Sixty managers described 225 experiences that had stretched them. Rotations, new teams, jobs bigger than the one before. DeRue and Wellman, who ran the study, asked how much each one had developed their leadership skill.

The answer had a shape. More challenge produced more development, up to a point. Past that point, the returns shrank. And one thing offset the drop-off at high challenge: how available feedback was.

That is the whole finding, and it is narrower than it sounds. Sixty managers, skill development reported by the managers themselves, no measure of anyone's wellbeing. It does not say a heavy assignment harms you. It says a heavy assignment with no route for hearing how it is going teaches you less than the same one with a route.

Worth sitting with, if you are the person holding the large thing.

The version of this that looks like diligence

You were handed the migration, or the regional launch, or the client nobody else wanted. It is bigger than the role you were hired for. Nobody said so out loud, but it is a vote of confidence, and you read it that way.

So you do what many people raised to prove themselves through effort do. You take it, you work, and you do not check in, because checking in can feel like admitting you need help. In a lot of workplaces, quiet competence is the respectable way to carry something heavy.

In a lot of US teams it reads differently. A manager who hears nothing does not conclude that all is well. A manager who hears nothing has no information. Silence is not a status report.

And from your side, the work gets heavier in a particular way. Not only more hours. More guessing. Is this the right scope? Is the quality bar where they thought it was? Did the thing you decided on Tuesday matter to anyone?

Each unanswered question gets carried. That is a load of its own, separate from the task.

What the study can and cannot say about that

Be careful here, because the temptation is to read your evenings into a paper that did not measure them.

What DeRue and Wellman found is about skill development, and about the offset. The sample is small and the ratings are self-reported. Managers who knew they had developed may also be the ones who remember getting feedback. Nothing in the design separates those.

What it supports is a modest, practical reading: if the point of the stretch, for you, is that you come out of it more capable and more visible, the feedback route is not a courtesy. It is part of what makes the assignment worth what it costs.

What it does not support is any claim about how much feedback, from whom, or how often. It has nothing to say about burnout. It has nothing to say about your particular manager.

What to notice

Three things, none of which need anyone's permission.

Count the signals you have had. Not praise. Signals. Since the assignment began, how many times has someone told you something specific about how it is going, good or not? If the count is close to zero after weeks, that is information about the setup, not about your work.

Separate the two loads. Take a normal week on the assignment and sort what tired you. Some of it is the work. Some of it is the open question, the decision you made without knowing whether it landed. They feel identical at 9pm. They have different fixes. Only the second is something another person can remove.

Notice who could close the loop, and what they would need. Often it is your manager, and often they would answer if the question were small and specific. A broad request for feedback invites a pleasant, vague reply. A narrow one about a single decision is easier to answer. What makes a request narrow enough, and how to put it so it lands as interest rather than doubt, is the part that depends on the person.

One honest limit

Some assignments come with no feedback route because the organisation is thin, not because anyone is withholding it. Your manager may be stretched too. In that case asking will not produce a signal, and the useful finding is a different one: that this particular piece of work is not going to develop you at the rate its size suggests, and you may want to weigh that before taking the next one.

That is a judgement call. The study cannot make it for you.

The load you are carrying may be bigger than the work. Worth finding out which part is which.