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How neuroscience shows that true leadership strength comes not from constant availability, but from the courage to rest, reset, and return with clarity.
I was talking to a friend the other day as she was packing for her holiday abroad.
“What a great time to switch off,” I said.
“Well, I’ll still check my emails,” she replied.
“Oh? Why?”
“In case there’s anything urgent.”
I asked whether she had an out-of-office response set up — something that told people she was away, gave them an alternative contact, or offered her mobile number in case of a true emergency. She did.
“So why check?” I pressed.
She thought for a moment. “I suppose because I don’t want to return to a mountain of messages.” Then she laughed: “Although, now I think about it, a lot of it does resolve itself when I’m away. It doesn’t need my input after all.”
Finally, I asked how she felt when she stayed partially “on” during a holiday. Her answer was simple: “Less relaxed.”
That made her pause. And then she decided: I’ll try an experiment.
The Leadership Myth: Rest as a Perk
For many senior leaders, the idea of fully switching off feels irresponsible, or even dangerous. Constant availability has become conflated with commitment. Yet neuroscience shows the opposite: remaining always “on” actively undermines performance, clarity, and resilience.
Switching off isn’t a luxury. It’s a cognitive requirement.
The Brain Isn’t Built for Constant Work
The brain’s executive control network – centred in the prefrontal cortex – allows us to focus, plan, and make decisions. But it tires quickly, especially under stress and distraction.
Leaders who push it continuously experience:
Tunnel vision – reduced capacity to see the bigger picture.
Reactive decision-making – defaulting to short-term fixes.
The solution isn’t more grit. It’s cognitive variety.
The Default Mode Network (DMN) activates during rest, reflection, and daydreaming — key for creativity, long-term planning, and emotional processing.
The Salience Network acts as a switchboard, helping us notice what matters and move between focus and reflection.
Even subcortical “hot” networks, linked to emotion and intuition, influence decisions in powerful ways.
When leaders never switch off, these systems are suppressed. They may execute efficiently in the short term, but they lose strategic and emotional capacity over time.
The Cost of Always Being On
Research is clear: failing to detach from work leads to poorer sleep, higher stress, and lower engagement (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015). Even quick email checks create attention residue — where part of the mind remains occupied by unfinished tasks (Leroy, 2009).
The consequences for leaders and organisations are profound:
Reduced Strategic Capacity – without downtime, leaders lose the ability to integrate insights into long-term vision.
Weaker Resilience – chronic vigilance raises cortisol and erodes stamina.
Cultural Contagion – leaders who respond at midnight model burnout as a norm, spreading it across their teams.
Why Leaders Struggle to Switch Off
Despite the evidence, many leaders remain tethered to their inboxes. Neuroscience explains why:
Dopamine loops: Email provides unpredictable rewards — urgent requests, praise, or nothing at all — a pattern that’s addictive.
Fear of loss of control: Leaders often overestimate how much truly depends on their input.
Identity attachment: Being “indispensable” feels like being valuable — but it keeps leaders reactive instead of strategic.
How to Switch Off Without Losing Control
Switching off doesn’t mean shirking responsibility. It means designing leadership for peak brain performance — for yourself and your team.
Redefine urgency: Use autoresponders with clear alternatives and escalation protocols.
Protect a transition window: Avoid email completely for the first 72 hours of holiday — the brain needs this to downshift.
Create recovery rituals: Walks, journaling, or tech-free meals cue the brain that it’s safe to rest.
Model boundaries: Leaders who visibly detach normalise rest for their teams.
Audit post-holiday insights: Write down new ideas or perspectives that emerged during rest — this reinforces the value of switching off.
A Future Skill: Cognitive Design
In a culture obsessed with productivity hacks and 24/7 availability, the real competitive advantage is cognitive design.
Leaders who deliberately create space for different brain networks don’t just protect against burnout — they build organisations that think more clearly, innovate more boldly, and adapt more quickly.
Switching off isn’t wasted time. It’s invested time — in the clarity and creativity leaders bring back.
Back to the Experiment
So, what happened to my friend?
She kept her promise. She didn’t check her emails once. Nothing collapsed. Urgent matters were managed. And many issues resolved themselves without her input.
Most importantly, she felt different: more deeply relaxed than she’d ever been, clearer in her thinking, and excited to return to work with fresh ideas that had emerged while her brain finally had space to rest.
The lesson is simple but vital: leaders don’t need to be always-on to be effective. In fact, the opposite is true. The courage to switch off may be one of the most strategic decisions you ever make.
