Welcome to The Steady

The Steady is a fortnightly letter — a short one, by design — for leaders in values-led organisations. Government. NGOs. Health. Community. The places where the work is meaningful and the load is heavy, and the people at the helm tend to be the ones quietly skipping lunch.

Each issue will be the same simple shape:

•      One idea worth sitting with

•      One thing to try this week

•      A quiet invitation if you want to go deeper

That is it. No hustle, no hacks, no ten-things-highly-effective-leaders-do. Just a steady companion for the work of leading well, and staying well while you do it.

The Idea: Lead from overflow, not overwhelm

Here is the thing about running on empty: it does not just make us tired. It makes us worse at our jobs.

When your nervous system is in sustained stress — the low-grade, weeks-and-months kind that most leaders I work with have normalised — your body prioritises survival. It is brilliant at this. Blood moves to the large muscles. Cortisol sharpens your attention to threats. Your prefrontal cortex, the part that does nuanced thinking, dials down.

Which is exactly the opposite of what leadership asks of you.

Leadership asks for discernment. For empathy. For the patience to ask a second question before jumping to a solution. For the creative problem-solving that sees a third option when everyone else is stuck between two. None of these are available to a nervous system that thinks it is being chased by a tiger.

So when we push through — when we skip the walk, work through the lunch, answer the email at 10pm — we are not being more dedicated. We are quietly becoming less capable of the exact leadership our teams need from us.

This is the reframe I want to offer, and it is the idea everything else in The Steady will build on:

Reframe self-care

The small acts of self-tending — the proper breakfast, the ten-minute walk, the hard no to the 5pm meeting — are not distractions from your leadership. They ARE your leadership. They are what allows you to show up on Tuesday morning with the clarity and kindness that your team, your clients, and your own integrity deserve.

Leading from overflow means there is something in the cup to give. Leading from overwhelm means scraping the bottom of a cup that has been empty for months, and wondering why everything feels harder than it should.

Most of the leaders I work with are not short on commitment. They are short on a way to sustain it.

Try this week: The Energy Audit

Notice what gives you energy, and what drains it

Here is the small experiment. It takes about two minutes a day for three days.

At the end of the day — on your commute home, or before you close your laptop — write down two things:

•      What gave me energy today?

•      What drained me today?

That is the whole practice. Do not try to change anything yet. Do not problem-solve. Do not make a spreadsheet.

Just notice.

By the third day, patterns start to show up. You will see which meetings leave you lighter and which ones leave you flattened. Which interactions restore you. Which ones you brace for. You will probably notice something that surprises you — something you thought was fine, that actually isn’t, or something small you had dismissed, that is quietly keeping you going.

That noticing is the beginning. It is the data your leadership is currently running without.

One more thing: if nothing ended up in the “gave me energy” column on a given day, that is important information too. Do not rush past it.

A quiet invitation

If this issue found its way to you at the right moment, you might be curious about going deeper.

Leadership Mentoring offers a trusted thinking partnership for leaders in complex roles to grow their leadership capacity. You will grow your confidence and steadiness with new skills and ways of thinking and relating.

The Wholehearted Leadership Programme is a six-session programme for teams in values-led organisations who want to lead with more clarity, courage and sustainability — without sacrificing the parts of themselves that got them into this work in the first place.

If you would like to know more, just hit reply. I read everything.

Warmly,

Heather

When we thrive, the mission thrives too