Leading Is Emotionally Draining. Here’s How to Recover.

Summary:

You have to lay off a team member, deliver hard feedback in a tense meeting, or end the day absorbing the resignation of a top performer. No crisis. Just another Tuesday.

Each of these moments is emotionally taxing on its own. But taken together—and set against a backdrop of performance pressures, shifting workplace norms, and the unrelenting emotional labor of guiding and supporting teams through crises and global turmoil—they quietly add up.

Newly released Gallup data reflects this toll. In 2024, global employee engagement declined for only the second time in over a decade. Unlike the first drop in 2020, however, the drop wasn’t driven by frontline workers. Instead, it was entirely due to declining engagement among managers. In a March 2025 survey by Modern Health, 77% of managers reported that their role was more challenging now than ever before.

Understandably, leaders focus on managing others through challenging moments. Faced with external expectations and a genuine desire to show up for their teams, they direct their attention and energy outward: guiding, steadying, and responding. But with that external focus and the nonstop pressure for results, it’s easy for leaders to overlook a crucial step: processing their own emotional experience. Pressing on feels efficient, even the only choice to stay afloat amid all the demands on your time. Indeed, it can feel nearly impossible to process your emotions when you’re in the thick of it at work. But over time, just powering through weighty situations without pausing to process your experience can come at a steep cost to your health, effectiveness as a leader, and relationships.

Emotional depletion is a real and significant tax of modern leadership. Recovery is no longer a luxury. Instead, it’s a leadership imperative, critical for protecting your well-being and sustaining your capacity to lead over the long haul. After a challenging event or period, use these three proven practices to process your emotions and replenish your energy.

Reflect: Don’t just move on—make meaning.

While revisiting weighty times may sound undesirable, taking the time to reflect on them is key to moving forward. When we ignore or suppress our emotions, they don’t disappear—they accumulate in the background, resurfacing later as increased stress, reactivity, and health issues. Reflection helps us process and metabolize what we’ve experienced so that we don’t unintentionally carry it around.

Carve out a few minutes after a challenging moment or day, and ask yourself:

What am I feeling?
Where do I feel it in my body?
What are my emotions trying to tell me?
What do they reveal about what matters to me?

Acknowledge and accept your feelings without judgment. All emotions—even the unpleasant ones like frustration, sadness, or anxiety—offer valuable insights into our values, needs, and limits. Judging and resisting them only escalates the feeling and increases your reactivity.

Consider writing down your responses to these questions. Writing creates space between you and your emotions, allowing you to identify meaning and purposeful next steps. Furthermore, research has shown that writing about your feelings for just 20 minutes a day over three days can improve both mental and physical health, reduce anxiety, and even boost job performance. If writing isn’t your cup of tea, try leaving yourself a voice memo instead. What matters most is giving your thoughts and true feelings space to surface without editing or filtering.

Alternatively, share your experience and challenges with a trusted peer or other sounding board. Social support not only helps us make sense of and process difficult events but also enhances our resilience to stress, protects us from burnout, and promotes our mental and physical well-being. Leadership is often a lonely experience, and having trusted peers, mentors, and other supports can be a powerful source of connection and clarity.

Reflection doesn’t require a lot of time. It just takes the discipline to pause amid the busyness. Even a few intentional minutes can help you build the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and resilience essential for effective leadership in today’s complex and challenging world.

Reframe: Shift the narrative.

Reappraising emotionally taxing experiences can also speed recovery by reducing our distress and freeing up our cognitive resources. Reframing doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the difficulty of a situation; instead, it’s about shifting your perspective to find new meaning or possibility.

For example, after successfully leading a major turnaround, my client Jacob was blindsided by a reorg that reassigned his team and left his role uncertain. Understandably, he was both frustrated and stressed. But over time, Jacob began to see the situation differently: as a chance to recharge after an intense chapter, and an opportunity to stretch into something new. By finding a silver lining, Jacob shifted his emotional state and was able to show up with more steadiness and optimism, while the organizational changes and his new role solidified.

On the backside of a tough event, consider asking:

What are the possible silver linings in this situation?
What are the potential long-term benefits despite the short-term costs?
How can I grow from it, or use it to build something better in the future?
When you change the story, you change your experience—and you gain access to new energy, insight, and direction.

Sometimes, however, it’s not just the situation that needs reframing; it’s how you see yourself in relation to it. Many emotionally intense leadership moments involve performing “necessary evils,” making decisions or taking actions that cause discomfort or harm to others, such as delivering tough feedback, letting someone go, restructuring a change-fatigued team, or implementing layoffs. Even when these actions are necessary for the greater good, they can leave leaders feeling anxious, guilty, and questioning their self-image as a fair and moral person.

In these moments, self-compassion is a critical tool. It doesn’t mean lowering your standards or avoiding responsibility. In fact, research shows self-compassion improves leadership, increasing emotional intelligence, composure under pressure, and resilience. Further, it enhances our psychological well-being and increases the compassion we show to others. Practicing self-compassion simply means treating yourself as you would a friend: acknowledging the challenge, recognizing anyone in your position might feel the same way, and responding with kindness instead of criticism.

After hard moments, ask yourself: What would I say to a colleague struggling with this same situation? Then extend that same support inward. This quiet act of self-kindness will help you feel better, recover faster, and lead more effectively.

Restore: Replenish your emotional reserves.

When we push through emotionally difficult events without pausing to recover, we slowly drain our emotional and physical reserves. Over time, this can lead to emotional exhaustion and damage our mood, health, and effectiveness. Just like athletes need rest after an intense game, professionals must replenish after emotionally demanding situations at work.

Without replenishment, the risk of burnout and long-term health issues climbs. Ironically, the more depleted you become, the less likely you are to engage in the very behaviors that would help. This is known as the recovery paradox: when you need a break the most, you’re least likely to take one.

Critically, recovering isn’t just about taking time off. It’s about engaging in the right kinds of experiences. Research highlights four that are particularly effective:

Detachment, or giving your mind a true break. Resist checking email after hours and avoid replaying the workday in your head.
Relaxation, or building in moments like taking a walk without your phone, listening to a calming playlist, or spending quiet time outdoors.
Mastery, or doing something that challenges you in a positive way. Try a new recipe, pick up a hobby, or learn something unrelated to your role.
Control, or protecting pockets of time where you choose what to do, even if it’s just saying no to one more commitment.

If you think you don’t have time to relax, or worry that it might seem selfish, think again. Research shows that when leaders spend time on hobbies, relaxation, or other enjoyable activities after work, both they and their teams feel and perform better the next day.

Intentionally investing in recovering after an emotionally demanding stretch isn’t just helpful; it’s essential to leading today. Reflecting, reframing, and restoring don’t just help you reset in the short term; they also help you build the emotional muscle to handle future challenges with more steadiness and strength. Because your team doesn’t just need you today—they need you to last.

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