In the last few weeks I’ve worked with two people, each with very different roles and responsibilities, yet both facing a similar dilemma:

One is a senior manager in charge of a team of high performers with millions at stake and the other, the owner of a small business that is gradually running into the ground. Each started their enterprise from scratch and each have been in their respective roles for over a decade.

One of these runs a business now owned by a multinational, and constantly clashes with the board, citing different philosophical ways of doing business as the main cause of tension. And the other is just plain sick of running their small business and wants out.

So what do they have in common?

For the manager in the multinational corporation, the dilemma is whether to invest time and effort in battling the views of the other directors, or whether to take another management role elsewhere (and there have been offers).

For the owner of the small business, the decision is whether to invest more into the business and build it up (because it has plenty of potential) or to close up shop and take a well earned retirement.

Your Leadership Coach can help you make the hard decisions

It would appear that each of these people would be better off on a personal level if they walked away. Certainly they are both suffering from tremendous levels of executive stress that would completely disappear the moment they make the decision to leave – but what is causing the stress?

The answer is that they are creating their own stress.

Each of these managers has a very strong sense of loyalty to their staff and their clients, and they have both demonstrated admirable levels of integrity in their business dealings.

So whilst both want to get out of their respective roles, they each feel trapped by their own sense of responsibility and their own beliefs about what is the ‘right thing’ to do for others.

If either of these people walked away from their roles, it would cause a great loss to many people. The small business would fold and be no more, and the large one would suffer with the loss of a key man and take a very long time to recover. (Yes, some businesses really should have ‘key man insurance’.) Staff in both businesses will lose their jobs.

So what is the best solution?

These managers are both trapped by their own beliefs. If they walk away, they will get immediate release from the stress and responsibility, but because of their strong emotional connection to staff they have worked with and supported for so long, they will both find themselves living with a sense of failure. If not consciously, they will definitely feel it at a subconscious level.

They both know that people who depended on them for a living, people they have grown to know personally, people who have supported them, will lose their jobs.

If they walk away, they will know that they have let others down, because when push came to shove, they didn’t take the leadership position and continue the fight.

So, what would you do?