9 / When Leaders Don’t Get Enough Rest – A Risk for Growing Businesses

In our global leadership work, we see a consistent theme: high-performing leaders rarely get enough rest. Sleep is essential for health, but rest is what allows leaders to reflect, reset, and sustain their energy – especially in demanding growth environments.

Our survey of 1,200 senior leaders revealed that only 10% feel adequately rested. Most are driving hard, but often without the recovery required to think clearly, innovate, or sustain performance.

For mid-sized, fast-growth businesses, this has a particular cost. When teams run at full speed without building in reflection, innovation stalls and burnout risks rise. The very people driving your growth may be the most at risk.

Micro Pause Training for Growth-Focused Teams

Micro Pause sessions are short, high-impact workshops (2–3 hours) that can be delivered onsite or online. They equip teams with tools to build reflection and recovery directly into their working rhythm.

• Practical and time-efficient – designed for busy teams in scaling environments
• Immediate ROI – sharper thinking, better collaboration, reduced stress
• Culture-building – embedding sustainable habits early, before burnout takes hold

In fast-moving businesses, it’s easy to equate busyness with progress. Micro Pause sessions help teams break that cycle, building the inner capacity they need to perform, adapt and thrive over the long term.

Get in touch to explore how Micro Pause sessions can support your teams through periods of growth and transition.

Many of the leaders I work with have been sharing a common challenge recently: struggling to get restorative sleep. It’s no surprise. High workloads, endless digital demands, and the inability to switch off can leave even the most resilient leaders lying awake at 2 a.m. replaying the day.

Because sleep is so vital to performance, clarity and wellbeing, I wanted to share six practical tools that I know genuinely make a difference. Unlike most of my advice, these are products rather than pure practices. I don’t have any affiliations with the brands listed here – they are simply tried, tested and effective. If you’re outside the UK, it’s worth shopping around for local versions.

The key is not to overhaul your life overnight. Start with one tool, experiment, and build gradually. Think of it as a long-term investment in your most precious resource: sleep.

1. Lavender Oil

• Why: Calms an overworked mind and signals your nervous system that it’s time to rest.
• Time: 30 seconds
• When: Just before bed
• How: Inhale directly from the bottle, rub a drop into your hands and inhale, apply to the soles of your feet, or add to a diffuser or Epsom salt bath.

2. Sleep Tea

• Why: A gentle, natural sedative that soothes the system and encourages deeper sleep.
• Time: 15 minutes
• When: In the hour before bed
• How: Brew for 15 minutes in a teapot. Sip slowly, breathe deeply, and treat it as a ritual of winding down.

3. Shakti Mat (Acupressure Mat)

• Why: Quickly releases tension stored in the shoulders, neck, and back after a demanding day.
• Time: Build up gradually to 15 minutes per day
• When: Before bed
• How: Lie down so your back is in contact with the mat. Start with a t-shirt for comfort, then progress to bare skin for deeper impact.

4. Stretching Programme

• Why: Regulates the nervous system and eases tight muscles caused by long days at a desk or on the move.
• Time: 15 minutes, 5 days a week
• When: Evening wind-down
• How: Follow short, guided videos. No need for add-ons, just space, time and consistency.

5. Synctuition Mind Spa (App)

• Why: Brings the benefits of meditation to those who don’t find it easy to meditate.
• Time: 20 minutes
• When: Before bed
• How: Download the app, plug in headphones, and let the immersive soundscapes ease you into rest.

6. Floatation Tank

• Why: Dramatically reduces stress and anxiety, supporting deep calm and recovery.
• Time: 60 minutes + travel
• When: As an occasional deep-reset practice
• How: Float in a pod of warm, Epsom salt-rich water. A powerful way to completely switch off.

Further Reading

If you would like to go deeper:

• My book,Sleep Meditations(Audible) – practical guided techniques to help you relax body and mind, preparing you for deeper sleep.
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker – a science-based deep dive into the importance of sleep for health and performance.

For more practical sleep strategies, you may also like my blog: [How to Protect Your Sleep Under Pressure]

When designing leadership programmes, we often focus on the what: skills, behaviours, frameworks, and performance outcomes. These are essential. But when it comes to equipping leaders for the complexity and pace of today’s environment, the how matters just as much.

Over years of working with senior leaders and upcoming talent, one truth has emerged consistently: the quality of leadership thinking is profoundly shaped by the depth, space, and environment we create around development.

These are not “nice-to-haves”- they are design principles that elevate leadership programmes from functional to transformative.

1. Depth

To operate strategically, leaders need to ask bigger, bolder questions:

• What is my role in shaping the future of this organisation?
• What do I stand for as a leader?
• How do my values align with the wider mission?

This type of reflection doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a deliberate shift from the operational to the reflective state, a transition that most busy leaders find difficult to make on their own.

In our Pause retreats and Micro Pause training sessions, we carefully design the journey into depth, using pace, reflection prompts and non-traditional activities to ease participants into more meaningful levels of thinking. Without this, insight remains superficial and struggles to translate into long-term behavioural change.

2. Space

Leaders under pressure rarely allow themselves the time to step back. Yet the unconscious mind is often the birthplace of the most creative solutions.

We know from experience (and plenty of neuroscience) that when leaders pause, their brain has the opportunity to integrate, reframe and imagine possibilities beyond the day-to-day. But space often feels countercultural, in organisations where “busy” is rewarded, pausing can look unproductive.

Helping leaders reframe pause as a courageous act, not an indulgence, is critical. It gives permission to use space strategically, not just as recovery, but as fuel for forward-looking leadership.

3. Environment

Environment acts as the silent partner in leadership learning. The same programme run in a sterile corporate room will land differently in a natural setting that expands horizons, calms the nervous system, and sparks fresh thinking.

Even in hybrid or digital contexts, small design choices matter: colour, light, pacing, and interactivity can all either dull or amplify the impact of the learning experience. Equally, the people leaders are surrounded by, whether they are locked into tactical detail or open to big-picture thinking, will shape the quality of outcomes.

When programmes intentionally consider environment, they invite leaders into states that support creativity, connection, and renewal.

Designing With Depth, Space and Environment in Mind

For HR and OD leaders, the challenge is no longer just delivering high-quality content, it’s creating the conditions where learning truly embeds and transforms.

That’s where Pause experiences can be woven into your programme design. Whether through a half-day Micro Pause session (in-person or online) or a full retreat, we provide the container for leaders to slow down, go deeper, and expand their capacity for future-facing leadership.

If you’re designing your next leadership programme and want to integrate depth, space, and environment into the experience, let’s talk. 

Book a call here.

In a world where leadership is measured in results, it’s easy to overlook the quieter forces that shape performance: integration, emotional regulation and the capacity to pause.

Over the years working with senior leaders, I have noticed that the biggest shifts don’t come from doing more, they come from creating space. Space to process what you already know, to work with what you already feel, and to access the clarity that emerges only when you stop.

This 3-part series explores the leadership value of what’s often overlooked:

Part 1: The Quiet Cost of Unprocessed Realisations

Leaders often have powerful insights about themselves, their teams or their organisations; but sometimes those insights sit unresolved, unintegrated and unprocessed.

The body remembers what the mind wants to move on from. When we intellectualise our growth but don’t process it emotionally, we risk staying stuck in the very patterns we thought we had outgrown.

Reflection prompts:

• What am I carrying that I’ve “figured out” but not fully worked through?
• How long have I been carrying it?
• How might it still be quietly shaping my leadership today?

For leaders ready to deepen their integration, structured coaching can provide the safe space to bring these realisations to completion.

Part 2: The Hidden Weight of Unspoken Emotions

Leadership often demands composure, but when emotions are consistently pushed aside, they don’t vanish, they accumulate.

Over time, unspoken emotions leak into decision-making, shape how teams experience us and erode resilience.

Learning to work with emotions, not against them is a critical skill. It means noticing what’s present, regulating rather than suppressing and finding constructive outlets for processing.

Practical rituals for leaders:

• Anger: move the body – walk, stretch, release.
• Irritation: pause before responding – step outside, breathe.
• Anxiety: slow the breath – hand on belly, inhale deeply.
• Doubt: journal – write down what is true and grounding.

Leaders who develop emotional agility don’t just manage themselves better; they model resilience for their teams.

Coaching offers a structured space to build these emotional regulation muscles, making it easier to carry the weight of leadership without carrying it alone.

Part 3: The Overlooked Value of Untaken Pauses

On the surface, skipping pauses looks productive; but when leaders move from one demand to the next without stopping, the quality of thinking declines. Reaction replaces reflection. Busyness replaces strategy.

The paradox is that pausing doesn’t cost time, it creates capacity. Even a few minutes of intentional stillness can sharpen focus, expand perspective and reset the nervous system.

Micro-pauses to try today:

• Before a meeting: one deep breath to reset intention.
• After a decision: three minutes of quiet to notice how it feels.
• Between calls: a short walk instead of another email.

Leaders who integrate pauses into their routines find they return to tasks clearer, calmer and sharper.

Our Micro Pause sessions are designed to help leaders experience this shift directly, building the habit of stopping into the rhythm of leadership itself.

The Space That Shapes Leadership

Leadership is not only about the actions we take but the space we create.

• Processing realisations turns knowledge into growth.
• Working with emotions turns vulnerability into strength.
• Taking pauses turns busyness into clarity.

These hidden dimensions don’t just support performance, they transform it; and yet, they rarely happen by accident. They need intention, structure, and, often, guided support.

If you’d like to explore how coaching or Micro Pause sessions could help you and your leadership teams integrate these practices into daily life, let’s start a conversation; because the leaders who thrive aren’t the ones who do the most – they are the ones who know when, and how, to stop.

When leaders talk about performance, they often focus on speed, decisiveness, and output. What gets overlooked is the value of the pauses not taken, the moments that never happen because the calendar is too full, the inbox is too loud or the pressure is too high.

The invisible cost of constant motion

On the surface, skipping pauses looks productive. One more meeting. One more email. One more decision made; but when leaders move from one demand to the next without stopping, the quality of their thinking inevitably declines. Reaction replaces reflection. Busyness replaces strategy.

Over weeks and months, this compounds. Leaders find themselves firefighting more often, defaulting to the familiar, or relying on habit instead of creativity. Teams notice this, decisions feel rushed, energy feels thin and the bigger picture becomes harder to hold.

Pausing as a performance strategy

What’s counterintuitive is that stopping, even briefly, doesn’t cost time, it expands capacity. A pause allows the nervous system to reset, attention to recalibrate and perspective to return.

Leaders who pause:

• Make clearer, more strategic decisions.
• Respond instead of react.
• Create calmer, more focused team environments.

And yet, because “pausing” doesn’t appear on a KPI dashboard, it’s often undervalued.

The habit of micro-pauses

The good news is that leaders don’t need long retreats to start. They can begin with micro-pauses embedded into their day:

• Before a meeting: one deep breath to reset intention.
• After a decision: three minutes to notice how it feels.
• At transition points: a short walk between calls, instead of checking email.

These micro-pauses are deceptively powerful. They reintroduce space where there was none, and over time, leaders discover they are not only calmer, but sharper.

Creating structured pauses

Of course, individual habits can only take leaders so far. For real cultural change, organisations need to build pauses into their leadership programmes. That’s why our Micro Pause sessions exist: short, practical interventions that give leaders the lived experience of how powerful even a few minutes of stillness can be.

Because the true measure of leadership isn’t how much you do without stopping; it’s how wisely you use the moments you choose to stop.

What’s the cost of leaving emotions unspoken?

I often meet leaders who tell me they’re “fine”, but their teams notice the sharpness in their tone, the heaviness in their presence, or the edge of impatience in their decisions. It isn’t that these leaders lack competence; it’s that unprocessed emotions always find a way to seep out.

We know from books like “The Body Keeps the Score” that emotions don’t disappear when ignored. They get stored; when this happens the body, the nervous system and our relationships end up carrying the weight.

Suppression looks efficient but it isn’t.

In high-pressure environments, leaders often learn to push emotions aside to “get on with the job.” Anger gets buried. Doubt gets hidden. Fear gets masked. In the short term, this looks like efficiency, but over time, suppressed emotions leak out as stress behaviours: micromanaging, overworking, withdrawal, irritability.

This matters, because culture flows from leadership. A leader who avoids their emotions unintentionally sets a tone that emotions are unsafe or irrelevant, which stifles openness and psychological safety in the wider team.

Processing creates capacity

When emotions are acknowledged and worked through, something powerful happens: energy returns. Processing doesn’t mean dwelling. It means giving emotions enough space to move through, so they don’t calcify into long-term patterns.

This is why emotional regulation isn’t “soft”, it’s one of the hardest and most essential leadership skills. Leaders who can regulate their own emotions build trust, clarity, and resilience in those around them.

Small practices, big shifts

You don’t need hours of therapy to start, you just need intentional micro-practices that create space for emotions to be noticed and metabolised:

• Anger → Move: go for a brisk walk or shake tension from your body.
• Anxiety → Ground: take three deep breaths with your feet firmly planted.
• Doubt → Reflect: write down one thing that is working right now.
• Overwhelm → Pause: stop for 60 seconds, close your eyes, and reset.

These small rituals create the habit of emotional hygiene, preventing build-up and restoring clarity.

Designing containers for leaders

The challenge, of course, is that leaders rarely create this space on their own. The pace of business pulls attention outward. Which is why structured interventions, even short ones, can be so effective.

Our Micro Pause sessions are designed exactly for this: to provide leaders with accessible, practical tools for emotional regulation. In these short sessions, they experience how to downshift stress and reconnect with presence. Over time, these practices compound, reducing the hidden costs of unspoken emotions.

Because when leaders regulate themselves, they don’t just feel lighter. Their whole team breathes easier too.