There is a contradiction at the center of modern leadership that most organizations refuse to acknowledge. We ask leaders to carry extraordinary weight. We expect them to be steady when things are falling apart. We hold them to standards of composure and clarity that we would never apply to ourselves. And then we act surprised when they burn out, lash out, or quietly fall apart behind closed doors.
This is not a new problem. But it is an ignored one.
I recently sat down with Melissa Doman, an organizational psychologist and former therapist, to talk about her second book, Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health. The conversation hit hard, not because the topic was unfamiliar, but because Doman articulated what so many leaders feel and so few say out loud: the system was never designed to support the people running it.
We Built Leaders Into Something They’re Not
The expectation that leaders should be emotionally bulletproof did not start in a boardroom. It started in our biology. Doman traces it back to our earliest ancestors, when social groups naturally looked to a leader for safety, certainty, and direction. That instinct still runs deep.
“We build leaders into what we need them to be and completely ignore what they actually are,” Doman told me. Over time, the gap between the human being and the leadership persona has widened to the point where acknowledging struggle feels like a career risk.
She pointed to research on what psychologists call leadership wellbeing and mental illness prototypes, studies showing that people literally assume leaders enjoy better mental health simply because of their title. When she found that data, her reaction was blunt: “Are you f****** kidding me?”
It sounds absurd when you say it plainly. But this assumption operates invisibly in most workplaces. Leaders internalize it. Organizations reinforce it. And no one questions the cost.
The Double Bind of Looking the Part
Doman connects this to Robert Cialdini’s work on authority and consistency, alongside the concept of impression management. Together, these forces create a trap. Leaders learn early that visible emotional struggle undermines perceived competence. So they perform stability, even when they are anything but stable.
“It is not a common practice to show that leadership success lives concurrently with emotional struggle,” Doman explained. “An honest display of emotion from a leader is not something many people expect and is not something that many people are comfortable with.”
This is the bind. Leaders who show vulnerability risk being seen as weak. Leaders who suppress everything risk becoming reactive, disengaged, or worse. There is no neutral option.
And the bind tightens further when identity enters the picture. Doman is direct about this: for women, for leaders from marginalized communities, for anyone who does not fit the traditional mold of authority, the expectations multiply. You have to be firm but kind, solution-oriented but relationship-oriented, confident but not threatening. The margin for error is razor-thin, and when mistakes happen, people attribute them to identity rather than capability.
The Pressure Valve Theory
When I asked Doman what happens when leaders do not address their mental health, her answer was simple: “The question is what doesn’t go wrong.”
She describes the dynamic through what she calls the pressure valve. If you do not have a release, the pressure will come out in ways you do not want, when you do not want, toward people you do not want. That is not a theory. That is a pattern she has observed across hundreds of coaching sessions and workshops.
“You cannot lead people or be a sustainable leader if you are not releasing the pressure valve and also replenishing as and when required. You just can’t.”
The downstream effects are predictable. Reactive decision making. Eroded trust. Damaged relationships at work and at home. Lost capacity for emotional intelligence, constructive conflict, and the kind of intentional communication that good leadership demands. Leaders operating on empty do not suddenly find reserves of empathy and clarity. They find walls.
Systemic Change and Personal Responsibility Are Not Competing Ideas
One of the most useful distinctions Doman draws in our conversation is between systemic support and individual ownership. She argues for both, without pretending that either alone is sufficient.
On the systemic side, she is clear: organizations should normalize conversations about leadership mental health, integrate mental health support into leadership development programs, and create peer support structures specifically for leaders. These should exist in the same way as any other employee resource group. The fact that they largely do not is, in her words, a failure of imagination.
But Doman is equally clear that individual leaders carry full responsibility for their own mental health management, regardless of what the system around them offers or fails to offer.
“We don’t choose to have mental health struggles. We choose what to do about it, provided we have access to resources and can afford to use them,” she said. “Managing mental health is the foundation of sustainable leadership.”
This is where her concept of non-negotiables for mental well-being comes in. The idea is straightforward: every leader needs at least one thing they do regularly, at a cadence they choose, that genuinely supports their mental health. Not what the wellness industry says they should enjoy. What actually works for them.
Doman practices what she preaches here. She is a former therapist who freely admits that journaling, meditation, and walks do nothing for her. Her non-negotiables are being in nature, playing with her dog, and salsa dancing. “When I dance, the world falls away. That’s the same outcome as meditation,” she said.
The point is not the activity. The point is consistency and honesty about what actually helps.
Build a Fence, Not an Open Field
For leaders who want to start talking about their mental health at work, Doman offers a metaphor that reframes the entire conversation. She is not advocating for radical transparency or emotional oversharing. She is advocating for building a fence.
“You decide what you let through. You decide what you keep out.”
The goal is to humanize the daily emotional reality of leadership without turning every interaction into a therapy session. It can be as simple as telling your team, “I’m having a tough week, but I’m handling it. If I seem off, it has nothing to do with you.”
That kind of disclosure costs very little and prevents a much larger problem. Because when leaders in positions of power start acting differently, and no one knows why, people fill in the blanks. And Doman is clear about what those blanks get filled with: fear or anger. Never patience. Never grace.
“The responsibility is not just mental health management,” she said. “It’s also communicating to people how you’re struggling and what you’re planning to do about it.”
The Leaders Who Need This Most
It would be easy to dismiss this conversation as soft. Doman anticipated that, and she addresses it head-on. This is not about making leadership comfortable. This is about making leadership sustainable.
She also acknowledged a tension that makes this topic harder than it should be: there are plenty of leaders doing real harm right now. That reality makes it harder to generate sympathy for leaders as a group. But Doman’s argument is that this is exactly why the conversation matters more, not less.
“The leaders who are doing the right thing should not be punished and not supported because of the leaders who aren’t,” she told me. “Ideally, we want to create more good leaders to eventually outnumber the not-so-great ones.”
Some leaders go down the wrong path not because they are fundamentally bad, but because they never had the support to sustain the weight they were carrying. That is not an excuse. It is a diagnosis of a systemic problem.
Where to Start
If you are a leader reading this and you recognize yourself in any of it, Doman’s advice is practical and clear.
Start with self-awareness. Ask yourself where your beliefs about leadership and emotion came from. Ask whether those beliefs are actually serving you. This is not a one-time exercise. It is iterative and ongoing.
Find your non-negotiable. Pick something that genuinely replenishes you and protect it the way you protect your calendar for important meetings.
Communicate simply. You do not need to share your diagnosis or your deepest fears. You need to stop lying about how you are doing. As Doman put it: “Today’s love language is anxiety.” That kind of honesty, delivered lightly, does more to normalize the human side of leadership than any wellness program ever could.
And if your workplace is not safe for this conversation, get your needs met elsewhere. Leadership peer communities exist. Therapy exists. The support does not have to come from the system that is failing to provide it.
The Bottom Line
When I asked Doman what she most wanted readers to take from her book, she paused. Then she said something that I think should be written on the wall of every leadership development program in the country:
“Humanity exists within leadership, and that is the key to its sustainability. The more we normalize telling people that, the less they will expect leaders to be something they’re not.”
That is not a soft message. It is a strategic one. Organizations that ignore the mental health of their leaders are not being tough. They are being shortsighted. And the leaders who keep pretending they are fine are not being strong. They are running out of runway.
The conversation about leadership mental health is just getting started. With AI, automation, and increasing complexity reshaping every industry, the demands on leaders will only intensify. The organizations that figure out how to support the humans in those roles will outperform the ones that keep pretending the humans do not have limits.
It is that simple. And it is long overdue.
Brandon Laws is the host of Transform Your Workplace, a podcast by Xenium HR that delivers practical insights for leaders and HR professionals. Melissa Doman’s book, Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health, is available now.