Last week, Hera had the pleasure of collaborating with the fantastic Delphine Renaud to host a workshop for women in our network on Nervous System Regulation as a Leadership Strategy.
Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest topics of conversation throughout the afternoon was burnout.
This happens not because people lack ambition or because they aren’t resilient enough. It happens because so many leaders have spent years operating at an exceptionally high level without ever being taught how sustained pressure affects the nervous system.
This then raised an important question. How many exceptional leaders are stepping away from careers they once loved and that excited them, not because they can no longer do the job, but because no one ever showed them how to sustain that level of performance?
Investing in leadership skills, but not capacity
Businesses invest heavily in developing leaders. They spend time and money teaching communication skills, strategic thinking, commercial awareness and how to manage teams.
But very few organisations teach leaders how to actually manage themselves. This could be anything from how to recognise when they’re operating in survival mode, to how stress can chance the way they think, communicate and make decisions, or how to recover before chronic stress develops into burnout.
For many of the women in the room, this was a completely different way of thinking about leadership. Not because they hadn’t experienced pressure before, but because no one had ever explained what was happening physiologically or given them practical tools to navigate it.
High performance can come at a cost
One of the most powerful parts of the workshop wasn’t simply learning about nervous system regulation. It was hearing leaders openly discuss what it actually takes and what it costs to perform at a consistently high level:
- The responsibility.
- The constant decision-making.
- The expectation to remain calm while everyone else is looking to you for answers.
- The pressure to always have capacity for one more meeting, one more challenge and one more problem to solve.
It was a reminder that burnout rarely comes from one particularly difficult week. More often than not, it’s the result of months or years spent operating in a heightened state, without enough opportunity to recover.
This isn’t just wellbeing conversation; it’s a business conversation.
It’s easy to position nervous system regulation as a wellness initiative. But we believe it should be positioned as a leadership strategy.
When experienced leaders walk away from organisations through exhaustion rather than choice, businesses lose far more than an employee. They lose knowledge, trusted relationships
They lose innovation.
They lose future leaders.
Helping people regulate their nervous system isn’t about reducing ambition or lowering expectations.
It’s about giving ambitious people the tools to sustain exceptional performance over the long term.
Why this work matters
Throughout the evening, a similar theme kept coming back and people were surprised by how practical these techniques were.
Many questioned why nobody had introduced them earlier in their careers. Others recognised, perhaps for the first time, that the way they had been feeling wasn’t a personal failing or a lack of resilience, it was the natural response of a nervous system under prolonged pressure.
That shift in understanding is incredibly powerful, because when leaders understand what’s happening, they’re better equipped to respond. They make clearer decisions, support their teams more effectively and build careers that are sustainable, not simply survivable.
Looking ahead
The response to the workshop exceeded our expectations. The event sold out, and afterwards we heard from a number of people who wanted to attend but couldn’t secure a place.
That tells us something important, that there is a growing appetite for honest conversations about what sustainable leadership really looks like.
At Hera, we’re passionate about helping businesses build exceptional leadership teams, it’s why we created Olympus Leaders, our leadership community, designed to bring together ambitious founders and senior leaders who want to keep learning, challenge their thinking and build meaningful connections with others navigating similar experiences. It’s a space where conversations extend beyond hiring and business growth to explore the realities of leadership.
A huge thank you to Delphine Renaud for sharing her expertise and to every leader who joined us with such openness and honesty. If you’d like to get in touch or find out more about Delphine’s work, then head to her website here… www.breathewithdelphine.com/ and make sure to connect with her on LinkedIn https://tinyurl.com/zph2t6r3.
If you’d like to start a conversation, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at info@heraconsult.co.uk to learn more about our Olympus Leaders, upcoming events or how we can support you!