I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of exhaustion many leaders are carrying right now.
Not just workload exhaustion.
Not just long hours or operational pressure.
A deeper exhaustion.
The exhaustion that comes from feeling like you constantly need to hold everything together.
The strategy.
The culture.
The uncertainty.
Other people’s emotions.
Stakeholder expectations.
The pressure to say the right thing, make the right decision, and somehow stay steady while the world around you keeps shifting.
And underneath that, I think there’s another layer.
Many leaders were taught to lead through certainty.
To analyse quickly.
To form strong opinions.
To defend positions.
To project confidence.
Our education system rewards it.
Workplaces reinforce it.
Social media amplifies it.
But the reality is that many of the challenges leaders face now don’t have one perfectly right answer.
There are competing needs.
Multiple truths.
Trade-offs.
Changing conditions.
And trying to hold all of that through force, control, or certainty alone is exhausting.
What I’m noticing is that leadership today requires something different.
Not less strength.
But a different relationship with strength.
The ability to stay open longer.
To hold uncertainty without collapsing into fear.
To listen deeply before reacting.
To trust yourself without needing constant external validation or agreement.
And I think this starts internally.
Because often the pressure to “hold it all together” externally mirrors something happening within us.
A fear of getting it wrong.
A need to be approved of.
An attachment to certainty.
A belief that leadership means always having the answer.
But what if leadership is becoming less about controlling everything around you…
…and more about learning how to return to your own centre within complexity?
Not shutting down.
Not becoming passive.
But finding a steadier place inside yourself from which you can think, relate, decide, and lead.
I’ve noticed that when leaders can do this, something changes.
They become less reactive.
More present.
More able to hold multiple perspectives.
More human.
And strangely, that often creates more trust – not less.
Because people don’t just respond to certainty.
They respond to steadiness.
To honesty.
To leaders who can stay grounded without pretending to have complete control.
Maybe that’s part of what’s being asked of leadership now.