Leaders of corporations fight pressures from their boards, customers, managers, and employees. Wouldn’t it stand to reason they are the most stressed people in their organizations?
interestingly , One study found that stress reduction correlates with feelings of control. Leaders with more subordinates and greater power felt less stress than other individuals who knew they had less control over outcomes. Top leaders who control the resources of their corporations and have plenty of employees to carry out their directives therefore can fight stressors before they affect them.
Sources: M. Korn, “Top-Level Leaders Hhave Less Stress Tthan Others,” The Wall Street Journal (October 3, 2012),
I am sure you can find lots of research that was done long before a WSJ article. It is the people in middle management who have the most stress because they are controlled by upper management and persons below them are not expected to solve mega problems. The fact that control reduces perceived stress has been shown in hundreds of studies on perceived stress. It is a cardinal dimension of appraisal which is key to how stressors translate to distress. The others are salience, predictability, novelty, causality and duration. Managers who do not know how to find good people to reduce their problem load should not be managers.
I am sure you can find lots of research that was done long before a WSJ article. It is the people in middle management who have the most stress because they are controlled by upper management and persons below them are not expected to solve mega problems. The fact that control reduces perceived stress has been shown in hundreds of studies on perceived stress. It is a cardinal dimension of appraisal which is key to how stressors translate to distress. The others are salience, predictability, novelty, causality and duration. Managers who do not know how to find good people to reduce their problem load should not be managers.
According to my memory the one who was most stressed was the person next to the leader!
is true that leaders appear to show fewer signs of stress by virtue of being leaders, regardless of higher income or longer job tenure. However, researchers found no “magic level” in an organization at which employees feel a reduction in stress levels.
Why Your Boss is Less Stressed Than You
Being the boss isn't so stressful after all. Post published by David Rock on Oct 08, 2012 in Your Brain at Work
James Gross of Stanford University and six other researchers has shown that the higher people go as a leader, the less stress )they experience. It turns out that being the CEO is less stressful than being a senior manager. It's an intriguing idea, as it flies in the face of the current thinking about leadership, which has supported the notion that top leaders are under enormous stress.
But research in neuroscience tends to support Gross's findings. One of the big ideas that has emerged out of the connection between neuroscience and leadership is that leaders are largely motivated by what we've come to call the SCARF model . SCARF stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness — the five social experiences that create strong threats or rewards in the brain.From the SCARF perspective, while top leaders might have plenty of stress, they also have lots of rewards that offset this stress. They obviously have very high status. Cameron Anderson from Berkely showed in a study (link is external) that respect from others (which comes from having high status) mattered more than money for happiness in life. From Psychology Today
Male leaders usually have a wife or support in many aspects.
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