As leaders and managers develop they are able to help both their organizations and employees balance their needs in order to get the highest performance possible.
Organizations typically exist to deliver some form of value to a given market. They need to be efficient, usually profit-conscious and empirical in their evaluation of what barriers to success exist and how best to win anyway. If their employees had no emotion - perhaps were just robots to be reprogrammed toward whatever direction was needed - things would be really simple. What makes it difficult for most leaders is that these employees also have emotions, opinions, want to be paid for their efforts and have goals of their own.
Employees want to have a purpose - they want to work for something bigger than themselves. They want to be inspired and grow. They want respect, relative autonomy and self direction. They want to be effectively led.
Left to pursue their own individual goals, organizations and employees often find their respective paths toward these goals to be in conflict in many ways. For example, a leader's reactions to stress of profit erosion may prompt the decision to layoff employees. Possibly good for the profitability of the business and its owners; not so good for employees.
Alternatively, if, for example, a new company opens in an organization’s market and pays better, offers more benefits and promises training and career growth, this can be great for employees; really expensive for organizations and owners.
The highest value for great management and leadership, when applied well, is to help both employees and leaders (and owners) craft and align to a path forward for both of them to mutually succeed and grow. There are tons of tactics that go into doing this right and many different scenarios, but effectively this is what should be happening when leadership is done well.