Rest is a Leadership Discipline
For much of my career, I viewed fatigue as something to overcome.
In the military, particularly in the EOD and diving communities, operating while tired was often simply part of the job. Basic training introduces sleep deprivation early, and during deployments and combat operations, inadequate sleep can become the norm. You learn to push through it.
There are times when that is necessary, but somewhere along the way, many of us—military leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and business owners alike—began treating a lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
It isn’t.
In Elevate Your Leadership, I identify six components of what I call the Science of Leadership: rest, hydration, nutrition, exercise, brain and heart health, and lifelong learning. I put rest first for a reason. These factors directly influence our executive function—what I simplify as our ability to see, hear, and think.
If you cannot see, hear, and think clearly, then your ability to lead is compromised.
Tired Leaders Make Different Decisions
Most leaders understand intellectually that sleep matters. What we sometimes fail to appreciate is how quickly fatigue begins affecting the very capabilities we depend upon to lead.
Decision-making. Patience. Situational awareness. Mental flexibility. Emotional control.
Think about the decisions you make during an average day. Hiring. Firing. Budgets. Strategy. Customers. Employees. Safety. Investments. Perhaps millions of dollars are at stake.
Now ask yourself a simple question: Would you rather make those decisions at your mental best or exhausted?
I write about a marketing decision I made several years ago when I was tired and under pressure from a salesperson. The next morning, after agreeing to something I later regretted, my reaction was simple: “What was I thinking?”
The answer was equally simple. I wasn’t thinking at my best.
That experience reinforced a rule I try to follow today: when you know you are not well rested, avoid making important decisions whenever circumstances allow. An unrested leader is simply not as prepared for the challenges of the day.
HALT Before You Lead
One of the concepts I discuss in the book is HALT.
We tend to make poorer decisions when we are: Hungry. Angry. Lonely. Tired.
Each of these conditions can reduce executive function. Fatigue is particularly dangerous because leaders often don’t recognize how impaired they have become. We tell ourselves we’re fine. We grab another cup of coffee and keep moving.
However, inadequate sleep often creates a cascade.
We over-caffeinate, skip exercise, and make poorer food choices. Our energy drops. Our mental clarity declines. And eventually, our performance suffers.
That isn’t high performance. That’s borrowing performance from tomorrow to get through today.
I Learned This Lesson in the Military
There are environments where fatigue cannot simply be avoided. I’ve been there.
But my years in Navy EOD and diving also taught me that fatigue has consequences. When someone is rendering safe an explosive device or conducting a complex diving operation, lack of sleep isn’t merely an inconvenience. A mistake can be catastrophic.
Looking back, I wish I had understood the importance of rest earlier in my career.
Leadership isn’t about proving how much punishment you can endure. It is about maintaining yourself at a level that allows you to make good decisions and take care of the people entrusted to you.
This statement leads to an important point: Rest isn’t only about you.
Leaders Have a Responsibility to Notice Fatigue in Others
Leadership requires us to operate in stereo.
We need to monitor ourselves, but we also need to pay attention to the people around us.
If someone on your team consistently arrives exhausted, disengaged, or unable to perform at their normal level, that becomes a leadership issue. Their lack of rest may affect productivity, customer interactions, safety, judgment, and ultimately the performance of the organization.
That doesn’t mean micromanaging someone’s bedtime.
It means knowing your people well enough to recognize when something is different.
Great leaders pay attention.
Recovery Is Part of Performance
The human body isn’t designed to operate indefinitely without recovery.
Sleep is when some of our most important restorative processes occur. In the book, I discuss melatonin and human growth hormone and their relationship to sleep. Melatonin helps regulate our circadian rhythm, while deep, restful sleep supports the release of human growth hormone associated with tissue repair and regeneration.
Therefore, perhaps we need to change the way we think about rest.
Rest is not the absence of productivity. Rest enables productivity.
Athletes understand this. You cannot train at maximum intensity every day without recovery and expect performance to improve.
Leadership is no different.
Rest Requires Discipline
We often associate leadership discipline with getting up early, working harder, staying late, answering one more email, or pushing through adversity.
Discipline sometimes means doing exactly that, but discipline sometimes means going to bed.
It means shutting down the computer. Putting away the phone. Limiting caffeine and alcohol late in the day. Creating a bedroom that is dark, cool, and quiet.
Recognizing that tomorrow’s performance is being shaped tonight. and perhaps most importantly, it means abandoning the idea that exhaustion somehow demonstrates commitment.
It doesn’t.
Your team doesn’t need the most exhausted version of you. They need the best version of you.
In Elevate Your Leadership, I make a very simple statement: Hi-performance leaders get enough sleep.
That may not sound as exciting as strategy, culture, courage, accountability, or vision.
But without the physical and mental capacity to execute those things, none of them matter very much.
Tonight, instead of answering one more email or squeezing another hour out of the day, consider making an investment in tomorrow’s leadership.
Get some sleep.
Your brain, your body, your business—and the people you lead—will thank you for it.