guide, coordinate, direct, steer, inspire or otherwise lead either other individuals, groups, or a whole organization. There are a number of reasons that make leadership stressful which forms the context of this paper.
Leadership is stressful because it is hard for leaders to receive solid feedback due to the existence of lack of awareness of a leaders' own self. When one ascends to leadership, there is a tendency to ignore self-assessment. One fails to accurately read their own complex environment in a way that attracts positive feedback in case an issue arises. Considering this scenario, the lack of feedback makes leadership stressful (Goleman et al., 2013). To address these circumstances, a leader should focus on identifying own ideal self by conducting a self-evaluation and assessment. Even though it is hard to change habits, a leader should be emotionally engaged in self-development and to their subjects. Most importantly, leaders need to focus on how they see themselves and how others view them.
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Moreover, challenges related to emotional intelligence makes leadership stressful. Emotional intelligence is the aspects of self-management understood as a self-ongoing inner conversation. It gives a leader the needed mental clarity and wards away those disruptive emotions that may throw a leader off-track. Since leaders’ emotions are contagious, it makes them lose touch with their followers thus more stressful. To address this challenge, organizations need more emotionally engaged leaders to build closer relationships with employees. The rationale is that a leader cannot handle anyone else's emotions without first handling own emotions (Goleman et al., 2013). A leader should, therefore, be pragmatic and intelligent enough. He should understand that one is responsible for their lives and self-management and thus employ intellect and logic while making decisions.
Leaders suffer from burnout frequently given their tight busy schedule. Burnout is the exhaustion of physical or emotional strength due to frustrations or prolonged stress. A leader feels emotionally overwhelmed by own work There is that feeling of depersonalization, disengagement and detachment from others at work. Fundamentally, there is reduced performance and personal accomplishment (Harms et al., 2017). In addressing this situation, a leader should learn to prioritize his work and avoid spending time on less important tasks. A leader should employ the aspects of being pragmatic and humanistic in nature. The two encompasses views that every idea, person or organization is worth and fundamentally consider that relationships give meaning to life. This effectively addresses the leadership stress causal aspects.
In conclusion, leadership may be perceived as being stressful. However, this is not an uphill task to manage. Suggestively, stress can be controlled through learn to prioritize work and avoid spending time on less important tasks. A leader should learn to delegate, be positive, stay active, organized honest, be reflective, and able to talk out issues which will translate to handling leading positively.
References
Harms, P. D., Credé, M., Tynan, M., Leon, M., & Jeung, W. (2017). Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review. The leadership quarterly, 28 (1), 178-194.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence . Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
