When Leaders Reach Their Edges: What the Research Says About Pressure, Presence & Being Human at Work

Why Senior Leadership Wellbeing Deserves More Attention

There’s a moment I see often in senior leaders, usually halfway through a coaching session, at that quiet point when someone finally exhales for the first time all day. They say something like:
“I’m usually fine. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
And the truth is: nothing is wrong with them. They’ve just been living too close to the edges of their internal capacity,  that middle ground where clarity, steadiness, and emotional availability tend to live. Not because they’re weak. Not because they’ve “lost resilience.” But because they’re human, and human systems only have so much bandwidth before they tip out of balance (Montano et al., 2017; Skakon et al., 2010).

The hidden pressures that stretch senior leaders thin

Leadership has always carried weight, but modern leadership places a unique load on the nervous system.
It’s not just workload, it’s emotional labour, responsibility, scrutiny, and the expectation to be the calmest person in every room.
Research consistently shows that senior leaders experience higher chronic stress due to emotional demands, uncertainty, and the felt responsibility for others (Arnold et al., 2017; Montano et al., 2017).
It’s no wonder many leaders describe feeling:
  • quicker to react
  • slower to think clearly
  • emotionally distant
  • tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix
These are not signs of failure. They are signs of a system stretched away from its natural centre.

Those days when everything feels urgent

Every leader knows the days when things move too fast:
  • conversations feel sharp
  • decisions feel rushed
  • patience shortens
  • priorities stack up faster than you can address them
You’re not “being reactive.” Your body is responding exactly the way biology says it will under acute stress, shifting into a protective, high‑alert state that narrows attention and speeds everything up (Porcelli & Delgado, 2009; Gross, 2015).
During these moments, studies show:
  • empathy is harder to access (Youssef et al., 2012)
  • communication becomes tighter or more brittle (Barsade, 2002)
  • decision quality dips (Leiter & Maslach, 2017)
It feels like being above yourself, operating high up and far away from your grounded self.

And the days when you feel foggy or absent

Just as common, but rarely spoken about, are the days when leaders feel:
  • foggy
  • flat
  • disconnected
  • emotionally muted
  • unable to focus
  • strangely far away from themselves
This isn’t disinterest. It’s the body’s way of conserving energy when pressure accumulates for too long, something stress researchers call allostatic load (Sapolsky, 1998; McEwen & Wingfield, 2003). It feels like being below yourself, drifting down into a quiet, heavy place where everything slows. Again, not a character flaw. A physiological response.

The middle ground where leadership feels most like you

Most senior leaders can name the moments when they’ve felt aligned, present, and grounded. Where conversations felt steady, decisions were thoughtful, and leadership felt like an extension of their values rather than a performance. This middle ground is where:
  • strategic thinking opens up (Gross & Thompson, 2007)
  • compassion and clarity coexist (Boyatzis et al., 2006)
  • psychological safety is easier to create (Edmondson, 2019)
No-one lives here permanently. Leadership inevitably pulls people above and below themselves at times.
The real work, the sustainable work, is learning to notice the drift early and find your way back to centre.

What helps leaders return to their centre

Here’s what the research and leadership practice both agree on:
The things that bring leaders back into steady internal ground are small, intentional acts, not wholesale life changes.
Actions like:
  • pausing before entering a difficult room (Porges, 2021)
  • protecting short blocks of thinking time (Drucker, 2006)
  • slowing pace and tone in moments of tension (Caruso et al., 2002)
  • noticing early cues of pressure before they ramp up (Gross, 2015)
  • naming overwhelm instead of internalising it (Edmondson, 2019)
These are not luxuries. They’re recalibrations, ways of easing yourself back toward that middle space where leadership becomes grounded again.

What leaders need to hear more often

Your wellbeing is not separate from your leadership. It is leadership. Your internal state shapes:
  • the quality of your decisions
  • the tone of your conversations
  • the safety your team feels
  • the culture you create
Leaders who look after their inner world lead their outer world with far more clarity, humanity and impact (Arnold et al., 2017; Boyatzis et al., 2006). And here’s the truth beneath the research:
  • You don’t need to be endlessly fine.
  • You don’t need to carry everything alone.
  • You don’t need to push past every signal your body gives you.

You are a leader.

And you are human.
Your edges matter.
Your centre matters.
Your wellbeing is not a side project, it’s the place from which your best leadership emerges.

If any part of this felt familiar, the edges, the drift away from your centre, the quiet pull back toward steadier ground, you don’t have to navigate that alone.

This is the work I do with senior leaders every day: creating space to breathe, reset, and return to the version of yourself you lead best from. If you’d like to explore that gently, you’re welcome to start a conversation.
👉 Get in touch here Let’s Connect

References

Arnold, K.A., Connelly, C.E., Walsh, M.M. & Martin Ginis, K.A. (2017) ‘Leadership styles, emotion-regulation strategies and wellbeing’, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(4), 423–433.
Barsade, S.G. (2002) ‘The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behaviour’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644–675.
Boyatzis, R.E., Smith, M.L. & Blaize, N. (2006) ‘Developing sustainable leaders through coaching and compassion’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(1), 8–24.
Caruso, D.R., Mayer, J.D. & Salovey, P. (2002) The Emotionally Intelligent Manager. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Drucker, P. (2006) The Effective Executive. New York: HarperCollins.
Edmondson, A. (2019) The Fearless Organization. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Gross, J.J. (2015) ‘Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects’, Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.
Gross, J.J. & Thompson, R.A. (2007) ‘Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations’, in Gross, J.J. (ed.) Handbook of Emotion Regulation. New York: Guilford Press, 3–24.
Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. (2017) Burnout in the Workplace: A Psychological Perspective. New York: Routledge.
McEwen, B.S. & Wingfield, J.C. (2003) ‘The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine’, Hormones and Behavior, 43(1), 2–15.
Montano, D., Reeske, A., Franke, F. & Hüffmeier, J. (2017) ‘Leadership, followers’ mental health and job performance in organisations’, Work & Stress, 31(1), 1–24.
Muraven, M. & Baumeister, R.F. (2000) ‘Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources’, Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 247–259.
Porcelli, A.J. & Delgado, M.R. (2009) ‘Acute stress modulates risk taking in financial decision making’, Psychological Science, 20(3), 278–283.
Porges, S.W. (2021) Polyvagal Safety: Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation. New York: W.W. Norton.
Sapolsky, R.M. (1998) Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Skakon, J., Nielsen, K., Borg, V. & Guzman, J. (2010) ‘Are leaders’ wellbeing, behaviours and style associated with the wellbeing of their employees?’, Work & Stress, 24(2), 107–139.
Youssef, C.M., Nelson, D. & Avolio, B.J. (2012) ‘Psychological capital and emotional labour’, Human Resource Development Quarterly, 23(2), 157–176.