Our community suffers great loss in terms of leaders becoming overwhelmed and burnt-out. It would be inappropriate to name individuals who have been frustrated in their efforts to bring a project to fruition, but the cost of leaders becoming frazzled is well documented.

Here are two research examples...

Leadership and stress
A meta-analytical review of the relationship between leadership constructs, and stress and burnout. Analyses confirmed that leader stress influences leader behaviour and that leadership behaviours are significant determinants of stress and burnout.

It discusses how leadership development needs to change to prevent leaders from becoming overly stressed.

Source: Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review Published 2017 Psychology Leadership Quarterly

Leading is a matter of resources
Studies suggest that transformational leaders play an important role in health and well-being. Building on conservation of resources theory, leaders’ perceptions of internal and external resources, in terms of vigour and peer support, augmented the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout in leaders (in Sweden N = 217).

Both vigour and peer support enhance this relationship. Both personal and contextual resources may help leaders to better engage in transformational leadership, which is important in order to protect them from burning out.