Leading with Energy: How We Sustain What Matters
Last month, I sat in a strategy session where, halfway through, the leader leaned back in her chair and quietly said, “I’m running on fumes.” She wasn’t being dramatic. She was telling the truth that many of us carry but rarely admit. We pride ourselves on pushing harder, staying later, saying yes one more time. But impact seldom comes from speed or force. It comes from stamina.
The paradox of modern leadership is this: the more we push, the less we preserve the very energy that makes us effective.
The Scoreboards of Energy
In organizations, we track output, hours logged, and quarterly results. But how often do we measure the quality of our energy, the thing that fuels all of it?
A leader’s focus during a tough conversation.
The atmosphere of safety they bring into the room.
The resilience they model when things don’t go to plan.
These are rarely written into dashboards, yet they are the invisible scoreboards that teams actually play by.
The Hidden Cost of Always-On
We’ve inherited a culture that equates exhaustion with commitment. But the quiet truth is that tired leaders don’t inspire, they transmit depletion. Teams notice when we’re stretched too thin. Families feel it too. And over time, our organizations don’t just burn resources; they burn out the very people they rely on.
When we operate from emptiness, we make decisions from scarcity rather than clarity. We become reactive instead of responsive. We solve for the urgent while losing sight of the important. The cost isn’t just personal; it cascades through every interaction, every meeting, every moment someone looks to us for direction.
An Invitation to Redesign Energy
What if we treated energy the way we treat any other scarce resource — with care, protection, and intention?
Instead of filling every hour, leaders could design white space into their calendars as thoughtfully as budget reviews.
Instead of glorifying late-night emails, teams could celebrate moments of genuine restoration.
Instead of pushing harder when things feel stuck, we could pause long enough to notice what's really draining us.
Energy is not indulgence. It is stewardship.
The Science of Sustainable Performance
Research shows us what intuition already knows: our brains function in natural rhythms. We have approximately 90-120-minute cycles of high focus, followed by 20-minute recovery periods. Yet, most of our workdays ignore this completely, demanding sustained attention for hours without meaningful breaks.
High performers in athletics understand periodization, the strategic cycling of intense effort with recovery. Musicians know that practice without rest leads to injury. Yet in leadership, we often mistake grinding for excellence.
The most effective leaders aren’t those who work the most hours; they’re those who bring their best energy to the hours that matter most.
Protect focus.
Choose one thing each day that deserves your undivided attention, and create conditions to defend it. This might mean:
Blocking the first two hours of your day for deep work
Turning off notifications during crucial conversations
Learning to distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s actually important
Restore stamina.
Treat rest as an active practice: take walks, engage in rituals of transition, and have conversations that bring joy. Consider:
A five-minute breathing exercise between meetings
Taking calls while walking when appropriate
Creating clear boundaries between work time and restoration time
Building micro-recoveries into your day — moments where you step back and reset
Model resilience.
Share not just victories but the boundaries you keep. Teams learn as much from how you recharge as from how you deliver. This looks like:
Being transparent about when you need to step away to recharge
Celebrating team members who maintain healthy boundaries
Showing that saying "no" to good things allows you to say "yes" to great things
The Ripple Effect of Energized Leadership
When leaders operate from a place of genuine energy rather than forced momentum, something shifts in the entire system. Meetings become more focused because the leader's attention is present. Decisions improve because they're made from clarity rather than fatigue. Creativity emerges because there's space for it to breathe.
Teams begin to mirror this approach. They start protecting their own energy. They become more honest about capacity. They deliver better work because they're not constantly operating at the edge of burnout.
The Courage to Pause
Sometimes the most radical act of leadership is not acceleration but interruption, stepping off the treadmill long enough to remind yourself and your team that energy is the soil from which all impact grows.
This doesn't mean lowering standards or reducing ambition. It means recognizing that sustainable excellence requires a different approach than the one that got us here.
Energy as Strategy
What if we started treating energy management as seriously as we treat financial management? What if we had energy audits the way we have budget reviews? What if we asked not just "What are our goals?" but "What energy will it take to achieve them sustainably?"
Some organizations are beginning to experiment with this approach:
Building recovery time into project timelines
Measuring team energy levels as leading indicators of performance
Creating environments that support natural work rhythms rather than forcing artificial ones
Designing meeting schedules that honor attention spans rather than calendar convenience
Questions to Sit With
What energy are you transmitting to the people who count on you?
Where in your work or life have you confused exhaustion with commitment?
What ritual of restoration could you build, not just for yourself, but for your team?
How might your leadership change if you prioritized the quality of your energy over the quantity of your output?
What would it look like to lead from fullness rather than depletion?
The Long Game
Because in the end, leadership isn’t about how much we produce. It’s about what we sustain.
The leaders who create lasting impact aren’t those who burn brightest for the shortest time. They’re those who understand that their energy is not just personal fuel, it's the foundation upon which everything else is built. When we tend to our energy with the same care we bring to our strategies, our relationships, and our results, we don’t just become better leaders. We become sustainable ones.
And in a world that desperately needs leaders who can stay present for the long challenges ahead, sustainability isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential.
