Much has been written about the benefits of visionary leadership behaviors to the followers as well as leaders themselves. Given this prevalence, however, visionary leadership may carry some unnoticed harms. Based on the conservation of resources theory, we argue that visionary leadership behaviors can exhaust a leader’s own resources and result in burnout. To test this hypothesis, we adopted weekly diary analysis and conducted two experience sampling studies through weekly surveys with each study lasts for five consecutive weeks. The results show that visionary leadership behavior is associated with psychological stress, and a resulting increase in burnout, among leaders. These detrimental outcomes extend beyond the advantages to followers (Study 1) and the leaders themselves (Study 2). The extent to which visionary leadership behavior is associated with increased psychological stress also depends on the characteristics of the followers. Specifically, when followers have low degrees of proactive personality (Study 1) or competence (Study 2), visionary leadership has stronger effects on psychological distress. Overall, the results elucidate when and why visionary leaders are likely to experience burnout.

关于有远见的领导行为对追随者和领导者本身的好处，已经有很多文章。然而，鉴于这种普遍性，有远见的领导可能会带来一些未被注意到的危害。基于资源守恒理论，我们认为有远见的领导行为会耗尽领导者自身的资源并导致倦怠。为了验证这个假设，我们采用每周日记分析，并通过每周调查进行了两项经验抽样研究，每项研究持续五周。结果表明，有远见的领导行为与心理压力有关，并导致领导者的​​倦怠增加。这些不利结果超出了对追随者（研究 1）和领导者本身（研究 2）的优势。有远见的领导行为与增加的心理压力相关的程度也取决于追随者的特征。具体而言，当下属具有低程度的主动人格（研究 1）或能力（研究 2）时，有远见的领导对心理困扰有更强的影响。总体而言，结果阐明了有远见的领导者何时以及为何可能会感到倦怠。