Protecting Your Energy is a Leadership Flex

The Link Between Energy Management and Effective Leadership

Learn why protecting your energy is a vital leadership skill and how redefining success through boundaries, clarity, and intention can help you lead sustainably - without burnout, overfunctioning, or self-sacrifice.

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There was a time in my life when being available to everyone felt like the cost of my job. I’d (secretly) pride myself on how much I could carry. I’d answer late-night messages, jump on one more call, pick up the emotional slack in a meeting - and still try to be present at home.

It worked, for a while. It made me feel like I was performing at a high level, like I mattered so much. You know where this is going 😂

Inevitably, eventually, after many years of operating this way, my capacity hit a ceiling. Not just in terms of time, but energetically. I was doing everything right - and feeling increasingly wrong inside.

Over time I realized: protecting my energy wasn’t a luxury. It was how I needed to lead myself to have a life I could joyfully live.

Leadership Begins With Self-Leadership

I think that the way you manage your energy says a lot about the kind of leader you are.

If you’re constantly overextended, chronically responsive, or low-key resentful - you’re not leading with presence. You’re leading from depletion. And while you might still be delivering, you’re no longer offering the kind of clarity, steadiness, and emotional regulation that real leadership needs.

Unprotected energy shows up in subtle but significant ways. For me, I would realize that my thinking would become less clear. I’d find myself second-guessing, avoiding deep work, or feeling foggy in conversations that needed my full attention.

I wasn’t burned out though (or maybe I was) - but I was also energetically brittle.

I see the same thing in the leaders I coach. Brilliant, accomplished people who are so used to overfunctioning that they don’t recognize how much it’s costing them. Until they’re so exhausted and have nothing left to give.

Energy Is Contagious

One of the most overlooked aspects of leadership is how much we absorb from the spaces around us. Whether you’re in a boardroom, a group chat, or a team of founders, you are influenced by the emotional tone, spoken or unspoken norms, and expectations that shape the room.

And unless you’re actively protecting your energy, you can start to match the room.

This happened me when I was part of the launch team at Twitter in Canada back in 2013. I was answering emails at 10pm because everyone else was. I kept saying yes even though my body is clearly saying no (I was so tired). I ignored my intuition in service of the collective pace, and after a while, I drifted from my personal values, and nearly forgot how to hear myself think.

The Cost of Carrying Everything

Here’s what unprotected energy can look like in practice:

• Saying yes when you want to say no, and then feeling irritated or resentful

• Feeling deeply responsible for other people’s emotions

• Always being “on” and not knowing how to turn it off

• Losing access to creative thinking because your system is stuck in reactivity

These are not personality quirks. They’re survival habits - especially common among high-functioning, highly empathetic leaders.

But they are not sustainable.

And what’s worse, they start to model something damaging for the people around you. You teach your team (and your children, and your community) that being a good leader means being constantly available, endlessly self-sacrificing, and barely human.

That’s not leadership. That’s burnout in disguise. Not good vibes.

How to Lead With Protected Energy

For me, the most profound shift I made to truly honour my energy was choosing to stop drinking alcohol. It was subtle at first, but undeniable. Over the years, alcohol quietly drained more of my energy than I ever realised - physically, emotionally, even spiritually.

Letting it go wasn’t about restriction. It was an act of liberation and a powerful choice to become the kind of person and leader I want to be. To this day, it remains the most powerful decision I’ve made to protect my energy and return to myself.

Along with that, here are a few other practices that help me, which I return to again and again:

1. Track your energetic before-and-after
   Notice how you feel before and after certain meetings (especially with certain people), conversations, or interactions. Your body always knows.

2. Redefine success on your terms
   For me, success now looks like space in my day. Time to write. Presence with my son. A life that actually feels like mine.

3. Create rituals of return
   Whether it’s five quiet minutes in the morning or a walk after school drop-off, find tiny ways to return to yourself.

4. Be willing to disappoint people
   Protecting your energy sometimes means others don’t get what they want from you. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It means you’re leading.

5. Build your own room
   Surround yourself with people who respect your energy - people who inspire you to stay regulated, present, and honest. Rooms where you feel like your full self, not just your title or what you have to give.

Final Thought: Energy Is Leadership

At this stage in my life and work, I no longer want to be the busiest person in the room. I want to be the calmest. The clearest. The most present.

Leadership for me is not about what I can carry, or how hard and long I can work. Leadership (and success) must be personal reflections of our unique strengths, gifts, values, and talents - because this is how we contribute our best selves.

We cannot do that without being intentional about how we share our energy with the world.

Energy is not infinite. It’s precious. And the way we protect, direct, and restore it determines not just how we lead - but who we become in the process. When your leadership is rooted in energy that is clean, intentional, and grounded… you don’t just show up more fully. You invite everyone around you to do the same.

Questions for reflection:

• Where in your life or leadership are you spending energy out of habit, expectation, or fear - rather than intention or alignment?

• What does a well-protected, well-resourced version of you feel like - and what boundaries or shifts might help you move toward that?

• If your leadership reflected your values more fully, what would you say yes to more often - and what would you lovingly release?

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