The Regenerative Leader
What my body taught me about sustainable leadership - and why your team is watching how you recover.
For a long time, I wore burnout like a badge. I never called it that, of course. At best I called it dedication, commitment, being “all in” - at worse, I shrugged it off and dismissed it as the norm of academic culture. I returned emails at 11pm, said yes to everything, and measured my value by my output. In meetings, I encouraged my team to rest and take care of themselves - but I never applied that advice to my own life. There was too much to do. Too many people counting on me.
The irony was that my journey into academia started with a PhD on self-compassion. Which, in turn, was sparked by my experience of a chronic illness that had almost killed me when I was younger. It seems that my person lesson in self-compassion is hard learned. As Pema Chödrön says: “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” This time, when my health began to unravel, I didn’t see it as a warning sign. I saw it as a betrayal. I had spent years holding everything together. Now, suddenly, I couldn’t hold myself upright.
The illness that eventually forced me to stop came without fanfare - just a slow, relentless erosion of my capacity. One morning, I simply couldn’t get out of bed. In that stillness, stripped of my productivity, my usefulness, and the performance of being fine, I began to see something more clearly than I ever had before.
Leadership - real leadership - was never meant to be a performance of depletion.
It’s easy, especially in high-pressure environments, to absorb the belief that good leaders should be tireless. We celebrate the leader who pushes through pain, who never needs a break, who sets the pace for everyone else by working harder and longer than anyone else. What we don’t talk about is what that pace costs. To the leader. To the team. To the quality of the work itself.
The Problem Isn’t Pace, It’s the Absence of Pause
Hustle culture often treats recovery as optional, something to squeeze in when the work is done. But in reality, recovery is what makes the work sustainable. And yet, most leaders operate like smartphones that never get plugged in - slowly degrading in performance, hoping no one notices.
Except that the people around us not only see it, they feel it. When leaders burn out, it doesn’t stay contained. Exhaustion is contagious. So is self-sacrifice. The way you lead teaches others how to treat themselves - and it sends a clear signal about whether wellbeing is a value or a footnote.
What Regenerative Leadership Really Means
Regenerative leadership doesn’t mean working less. It means designing your leadership practice to restore what it consumes.
This is not a metaphor. Like a landscape, your leadership has seasons, cycles, and a finite store of energy. If you’re constantly harvesting without restoring, you will deplete the very soil you’re trying to grow from.
So what does this look like in practice?
Three Layers of Recovery That Sustain Leaders
Micro-Recovery: The Space Between
Think in moments, not hours. The nervous system needs regular signals of safety to reset. Build in pauses between calls. Take three slow breaths before opening your inbox. Walk the long way to your next meeting. These small shifts create space for presence—and reduce the cumulative wear of constant reactivity.
Macro-Recovery: The Ritual of Rest
This isn’t about “work-life balance” in the abstract. It’s about identifying the specific practices that replenish you - creative time, solitude, exercise, nature, play - and protecting them with the same commitment you give your work. Not as a reward for surviving the week, but as a foundation for leading well.
Seasonal Recovery: Cycles, Not Straight Lines
Great leadership is not linear. There are months of acceleration and months of reflection. Times for output and times for recalibration. Build rhythms that reflect this. Consider: when will you consolidate, deepen, or step back? How are you designing your year - not just your day - for long-term impact?
The Hidden Role of Self-Compassion
It’s easy to talk about boundaries and rest. It’s harder to enact them without guilt.
This is where self-compassion becomes a strategic asset. Not self-indulgence - self-stewardship. The same inner voice that supports your team through setbacks must be cultivated for yourself. When you model this, you give permission for others to stop equating their worth with exhaustion.
The truth is, many of us became leaders because we care deeply. But caring without recovery becomes extraction. Over time, what we give becomes less generous. More brittle. More performative.
To care well over time requires protecting your capacity to care at all.
Regenerative Practices to Try This Week
This isn’t a checklist. It’s an invitation to design a more humane pace. Try one or two of these:
Audit your week. Where are you overcommitted? Where is recovery absent?
Start your day tech-free. Protect the first 30 minutes for reflection, movement, or stillness.
Design buffer time. Schedule 10-minute spaces between meetings as default, not luxury.
Build a “recovery anchor.” One non-negotiable each week that nourishes you.
Communicate your rhythms. Let your team know when you’re offline - and why. Make recovery visible.
Remember, when you lead regeneratively, people notice. Your team starts to breathe differently. They begin to believe that excellence doesn’t require self-erasure. They start asking better questions - not just “What can I achieve?” but “What can I sustain?”
