Distributed leadership is commonly framed as a means of widening participation, mobilizing expertise, and reducing dependence on a single formal leader. Yet distributing influence does not necessarily distribute answerability, emotional maintenance, or coordination work evenly. This Original Propositional Model Article develops the proposed Distributed-Burden Model to explain how leadership distribution may create unequal burdens even when voice and decision opportunity appear broadly shared. The model integrates four domains: theoretical foundations concerning emergent influence and multilevel leadership; responsibility diffusion through misalignment among authority, execution, and answerability; emotional and relational load associated with sustaining cooperation; and coordination inequality produced by brokerage, integration, and follow-up demands. It proposes that distribution triggers activate distinct burden channels whose allocation is shaped by expertise dependence, network position, status recognition, availability, help-acceptance norms, work design, and temporal conditions. These pathways may concentrate hidden work among particular members while benefits remain more widely distributed. The article derives conditional propositions and decision principles for distinguishing formal permission from substantive power, visible participation from consequential influence, and short-term coordination from longer-term team viability. The model is an original conceptual synthesis rather than a validated causal account. Its relationships require multilevel, longitudinal, network, experimental, and qualitative testing. Applicability is bounded by task interdependence, hierarchy configuration, team maturity, trust, demographic expectations, recovery capacity, and technology-mediated work design. The contribution is a testable vocabulary and architecture for examining who carries the work that makes distributed leadership function.
