Rest: The Leadership Strategy You May Be Overlooking
When leaders talk about strategy, the conversation usually turns to vision, performance, growth, or innovation. Rarely do we talk about rest. And yet, without rest, your organisation, team and self is not sustainable.
We tend to think of rest as sleep, a nightly recharge before the next day’s demands. But rest is much more layered than that. Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith identifies 7 types of rest: physical, mental, creative, emotional, social, sensory and spiritual rest. Each is essential. Each is often overlooked.
Consider the leader who never truly switches off. Physically they may collapse into bed, but mentally they are still scrolling through tomorrow’s to-do list. Or the executive who powers through meeting after meeting, but whose creativity has quietly dried up from lack of spaciousness. Or the high achiever who keeps pushing forward without ever stopping to tend to emotional fatigue.
And it’s not only the leader who suffers. Teams mirror what is modeled. When leaders neglect rest, they can unintentionally create a culture that drives people to the edge of exhaustion. Motivation falters, stress rises, and resilience is lost. True leadership requires noticing when your people are close to breaking point, in fact, true leaders wouldn’t allow their teams to reach that point! Have the courage to lead differently.
Sometimes that means flexibility: allowing space for family needs in times of crisis. Sometimes it means managing workload with compassion, not simply efficiency. And sometimes it’s as simple as giving permission, for yourself and others, to pause, breathe, and recover. Rest is not weakness; it is the soil from which sustainable performance grows.
This kind of imbalance doesn’t just drain the individual, it affects entire teams. Leaders who neglect rest unintentionally model burnout as the norm.
As the Equinox arrives as a reminder of the essential need for balance: there are seasons for action, and there are seasons for stillness. Just as the earth cycles between growth and rest, so too must we. True balance is not about doing it all at once, it is about honoring rhythm.
When leaders embrace rest as part of their strategy, they unlock clarity, resilience, and a deeper well of creativity. Decisions sharpen. Teams flourish. Innovation returns. If this seems like a challenging concept to you in our fast paced world, I understand! I invite you to explore the idea further in my speed coaching session below all about the Stages of Rest. It may be the most overlooked strategy in your leadership toolkit.
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