Why are we talking about isolation of the entrepreneur?

Many business leaders experience a phenomenon known as manager isolation. If isolation is often understood when talking about the elderly, it is less well understood when we talk about the function of the leader who remains more than difficult to define for everyone. Zoom on this harmful isolation and that the majority of people do not understand.

Poorly understood stress areas

If the job of manager is often in the top 5 of jobs under stress, it is not for nothing. He is often considered on the same level as war reporters, it is to say. It must be said that the leader must absorb pressure from all sides and that he is the last bulwark of the company against almost all difficulties as well as the decision maker for everything that goes wrong. It is to him that we address ourselves for all the hiccups that can happen and who must manage all the complicated situations, especially in small businesses. If employees make mistakes in this way, it is in the overwhelming majority of cases for them to resolve them and assume the consequences, in particular vis-à-vis customers or in a global manner. It is not uncommon for him to encounter 4 or 5 major difficulties in a day that he must take care of solving or finding the solution so that the operation of the business is not altered.

Extraordinary work overload

Who says managing the difficulties also says filling the gaps. He is thus on the front line for overtime. In small businesses and especially during the launch, there remains the one who goes from morning to evening and sometimes exceeds one hundred hours per week. It must be said that the hourly restrictions of the labor code do not apply to him and that he very often doubles it until the company turns and it standardizes its week around 60h per week according to surveys. His hard work is often there to fill what cannot be recruited into the company. Consequence: fatigue and stress are constantly absorbed. Fortunately, he usually quickly learns to put situations into perspective and increase his productivity tenfold if he does not want to collapse under the mass of work as well as to manage a tension that never stops. Unfortunately this is not always the case and it is not uncommon for it to give in to a burn-out because it is indeed the profession which has almost invented the expression even if it has become popular in the field wage earners to sometimes designate anything and everything.

The misunderstanding in addition

The worst thing in history is that he often remains misunderstood. Not content with doing more than others or absorbing more stress and fatigue than others, it is a function that is absolutely not understood. Some consider business leaders to be at their service and do not hesitate to disturb them for everything and for nothing. It must be said that the confusion between the “manager” whose door is open and who has time dedicated to management is often confused with that of the “operational” manager who does not have it at all and permanently assumes the costs of work in a rush.


Some collaborators thus consider that the fact that the manager does double their hours, get up early, go to bed late or even produce much more than them is normal and that they can sometimes add extra work to them with useless questions and that they can solve by themselves. However, most of them would be incapable of climbing their hourly rhythm to this level and of keeping up even for a few days at this rate. Yes but you understand, he’s the boss… Fortunately for the leader, that’s far from the case for everyone.

An expression that annoys

If there is indeed an isolation of the entrepreneur, it is that which consists in generalizing the function in the word "boss". As if this word covers all the realities of the job when the difference in workload or stress is not at all the same from one company to another. Considering that being the boss of a VSE and that of a larger structure is the same thing comes down to comparing two completely different professions where the means and roles are completely different. Hourly rhythms, ability to rest on an established structure or to delegate, responsibility, stress, ... Nothing in common between two managers from two different companies.

This confusion is often expressed in a sentence often heard: "yes, but it was you who decided to be a boss", which one might wonder if there would be a meaning to say to an employee: "yes but it was you who chose to be an employee ”when he encountered a difficulty. As if being a manager does not generate some grounds for complaining or experiencing bad situations.