Leadership Load in Times of Change

Most organisational change doesn’t struggle because the strategy is wrong.
It struggles because the logic of the organisation changes — and no one recalibrates what leadership is now required to carry.

While recently back at Trinity, working through an assignment on organisational change, this pattern became increasingly clear. Across different forms of change — new ownership, restructuring, post-merger integration, shifts in governance or strategic direction — the same dynamic appeared repeatedly.

The change itself was rarely the problem.

The strain emerged when the underlying logic of how the organisation worked quietly shifted, while expectations of leadership remained unchanged — or increased.

Every organisation operates on a set of largely unspoken assumptions:

– how decisions are made
– where authority sits
– what “good leadership” looks like
– how accountability flows

When these assumptions hold, leadership feels demanding but coherent.

When they shift, leadership becomes heavier — often without anyone naming why.

This is most visible in post-merger and post-acquisition environments. New ownership, revised governance structures, or altered strategic priorities can fundamentally change decision rights and expectations, even when job titles and reporting lines stay the same.

Leaders find themselves operating under a different set of rules — often without those rules ever being made explicit.

Decision rights blur.
Old assumptions stop working.
Expectations increase just as clarity decreases.

Leaders are asked to stabilise today while interpreting a future that is still forming, inside systems designed for a previous version of the organisation.

There is a common assumption that proactive, well-planned change should be easier for leaders to manage than reactive change.

In practice, it often increases leadership load.

Planned change multiplies decisions. It introduces parallel priorities. It stretches attention across “now” and “next.” And it concentrates responsibility during transition periods — particularly at senior levels.

Leaders become the point where complexity settles.

This is not a failure of leadership.
It is a failure to examine load.

Leadership load rarely comes from lack of skill or resistance to change. It tends to arise from three consistent sources.

Decision density
Too many decisions sitting with too few people, often because authority has not shifted alongside structure.

Decision debt
Half-made, deferred, or repeatedly revisited decisions that quietly accumulate and drain capacity.

Structural drag
Legacy processes, roles, and expectations that no longer fit the organisation’s current reality.

These pressures are rarely visible on organisational charts — but leaders feel them immediately.

This is where many leadership interventions miss the mark.

Capability refers to skill, experience, and competence.

Capacity refers to space — cognitive, emotional, and structural — to think, decide, and lead well.

Most leaders operating under heavy load are highly capable. What they lack is capacity.

Coaching, development programmes, and resilience initiatives can help leaders cope. They do not, on their own, reduce the load being placed on the system.

Without examining what leaders are carrying, organisations risk strengthening individuals while leaving the system unchanged.

Importantly, shifts in organisational logic are no longer limited to mergers or acquisitions.

AI adoption, automation, regulatory change, evolving professional standards, and the increasing speed of decision-making are quietly rewriting how organisations function — even when structures appear stable.

In many organisations:

– decisions are faster but less clearly owned
– expectations are higher but less explicit
– accountability is broader but more ambiguous. 

The effect is the same. Leadership load increases — often invisibly.

Coaching plays a valuable role in supporting leaders through complexity. But when leadership strain is systemic, individual support is only part of the response.

Before asking leaders to adapt further, a more fundamental question needs to be asked:

What is actually sitting on the leadership system right now — and does it still make sense?

Without that pause, organisations risk mistaking overload for underperformance, and resilience gaps for structural problems.

This is where a different kind of intervention becomes useful.

A Leadership Load Review is not a performance assessment, and it is not a development programme. It is a structured opportunity to examine:

– where decisions are currently sitting
– how responsibility is distributed
– what ambiguity leaders are absorbing
– whether the organisation’s operating logic still fits its current reality

When done early, this kind of review can prevent later burnout, disengagement, and conflict. It creates clarity before symptoms harden into problems.

Change will continue to accelerate.
Organisational logic will continue to shift — sometimes visibly, often quietly.

The organisations that navigate this well will not be those that simply ask more of their leaders, or invest only in developing individual capability. They will be the ones willing to pause and examine what leadership is now being asked to carry — how decisions, responsibility, and ambiguity are actually distributed across the system.

This work at Trinity didn’t introduce a new idea for me.
It confirmed a pattern I see repeatedly.

Leadership feels heavier than it should when the logic has changed — but the load itself has never been examined.

This perspective informs my work with leaders and organisations examining leadership load during periods of change.