The Elastic Manager paradox: being there for others without losing yourself
During the summer period, expectations placed on managers rise sharply. They are asked to be flexible with last-minute holiday requests, understanding about the legitimate dip in their team’s pace, and highly empathetic in order to maintain a positive atmosphere despite being understaffed.
All of this is entirely reasonable. But it creates a significant paradox: the more a manager’s elasticity is stretched to preserve the team’s comfort, the less anyone is preserving the manager.
By continually absorbing the impact for everyone else, leaders often end up exhausted — in silence.
The double burden of august
Consider a situation that is very common around mid-August. T.M. manages a team of six. Three members are on holiday, one is working remotely from the other side of the country, and the remaining two are holding the fort at the office with noticeably low motivation.
To keep the department running, T.M. accepts everything: rescheduling his own meetings to accommodate departures, picking up the unfinished work left by colleagues at the beach so as not to overload those who stayed, and absorbing pressure from senior management growing impatient about deliverables due in September.
Officially, T.M. is a “caring” manager. In practice, he is burning out.
In occupational psychology, this phenomenon has a name: compassion fatigue. By continuously absorbing others’ stress and compensating for every gap without ever saying no, the elastic eventually snaps. If a manager enters September already running on empty, the entire team’s performance will suffer at precisely the moment it needs to pick up again.
Advice for managers: how to set healthy boundaries
Being an empathetic manager does not mean being a self-sacrificing superhero. Navigating summer — and the rest of the year — without compromising your mental health requires a few important habits.
Define your non-negotiables. If you allow your team to ease off, apply the same principle to yourself. Block time in your own diary where you are genuinely unavailable — for instance, no work emails after 6.30pm, or no working at weekends even during the busy summer period.
Practise constructive assertiveness. If the workload becomes unmanageable due to absences, do not compensate through hidden work in the evenings or during your own leave. Raise the issue with your line management using concrete facts: “With 50% of the team absent in August, we can deliver projects A and B. Project C will need to wait until the first week of September.”
Share vulnerability. Management is not a one-way relationship. You are entitled to say to the team members who have stayed: “I know this is a challenging period for everyone. I need your help and your autonomy on these files so that we can all get through August in good shape.” Trust is built through reciprocity.
The HR role: how to protect your managers
HR carries a significant responsibility here: ensuring that empathy does not become an asymmetric expectation that falls solely on the shoulders of managers.
Measure the real managerial workload. In July and August, HR teams should establish a simple ritual: a ten-minute check-in with each manager to take their pulse — not just that of their teams. The question to ask: “How are you managing your own workload with people away?”
Reinforce the principle of reciprocal care. This fundamental concept reminds us that the quality of the relationship between a manager and their team depends directly on the quality of the relationship between the organisation and that manager. HR should encourage senior leadership to extend flexibility to managers on deadlines for summer deliverables.
Equip rather than simply expect resilience. Do not simply ask your managers to “be resilient”. Give them the means to be so: clear frameworks for prioritising workloads, and access to soft skills assessment tools to identify the profiles most exposed to stress.
Resilience is a team sport
The strength of an organisation does not rest on its managers’ capacity to sacrifice themselves to keep the ship afloat over the summer. It rests on their ability to set healthy boundaries that allow them to sustain their performance over time.
As HR decision-makers, looking after your managers in August means protecting the first line of defence against disengagement and psychosocial risk. A manager who feels supported, rested, and respected in their limits during summer is your assurance of having an inspiring, clear-headed, and effective leader ready to drive the final quarter.
