When a Senior Role Starts to Feel Unsustainable, It’s Usually a Design Problem
Senior leadership roles often feel unsustainable not because leaders lack resilience, but because the role hasn’t been redesigned as demands evolve.
In This Article
Why senior roles start to feel unsustainable over time
How role design—not effort—is often the real issue
What leaders can adjust to make senior roles sustainable again
When a Senior Role Starts to Feel Unsustainable, It’s Usually a Design Problem
A growing number of senior leaders are quietly asking the same question:
Why does my role feel unsustainable even though I’m capable, committed, and successful?”
Not difficult.
Not demanding.
Unsustainable.
A recent Harvard Business Review article explores this exact tension, naming what many leaders feel but rarely say out loud: the strain isn’t just workload—it’s the cumulative pressure of expectations, decisions, and constant availability.
What stands out isn’t that senior roles are hard. That’s expected.
It’s that the way the role is structured often makes sustained performance nearly impossible.
The Real Issue Isn’t Effort
Most leaders experiencing this don’t lack commitment. In fact, they’re often over-committed.
They are:
highly responsive
deeply involved
constantly accessible
carrying more context than anyone else
From the outside, it can look like strong leadership. From the inside, it feels like being permanently “on.”
The problem isn’t effort. It’s that effort is being spent reactively instead of intentionally.
How Senior Roles Become Unsustainable
Over time, senior roles tend to absorb more than they release.
More decisions funnel upward.
More meetings require presence “just in case.”
More communication demands immediate response.
None of this happens overnight. It accumulates.
Eventually, leaders find themselves spending most of their time:
maintaining momentum
resolving friction
filling gaps that shouldn’t exist
The role expands, but its design doesn’t evolve with it.
Why Sustainability Is a Leadership Issue, Not a Personal One
One of the most important takeaways from the HBR article is that unsustainable roles are rarely caused by individual weakness.
They’re the result of:
unclear decision ownership
poorly designed delegation
constant interruption
and a lack of shared operating norms (this one is huge)
In other words, the role is doing too much by default.
This is where many leaders internalize the strain instead of redesigning the work.
A Different Way to Look at Senior Leadership
In my experience, sustainable senior leadership isn’t about working fewer hours or caring less.
It’s about designing the role to protect capacity.
That includes:
deciding which decisions truly require senior input
establishing clearer decision rights across the team
redesigning meetings to produce outcomes, not updates
reducing communication that creates coordination overhead
When these elements aren’t addressed, even the most capable leaders eventually hit a ceiling.
Why Redesigning the Role Is the Real Opportunity
The HBR article makes it clear: senior leaders don’t need more resilience strategies. They need roles that are built to last.
That means shifting from:
presence to purpose
responsiveness to direction
effort to return
Sustainability comes from clarity, not endurance.
Now What?
If a senior role feels unsustainable, it may be worth stepping back and asking a different question:
Is this role designed to operate at the level it’s being asked to perform?
In my work with executives and leadership teams, this is often the turning point—moving from personal coping strategies to structural redesign.
Because senior leadership shouldn’t rely on constant strain to function.
It should be designed to support focus, judgment, and long-term impact.