You’re the emotional buffer for everyone — and it’s getting heavy. 

Emotional buffering is a new experience for a lot of leaders. With changes to psychosocial risk legislation and more focus on health and wellbeing, the reliance on leaders to support their teams emotionally, has increased significantly. 

Leading with care without carrying it all 

There’s something few leaders are taught but almost all feel. 

You become the steady one. The one who absorbs team frustration, listens to personal struggles, catches the complaints from above and translates change into reassurance. 

You’re the emotional buffer. The human shock absorber. 

And it’s exhausting. 

You might find yourself ending the day drained — not from the workload, but from the emotional weight of it all. 

“I’m doing everything I can to support my people, but I feel like I’m carrying it all myself.” 

The silent strain of holding it together 

Let’s make this real. 

You walk into a 1:1 with someone who’s burnt out. You shift into support mode. 

Immediately after, you’re pulled into a leadership meeting where the tone is high-pressure — numbers, targets, KPIs. 

Then, back to the team: someone’s upset about feedback they received, someone else is dealing with personal grief, and another is quietly disengaging. 

In all of this, you are the one absorbing, translating, softening, supporting. 

 
And no one is asking, “How are you doing?” 

This is the emotional labour of leadership. It’s real. It’s constant. And it’s rarely acknowledged. 

What happens when you carry too much? 

When you don’t have a way to release that emotional pressure, several things start to happen: 

• You become short with your team — unintentionally. 
• You stop listening deeply, because you have nothing left in the tank. 
• You feel resentful, even though you care. 
• You start to withdraw — not because you’ve stopped leading, but because you’re tapped out. 

This doesn’t make you a bad leader. It makes you human. 

3 ways to support without absorbing everything 

1. Know the line between holding space and holding weight 

It’s powerful to hold space for someone — to listen, to stay present, to validate. But you don’t need to carry their emotion home with you. 

When someone’s venting, try this internally: 
“I hear this. I can support them. But I don’t have to fix it.” 

Your job is to guide — not rescue. Leading with empathy doesn’t mean self-sacrifice. 

2. Set boundaries that honour your energy 

Boundaries are not a barrier to connection — they’re the foundation of sustainable leadership. 

“I want to have this conversation properly, not while I’m rushing. Can we check in this afternoon so I can give it the space it deserves?” 

That’s care. That’s presence. And that’s protecting your own capacity. 

3. Let others support you 

You’re not the exception to needing support. 

Be real in your leadership circles: 
“I’ve been absorbing a lot of emotion from the team lately — what’s working for you when you’re in that space?” 

You give others permission to be vulnerable when you model it first. 

You can lead with heart and still protect yourself 

Caring deeply is one of your greatest strengths as a leader. But it needs boundaries. It needs awareness, and it needs space to recover. 

The strongest leaders aren’t the ones who carry everything silently — they’re the ones who know when to hold, when to guide and when to step back and regroup. 

Because when you protect your energy, you protect your ability to lead well with empathy, integrity and impact.