Three weeks into her new role as VP of operations, “Maria” got an 11:47 p.m. Slack from her COO: “Where are we on the Q3 supply chain numbers?” She had sent him those numbers that morning. She sent them again.
By 6 a.m., Maria’s boss had changed the entire project scope based on a board conversation she didn’t know had happened. By noon, he’d cc’d the CEO on a complaint about “delays”—delays caused by his own shifting priorities.
Maria didn’t push back: She absorbed the burden. She reframed his abrupt messages before forwarding them to her team. She stayed late recalculating projections to match his latest mandate. She deflected her team’s frustration with careful explanations about “strategic pivots.” The work was exhausting, and it was invisible. Her team saw a supportive leader. Her boss saw smooth execution. No one saw the toll.
Many managers find themselves in this position: absorbing friction from above while protecting those below. Gallup research finds that managers account for at least 70% of changes in employee engagement, yet many of those same managers report feeling crushed by contradictory demands from their own bosses. McKinsey research confirms that the quality of the relationship with a direct manager is the single most important factor in employee satisfaction. The message is clear: The friction you absorb doesn’t just affect you. It reverberates through everyone below you.
In my executive and team coaching work with senior leaders, I see this pattern repeatedly: A C-suite leader creates destructive organizational friction through a chaotic style, lack of personal accountability, and unchecked reactivity. And managers are left to absorb it.
It’s an unsustainable dynamic—but one managers can counteract. Here are four strategies for navigating friction without burning out or compromising your effectiveness.
1. Name the Friction, Then Decide What’s Worth Absorbing
The first step is getting honest about which type of friction you’re dealing with. Constructive friction—a boss who raises the bar, questions your logic, or forces you to confront underperformance—is uncomfortable but valuable. This is what I call healthy friction. If your boss is pushing you to eliminate inefficiency or rethink a flawed process, that’s worth leaning into, not absorbing.
Destructive friction is different. It’s energy lost to misalignment, rework, and emotional labor. Stanford management professor Bob Sutton identifies several types of destructive friction: unnecessary complexity that adds steps without adding value, ambiguity when goals keep shifting, emotional volatility that forces you to manage up constantly, and micromanagement that erodes autonomy.
Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers, calls leaders who create destructive friction “diminishers.” They drain capability through behaviors like jumping in with answers or involving themselves in every decision.
To separate signal from noise, seek to understand whether this unnecessary interference is actually your boss managing real constraints you don’t see. A sudden pivot might reflect CEO pressure. Increased scrutiny might follow a compliance issue. Research on the hidden realities of leadership shows that senior leaders frequently operate under pressures that are invisible to their teams.
Use these criteria to assess the situation:
- Comprehension: Have you had a candid, vulnerable conversation with your boss to understand the origin of the friction? What specific behaviors create it?
- Duration: Is this temporary or chronic? You can absorb friction during a crisis. You can’t sustain it indefinitely.
- Impact on outcomes: What is your role in creating or enabling the behavior? Does absorbing the friction improve results or just create an illusion of progress?
- Cost to you and your team: What does it cost in time, energy, and team morale? Are you protecting your team or just delaying the impact? If talented people are leaving, you’re not absorbing effectively.
“Marcus,” chief of staff at a healthcare startup, learned this the hard way: “I spent three months resenting my CEO’s constant questions about our hiring pipeline. I thought he was micromanaging. Then I learned we were six weeks from running out of runway, and he was trying to slow spending without panicking the team. I wish I’d asked, ‘What are you seeing that I’m not?’ sooner.”
2. Create Systems That Reduce Friction
Once you’ve diagnosed the friction, build systems to reduce it—systems that don’t require you to be the constant intermediary.
The instinct is to work harder, absorb more, and hope conditions improve. But research consistently shows that individual effort cannot compensate for structural dysfunction. A Deloitte study finds that when productivity tools and ways of working lack clarity, they create more work rather than less. And Gallup’s engagement research shows that only 46% of employees clearly understand what is expected of them, a 10-point drop from 2020. When the system around you generates confusion, the solution is not to absorb faster. It’s to redesign the system.
Four structural changes can reduce your role as the constant go-between.
Establish clear decision rights. Much friction comes from unclear ownership. When roles blur, decisions stall and accountability weakens. Bain’s RAPID framework (recommend, agree, perform, input, decide) can help. When Maria finally had this conversation with her boss, they discovered he wasn’t trying to micromanage. He genuinely didn’t know she had authority to approve vendor contracts under $500K.
Create predictable communication. Random check-ins create constant interruption. Your operating rhythm is a signal of how you lead—it sets the tempo for decision-making, collaboration, and accountability. One director of product management I coached solved her boss’s “just checking in” problem by instituting a Friday afternoon dashboard: three metrics, three decisions pending, three risks. “He stopped asking because he knew he’d get answers Friday,” she said.
Document and share context. When priorities shift, capture the change and its rationale. A simple decision log helps everyone see how you got here and why yesterday’s plan changed.
Build buffers into your processes. If your boss routinely changes direction, don’t commit your team to immovable deadlines. Build in review points. Use phased rollouts.
3. Have the Conversation
Sometimes systems aren’t enough. You need to name the pattern directly. Your boss likely doesn’t see themselves as creating friction; they see themselves as ensuring quality or responding to pressure from above. Research on managing up suggests framing it as a shared problem, not an accusation. Try the following scripts:
- Frame it as shared: “I want to make sure I’m giving you what you need without overwhelming the team. Can we talk about how decisions are flowing right now?”
- Come with data: “We’ve reprioritized three times this month, which has added about 40 hours of rework. I want to understand what’s driving these changes so we can build more flexibility into the plan.”
- Focus on impact, not intent: “When requests come in after 9 p.m., the team feels like they need to respond immediately, which is creating burnout. Can we establish core hours for urgent communication?”
- Propose experiments: “What if we tried a two-week sprint where priorities stay locked unless something is genuinely on fire?”
“Andrea,” a senior director at a media company, used this approach when her boss’s conflict-avoidant style created constant mixed messages. “I told him, ‘I think we both want the same thing: happy clients and a sustainable pace. Right now, we’re getting requests from three stakeholders who think they are all top priority. Can you help me understand how to sequence these?’ He didn’t love the conversation, but he did start having clearer conversations with stakeholders.”
4. Know When to Stop Absorbing, And Protect Your Own Leadership
Sometimes friction stops being fuel and becomes rot. Drawing on insights from organizational psychologists like Adam Grant, you can watch for three warning signs that conflict has crossed into dysfunction: It’s chronic rather than tied to specific crises, it’s driven by ego or insecurity instead of real business concerns, and it’s starting to show up in exit interviews and the loss of your strongest people. At that point, continuing to quietly absorb the damage is not noble leadership. It’s enabling a toxic culture.
You have three options:
- Escalate. Share what you’re experiencing with a skip-level leader or HR business partner—not as gossip, but as a risk flag. “We’ve lost three senior people in six months, and the exit interviews all mention the same concerns about unclear priorities.”
- Set boundaries. Let some friction flow downward or upward. If your boss demands weekend work for nonemergencies, say no. If they change priorities daily, push back: “I need three business days to reallocate resources. If it’s truly urgent, tell me what we’re deprioritizing.”
- Leave. If the friction is chronic, you’ve tried to address it, and nothing changes, staying may be costing more than it’s worth. Make an exit plan.
“James,” former VP of Sales at a SaaS company, eventually chose to leave. “After two years, I realized this is the job. And the job was making me someone I didn’t want to be: short-tempered with my team, anxious on Sunday nights, too tired to be present at home. Leaving felt like giving up. Six months later, I can see it was the smartest thing I did.”
The bigger risk, though, is what happens if you stay and don’t change course. Deloitte’s research on leadership sustainability shows that burned-out leaders transmit their stress directly to their teams, creating a cascade that damages performance at every level. You become reactive instead of strategic. You model anxiety instead of steadiness. You teach your team that success means managing up rather than delivering value.
The Fallout from Friction
With time, Maria also realized this. “I thought I was being a good boss by shielding my team. But I was teaching them that last-minute fire drills were normal. When one of my best people resigned, she said, ‘I just want to work somewhere that feels calmer.’ I wasn’t absorbing the friction. I was transmitting it.”
So as you navigate friction from above, ask yourself regularly: What kind of leader am I becoming? What norms am I creating? What am I teaching my team about how work should feel?
Being a buffer matters. But being a buffer shouldn’t require you to lose yourself in the process.
