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The chief executive stands up at a management conference and says:‘Leadership isn't about hierarchy. Every manager in this organisation is a leader.'The room nods. It sounds empowering. It is rarely presented as what it also is, an increase in expectations.For more than 20 years organisations have been telling managers not to just manage but to lead. Create a vision. Inspire people. Take ownership. Be resilient. Be authentic. Be visible. Be emotionally intelligent. Leadership has become the gold standard.For good reasons. Public services need leaders who can navigate uncertainty, build trust and drive change.But in local government this message is repeated so often it is rarely questioned. Leadership is everyone's responsibility. Every manager is expected to be a leader.The question nobody asks is, what does that expectation cost? Not financially. Emotionally.Most managers thought they were being promoted into management. The organisation had something else in mind.An invisible contract.Middle managers are expected to explain the changes and maintain morale. Sometimes they support the decision. Sometimes they have serious reservations. Sometimes they simply do not know whether it will work.Twenty years ago a competent manager was expected to organise work, supervise staff and deliver results. Today they are expected to do all that and provide optimism, resilience, purpose and inspiration.Somewhere along the way management acquired an emotional job description. Nobody reduced the other responsibilities. They simply added new ones.What began as an expectation of senior leaders has gradually become an expectation of everyone. Leadership is no longer reserved for chief executives and directors. The result is that people throughout organisations are now expected to carry emotional responsibilities that once came with the most senior roles.One of the least discussed aspects of leadership is the burden of borrowed enthusiasm.Senior leaders announce a restructuring, a new operating model or another transformation programme. Elected members approve another round of savings. A service is redesigned. Posts are deleted. Vacancies remain frozen.Middle managers are expected to explain the changes and maintain morale. Sometimes they support the decision. Sometimes they have serious reservations. Sometimes they simply do not know whether it will work.Sometimes the decision originates with senior officers. Sometimes it originates with elected members. Either way, the conversation with staff usually happens through the manager in the middle.Once the decision has been made their role changes. They become the face of the decision for their team. Their staff do not see the corporate management team. They see their manager.Modern leadership asks managers to take ownership. Sometimes this means taking ownership of decisions they had no part in making and may not even agree with. That is not leadership as it appears in textbooks. It is leadership as it is experienced in organisations.Which means middle managers are often expected to generate confidence they do not necessarily feel themselves.That emotional effort rarely appears in leadership frameworks.Nor do they say much about the loneliness that comes with responsibility without control.Middle managers occupy an awkward space. They know more than their staff but less than senior leaders. They are expected to support organisational decisions whilst absorbing the reaction to them. They cannot always share what they know. They cannot always say what they think. They often have nowhere to take their own frustrations.Responsibility flows down. Influence does not always follow.Leadership training talks a great deal about accountability. Less often about accountability for things you cannot influence.Demand rises. Budgets fall. Political priorities change. An inspection highlights weaknesses. A service comes under pressure.The manager in the middle is still expected to have answers. Their team expects answers. Senior leaders expect answers. Service users expect answers. Sometimes there are no answers, only uncertainty.Yet leaders are expected to project confidence even when they are privately wrestling with the same doubts as everyone else.This is the emotional labour of leadership. Absorbing frustration without passing it on. Listening to anxiety without adding to it. Managing disappointment without displaying it. Remaining optimistic when you are tired. Remaining visible when you would rather withdraw. Remaining calm when you are worried yourself.The emotional life of organisations depends heavily on people doing exactly this. Yet organisations often behave as if it comes free with the job title.There is another possibility organisations rarely consider.Not everyone aspires to be a leader. Some people are excellent managers. They bring stability, judgement, consistency and operational competence. Yet many organisations now treat leadership as the higher calling and management as something lesser.The irony is that services often fail because of weak management long before they fail because of a lack of leadership.The organisation wants managers who inspire others. Fair enough. But if every manager is expected to be a leader, someone should pay attention to the emotional cost.Because people can carry borrowed enthusiasm for only so long.Eventually they stop trying to inspire. They focus on surviving. Some step back from promotion. Some become disengaged. Some leave altogether.And organisations then face an irony they rarely acknowledge.The relentless demand for leadership can gradually extinguish the very qualities leadership was supposed to create.The question is not whether leadership matters. It does.The question is whether organisations are creating more leaders — or quietly exhausting the people they need most. Blair McPherson is an author and former director in local government

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LEADERSHIP

The burden of borrowed enthusiasm

By Blair McPherson | 29 June 2026

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