WHEN LEADING HURTS: THE EMOTIONAL CRISIS OF NEW MANAGERS THAT NO ONE WANTS TO SEE

“Leadership is not just about delegating tasks or putting out fires. It’s about managing the invisible tensions that erode the human fabric of organizations.”
Have you ever felt the weight of being a leader?
I’m not just talking about unreachable goals or endless spreadsheets, but that intangible burden that emerges when conflicts, urgencies, and personal life all collide at once.
Leadership today is no longer a position; it’s an emotional, intellectual, and existential battlefield. And new managers—those stepping into team leadership roles for the first time—stand at the eye of this storm.
Gallup estimates that workplace stress costs companies $450 billion annually. Meanwhile, the Management Barometer 2025 by the Cegos Group reveals numbers that go beyond statistics:
• 73% of new managers face interdepartmental conflicts
• 60% are overwhelmed by managing urgencies
• 58% struggle to balance personal life with new responsibilities
These figures are more than mere percentages; they are snapshots of a silent crisis in the soul of contemporary leadership—marked by a lack of psychological safety, emotional fragility, and difficulty navigating external pressures and internal conflicts.
What nobody tells you about leadership:
1. Conflicts aren’t failures — they’re opportunities.
If departments clash, maybe the issue isn’t a “lack of communication,” but rather a lack of shared purpose.
Instead of pacifying, create alignment.
2. Urgency is an addiction — and addiction kills strategy.
If everything is “for yesterday,” then nothing is a priority.
Leading means saying “no” without fear. It means shielding your team from chaos and focusing on what truly matters.
3. Leadership doesn’t mean giving up your life — it means making choices.
If becoming a manager cost you your peace, something is wrong.
Productivity isn’t measured by hours worked, but by results delivered.
So, how do you escape this trap?
✓ Stop thinking you need all the answers — your role is to facilitate, not dictate.
✓ Be wary of “crisis mode” — if everything is urgent, nothing is strategic.
✓ Remember: you’re human — leadership isn’t martyrdom.
But here’s the deeper question:
Are you truly willing to lead, or are you just occupying a seat with a “manager” badge?
In this article, I want to challenge you to see these struggles not as personal failures, but as symptoms of a system in urgent need of rethinking.
Let’s explore what leadership really means today, why new managers are suffering, and more importantly, how to turn chaos into an opportunity for growth—for you, your team, and your organization.

The Reality of Leadership Today: Unstable Ground
Picture this:
Ana was promoted to lead the team where she had worked as a senior analyst for five years. She knows the processes, understands the backstage dynamics, and maintains good relationships with everyone. But now, seated in the manager’s chair, everything has changed.
Her colleagues no longer treat her with the same ease. Conflicts between Operations and Sales fall squarely into her lap. Urgencies explode before her coffee even cools. And at night, her phone buzzes with endless messages. Her child complains that she’s distant. And she barely recognizes herself in the mirror.
Ana is not alone. She’s the invisible face of a silent crisis.
Today, leadership isn’t just a function—it’s an emotional, relational, and cognitive minefield. Often without training, without mentorship, and with no room for error.
According to the Management Barometer 2025 by Cegos Group:
73% of new managers face interdepartmental conflicts,
60% are consumed by urgencies,
58% struggle to balance personal life with new responsibilities.
These are not cold statistics—they are silent cries from a leadership model that sickens, isolates, and exhausts.
Psychologist Christina Maslach, a pioneer in burnout studies, is clear: burnout isn’t just caused by overwork, but by the dissonance between what an individual values and what the organization demands.
This disconnect is what we see behind the scenes—leaders trying to meet inhuman goals, trapped in systems that glorify urgency and ignore suffering.
In other words, we live in a scenario where everything is urgent—except what truly matters.
The culture of reactivity has turned “crisis mode” into a routine.
Emergencies that could have been prevented with strategy are now badges of honor. A manager who “solves everything” is hailed as a hero—even if they’re on the brink of collapse.
As behavioral psychology shows, the human brain seeks immediate relief from stress. Solving a crisis activates the reward system and releases dopamine—the same neurotransmitter associated with instant pleasure.
But this short-term relief comes with a hidden cost:
our ability to think strategically is slowly eroded by automatic, impulsive responses.
Even worse: over time, we stop producing serotonin—the neurotransmitter of well-being—and start operating under high doses of adrenaline and cortisol—the hormones of stress, survival, and burnout.
Do you know what this does to your mind? To your body? To your team?
The more a manager puts out fires, the less they lead—and the more they simply survive.
This cycle breeds silos, a culture of competition disguised as collaboration, and the dangerous myth of organizational spontaneity: the idea that team harmony “just happens” without intention or structure.
But interdepartmental conflicts aren’t just communication glitches.
They are deep symptoms of cultures that still operate in feudal mode, rewarding rivalry and pitting departments against each other for resources, recognition, and influence.
How can you build collaboration when the system rewards war?
Here’s a challenge from neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman:
“The need for social connection is as fundamental to the human brain as hunger or thirst.”
Environments that fail to foster connection and psychological safety activate the same brain regions as physical pain.
In other words:
working in a divided team literally hurts.
And the first person to feel this pain—most intensely—is the new manager.

Why Is Leadership So Hard? A Systemic Perspective
The answer doesn’t lie in leadership manuals or traditional management frameworks.
Leading today is an act of humanity in the collapse of outdated models.
To understand why so many new managers are suffering, we must look beyond symptoms and address the root causes: disconnected cultures, toxic systems, and imprisoning narratives.

1. Conflicts: The Mirror of Fragmented Cultures
Interdepartmental conflicts aren’t just operational noise—they reflect structures that prioritize performance over relationships.
When departments compete for resources, status, or prominence, the issue isn’t just budgetary—it’s the lack of a shared vision that unites purposes and dissolves silos.
Neuroscience illuminates this impasse:
Conflict activates the limbic system, responsible for primal emotional responses like fear, threat, and defense. For a new manager—often without an emotionally developed toolkit—mediating these tensions is like walking a minefield without a map.
Without psychological safety and nonviolent communication tools, conflict calcifies. What could be a chance for alignment becomes a constant source of tension and withdrawal.
Pause and reflect:
What would your leadership look like if every conflict was treated as an invitation to connection and strengthening bonds?

2. Urgency: The Disguised Cult of Reactivity
We live in the age of “crisis mode.”
Replying to emails at 11 PM, solving everything in real time, and being constantly available have become badges of worth—but they are, in truth, signs of hidden exhaustion.
Behavioral psychology explains the trap:
When you resolve an urgent task, the brain releases dopamine, giving a false sense of accomplishment. The problem? That reward is fleeting. Over time, the nervous system adapts, and the chase for relief becomes an addiction to reactivity.
Worse yet: frequent decisions under pressure activate the fight, flight, or freeze system, reducing our ability to think analytically and strategically.
In the long run, the manager becomes reactive, impulsive, and emotionally drained—a crisis executor, not a direction-setter.
Pause and reflect:
How many of the urgencies consuming your energy could be avoided with planning, prevention, and conscious delegation?

3. Personal vs. Professional Life: The Myth of Omnipresence
Perhaps the most human (and least discussed) challenge of modern leadership is the collapse of boundaries between life and work.
The new manager, eager to prove themselves, often believes “handling it all” is their new identity.
And without realizing it, they suffer a silent collapse while wearing the costume of productivity.
We live in a culture that confuses dedication with martyrdom.
Being the last to leave became a merit.
Always being online became a badge of value.
But Stoic philosophy reminds us: we cannot control the external world, but we can choose how we respond to it.
And neuroscience agrees: chronic stress impairs the prefrontal cortex—the brain area responsible for empathy, decision-making, and emotional regulation.
That means:
An exhausted leader thinks worse, feels less, and connects superficially.
Their team notices. Worse—they replicate it.
Pause for a moment and reflect:
What boundaries must you honor to protect what is most precious—your mental clarity, emotional integrity, and presence with those who matter?

What If the Problem Isn’t You?
What if the problem isn’t your competence—but the system you were inserted into?
How many times have you blamed yourself for not “keeping up”? For not answering everything, not leading perfectly, not balancing your calendar, team, family, and sleep?
How many nights have you replayed an unresolved conflict or a meeting where you silenced what you truly wanted to say?
Perhaps the failure isn’t in you—but in a leadership model designed for a world that no longer exists.
The traditional paradigm, forged in the industrial era, was built on three pillars: predictability, control, and obedience. The ideal leader was the one who mastered processes, minimized variables, and kept everything functioning like a machine.
But leaders don’t lead machines. They lead humans. And humans live, suffer, change, resist, and dream—every day.

From VUCA to Permavucalution: Crisis as a Permanent Condition
In the 1990s, the term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), coined by the U.S. military, sought to describe the post–Cold War context. It quickly made its way into organizations: the world had become uncertain, changeable, fluid. Adaptation was required.
But what was once the exception became the rule. And what was once instability became our habitat.
Crises are no longer episodic—they are continuous. It is in this context that the concept of Permavucalution emerges, coined by Bob Johansen, futurist at the Institute for the Future. The fusion of “permacrisis” (permanent crises) + “VUCA” + “evolution” reveals the new landscape:
“Leaders no longer face temporary challenges. They live in prolonged states of mutation, requiring presence, mental plasticity, and internal coherence.” — Bob Johansen, Leaders Make the Future
In Permavucalution, leadership is dancing in the hurricane without losing your center. It’s not about surviving a critical moment, but learning to flow with instability—without dissolving.

What Does This Demand?
It demands self-awareness and systems awareness. It demands emotional self-knowledge, cognitive flexibility, and the ability to cultivate psychological safety even in tense environments.
But the hardest part isn’t applying tools—it’s questioning old narratives:
• that confuse leadership with control,
• productivity with urgency,
• availability with personal value.
“The true dilemma of the modern leader isn’t dealing with external complexity, but with the internal contradiction between who they are and the role they’re expected to fulfill.” — Marcello de Souza
I challenge you:
➤ What if, instead of adapting to an obsolete model, you redesigned the gears of your own leadership?
➤ What if you stopped trying to “cope” and started trying to give meaning?
➤ What if your leadership became a living laboratory of experimentation, balance, and authenticity—even in chaos?

How to Transform Chaos into Meaning: An Integrative Approach
Imagine this scene:
Remember Ana? During a strategic meeting, an analyst interrupts with a suggestion that challenges the plan of the newly promoted manager. The room goes silent. All eyes turn to her—she has two seconds to choose between defending her ego or co-constructing something with the team.
She breathes. She doesn’t react. She pauses and asks:
“What led you to think like that?”
In that moment, she isn’t merely managing conflict—she’s planting a new culture. That is the central point: leadership isn’t about controlling chaos, but learning to dance with it. It’s not about having all the answers—it’s about asking the right questions. It’s not about driving performance at all costs—it’s about creating conditions for the team to flourish, even under pressure.
Leading in Permavucalution times is, above all, an act of cognitive lucidity, emotional maturity, and collective responsibility.
Below are three cardinal axes—drawn from Organizational Cognitive Behavioral Development (DCCO), applied neuroscience, and contemporary leadership—to turn tension into clarity, and chaos into meaning:

1. Conflicts: Shift from Defensive Walls to Dialogue with Psychological Safety
Neuroscientist Tania Singer showed that the human brain reacts to judgment with the same neural activation as physical pain. That means in environments where leaders punish mistakes or ignore dissenting ideas, the brain remains in threat mode—reducing creativity, working memory, and empathy.
Amy Edmondson coined psychological safety precisely to address this: creating spaces in which mistakes become learning and dissent becomes connection.
How to cultivate it?
• Practice generative listening: listen without aiming to defend your position.
• When mediating conflict, shift focus from the person to the process.
• Reframe tension as multiplicity: “We have two maps here. Let’s build the territory together.”
Neuro behavioral tip: train your brain to respond, not react. A 10 second pause activates the prefrontal cortex and deactivates the limbic system.
Practical example: confronted with team conflict, say:
“I don’t want to resolve this in haste. I want to understand what each person believes is essential. Only then can we find a shared way forward.”

2. Urgencies: Escape Automatic Pilot and Reclaim Intention
Most organizational urgencies arise from lack of prioritization, unclear roles, and missing alignment rituals. More deeply: resolving crises quickly triggers a dopamine rush—the reward neurotransmitter. But it establishes a behavioral addiction to firefighting, which undermines strategy and wears down leadership.
“Constant urgency isn’t a sign of dynamism—it’s a symptom of a system that fails to plan.” — Marcello de Souza
How to break the cycle?
• Use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix to distinguish what’s truly urgent from what only feels urgent.
• Begin each day by asking three questions:
1. What is essential?
2. What can I delegate?
3. What can wait?
• Learn to say “no” with generosity, clarity, and context.
Practical example: when a “new urgency” arises, reply:
“Thank you for raising this. Let’s assess whether it’s more effective to solve it now or to structure something sustainable for tomorrow.”

3. Balance: Model Human Leadership—Starting with You
Studies from the HeartMath Institute show that chronic stress misaligns heart rate variability, impairing reasoning, decision-making, and empathy. Exhausted leaders don’t just lose performance—they spread anxiety through emotional osmosis. Remember: “You can’t lead with clarity when you live in haste.” — A philosophy I share with my clients.
How to regain your presence?
• Create transition rituals between work and life: walk, breathe, sit silently for 5 minutes after work.
• Practice conscious self compassion: replace the question “Why can’t I?” with “What is this situation asking me to learn?”
• Make your boundaries visible. Your team doesn’t need an exhausted hero—they need a coherent human.
Practical example: assert with care:
“From today on, I won’t respond to messages after 7 PM. I want to model respect for everyone’s time.”

In other words, transforming chaos into meaning demands more than techniques. It requires presence, clarity, and the commitment to become the kind of leader you wish you’d had. The leadership that thrives in difficult times doesn’t command with rigidity—it creates space for others to breathe, think, feel…and collaborate.

The Invitation to Transformation
Lead, in its noblest essence, is not about status, targets, or control—it’s about presence, discernment, and existential courage.
The courage to see what is invisible, to name what is confused, and to create meaning where only survival once lived.
Because ultimately, the greatest battlefield isn’t between departments—it’s between versions of yourself. Between the manager who repeats patterns… and the leader who reframes them. Between the one who tries to handle everything… and the one who allows co creation with others.
The chaos outside will never be louder than the silence unaddressed within.
So before seeking a new method, ask yourself:
“Who am I becoming by leading this way?”
You can continue putting out fires—or you can redesign the ecosystem.
You can run against the clock—or create your own time.
You can suit up in armor—or embrace wholeness as your new authority.
The leadership of the future is born from the courage to be vulnerable in the present.
So, I pause this text to launch a sincere question:
What choice can you make today that your “future self” will thank you for?
Whether small—like a conscious pause. Or deep—like that conversation you’re avoiding.
Because there is no transformative leadership without a leader in constant transformation.

Why “When Leading Hurts”?
Because it hurts, yes.
But it’s not visible pain—the kind that registers in files or leads to medical leave. It is a silent hurt, backstage in the soul, unseen in performance reports but shaping every decision made under tension.
It’s the pain of trying to be an example… while crumbling inside.
The pain of having to “cope”… when all you wanted was to ask for help.
The pain of not fitting into the old model… and not yet knowing how to build a new one.
This is the emotional crisis no one wants to see—not leaders, not organizations. Because acknowledging that leading hurts is a subversive act. It’s admitting that the badge doesn’t numb you. That the title doesn’t shield you. That the role doesn’t immunize you from the deepest of human vulnerabilities.
But perhaps it is precisely this pain that becomes the turning point. Because only legitimate pain has the power to awaken us from organizational anesthesia. Only it pulls us out of autopilot and invites reinvention. When leading hurts, it’s because a new way of leading is being born. More honest. More conscious. More aligned with who we are and what the world needs.

So don’t silence your pain—listen to it.
It’s not weakness. It’s a compass.
And if it’s present… it signals that it’s time to change the game.
Welcome to the era of leaders who feel.
Because only those who feel… can truly transform.

Dr. Marcello de Souza is a specialist in Human and Organizational Behavioral Development with over 27 years of experience transforming leaders and cultures in challenging environments. Through an integrative approach that blends neuroscience, psychology, and management, he offers deep insights and practical tools for leaders to cultivate presence, self knowledge, and lasting impact. Connect with him on LinkedIn and YouTube for exclusive reflections that inspire personal and organizational evolution.

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