<p>Leadership burnout is commonly framed as an individual wellbeing or resilience issue. However, emerging evidence suggests that sustained burnout within leadership roles often reflects structural pressures embedded within organisational systems. This paper introduces the concept of <strong>Load-Bearing Leadership™ (LBL)</strong> as a framework for examining how leadership load accumulates when responsibility, authority, identity expectations, and structural support become misaligned.</p> <p>In many organisations, high-performing leaders stabilise operational and relational gaps by absorbing additional decision-making, coordination, and emotional labour. While this invisible compensation can preserve short-term organisational performance, it often results in sustained leadership fatigue and eventual burnout.</p> <p>This paper explores burnout as a structural phenomenon rather than solely an individual outcome. The Load-Bearing Leadership framework identifies four interacting forces that shape leadership load within organisations: <strong>Responsibility, Authority, Identity, and Structural Support</strong>. When these elements drift out of alignment, leadership pressure concentrates within individuals and roles, increasing the likelihood of fatigue, disengagement, and burnout.</p> <p>By reframing burnout as a signal of systemic misalignment, the framework offers organisations a diagnostic lens for examining governance structures, decision authority, and leadership expectations. The model provides a foundation for identifying where leadership load is being silently absorbed and for redesigning organisational systems to distribute responsibility and authority more sustainably.</p> <p>This paper contributes to leadership and organisational behaviour discourse by proposing a structural interpretation of burnout and introducing Load-Bearing Leadership as a model for analysing how leadership pressure is generated and carried within complex organisational environments.</p>