• Subordinates. “[For me] as a leader, manager, and supervisor,
sustaining a motivated and well-aligned staff consumes more
energy than necessary,” says one executive. “Raising children is
less stressful than managing adults who struggle with taking
personal responsibility.”
“Unreasonable demands from management were the primary
source of stress in my life,” says yet another executive. “I was working
for a leader who continued to espouse an unrealistic do-evenmore-
with-even-less mentality. My main role was to be a buffer
for the staff. Fortunately, I switched to a different position with a
more focused set of responsibilities and more realistic expectations.
Life is too short to continue in a situation in which the ordinary
stresses are added to by an unreasonable management.”
“The most stress comes from executives in IT,” says an information
technology manager. “They are contradicting one another
and are prone to changing decisions after they have been communicated.
They might have reached their level of incompetence.”