In the new world of work, careers are unfolding inside teams that operate with more autonomy, speed, and complexity than ever before. The challenge for leaders isn’t just to keep up, it’s to build careers and teams that are resilient, innovative, and ready to meet the demands of a rapidly changing workplace.
But here’s the paradox: you can’t lead clearly if you’re exhausted. You can’t make sound decisions if you’re chronically depleted. You can’t build a lasting career if you’re always recovering from it. And you certainly can’t build a thriving team or culture if you’re quietly burning out to hold it all together.
I’ve seen this up close — in my career and the lives of the leaders and teams I advise. Too many of us have absorbed a dangerous message: success requires self-sacrifice. That leadership means being always on, always pushing through adrenaline, always performing.
But making yourself the cost of performance drains the stamina you need to lead with clarity and care when it matters most.
The good news? We don’t have to live and work that way anymore. We can build careers and organizations that support long-term resilience and emotional strength, not just short-term energy bursts. But this requires a reset: less of what drains us and more of what moves us forward.
The Data Is Clear: Less Can Lead To More In Your Career
A growing body of research confirms what we’ve known in our bones: overwork doesn’t prove your worth. And hustle? It’s a cultural meme — loud, shallow, and a barrier to performance and well-being.
A U.K. pilot of a four-day workweek across 61 companies found that productivity held steady or increased, while employee burnout, resignations, and sick days dropped significantly. Over 90% of companies chose to keep the model after the trial ended.
And it’s not just about hours. Analysis of knowledge workers found that breaks and schedule flexibility improved performance, helped workers recover cognitive clarity, and reduced costly errors.
The most effective leaders I know aren’t the busiest. They’ve stopped confusing output with worth. They lead with intention, not endless intensity. That shift — from intensity to intentionality — is a strategic, design choice.
Especially For Women, The Career Cost Is Higher
We must keep repeating this truth: the burden isn’t evenly distributed. In her new book, This Isn’t Working, Meghan French Dunbar highlights a striking insight: “Working women’s well-being is declining faster than men’s.”
That’s a systemic failure that we can’t afford to ignore. As Meghan explained to me, “Business was designed by men — for men. Women have only been allowed into the business world in significant numbers for the last 50 years. That means we were excluded from shaping the systems, cultures, and norms of work for most of its history. The men who designed these systems often held deeply patriarchal beliefs that women were inferior — and these beliefs have seeped into workplace policies, leadership models, and unspoken cultural rules.”
Now we’re in the room, but the systems still expect us to lead like we don’t have bodies, caregiving roles, or burnout limits.
Women — especially women of color — are often praised for “doing it all,” while being disproportionately tasked with invisible labor, emotional management, and over performance just to be seen as competent. I’ve lived it. So have most women leaders I know.
And when women burn out, the losses ripple through organizations: culture weakens, innovation slows, and trust erodes.
So, if the current systems are failing women and organizations, what should success look like instead?
There’s A Better Career Success Metric: Human Flourishing
At Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, Dr. Tyler VanderWeele offers a framework for redefining what success really means. Instead of rewarding output alone, he asks: Are people thriving?
The six core domains of flourishing are:
- Happiness and life satisfaction
- Mental and physical health
- Meaning and purpose
- Character and virtue
- Close social relationships
- Financial and material stability.
VanderWeele makes a compelling case: flourishing can’t wait until we “find the time.” It must be the baseline for how we design our lives, leadership, and organizations.
This is more than a philosophy; it’s a performance strategy. Companies that prioritize well-being, autonomy, connection, and purpose consistently outperform those that run on hustle and heroic exhaustion.
Meghan echoed this: “When leaders understand that, they start to see self-care not as indulgence, but as a responsibility. Taking care of yourself is what enables you to show up at your best for others.”
Lead With Limits, Build Careers That Last.
In This Isn’t Working, Meghan shares proof points from companies doing things differently:
- Torani Syrups builds collaborative systems that reduce isolation, prioritize mental health, and give employees real purpose. Their outcome? Over 20% year-over-year growth for more than three decades.
- Eileen Fisher, WOCStar Capital, and EO Products all center well-being, inclusion, and meaning, not just productivity.
“We don’t have to imagine (better models),” Meghan told me. “We can learn from them, adapt their practices, and scale them.”
Five Shifts To Build A Career You Don’t Have To Recover From
You don’t need a company-wide overhaul to make change. But you do need structure. Here’s where to begin:
1. Reflect. Not A Status Update — A Career Pulse.
A career you don’t have to recover from starts with clarity about what matters most. Reflection is direction.
Taylor Swift recently put it this way on the New Heights podcast: “Think of your energy as if it’s expensive, as if it’s a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it… What you spend your energy on—that’s the day.”
She’s right. Energy is your most valuable resource. Reflection helps you notice where it’s going and whether it’s aligned with the career you deserve and crave.
- Head: Am I clear on my priorities, or chasing every fire?
- Heart: Am I aligned with my values, or performing someone else’s script?
- Body: Am I sustaining my energy, or ignoring the signals that I’m running on empty?
Burnout is feedback. And reflection is how you course-correct before exhaustion becomes your career story.
2. Replenish. Not A Perk — A Career Practice.
A career you can sustain over decades requires stamina, not just spurts of adrenaline. Replenishment is leadership fuel. Protect time for reflection, movement, deep thinking, or even doing nothing. Those pauses aren’t distractions from your career; they’re what allow it to last.
Author Emily Austen, in her book Smarter, pushes back on grind culture with what she calls the “8AM Club” — a cheeky counterpoint to the cult of 5AM wake-ups. Her point is simple: productivity is personal. Forcing yourself into someone else’s routine isn’t proof of ambition; it’s a recipe for exhaustion.
The same is true for leadership. Replenishment is not indulgence; it’s infrastructure. The leaders who last are the ones who stop measuring their worth by how early they start and begin designing their careers around what sustains them.
As Tony Schwartz, founder of The Energy Project, notes: sustainable high performance isn’t about how long you endure but how well you recover and renew.
3. Redefine. Not Busy — Career Effectiveness.
In today’s workplace — where autonomy, speed, and complexity define daily reality — chasing every fire isn’t leadership, it’s survival mode. Distinguishing urgency from importance is what keeps careers sustainable and teams effective. Stop glorifying hours logged or calendars packed. Stop carrying what isn’t yours to carry. Real success and sustained performance comes from clarity, emotional resilience, and boundaries.
In her book Smarter, author Emily Austen calls this trap the “approval addiction cycle,” where packed calendars and 5 AM routines become highlight reels of busyness rather than value measures. “Busyness has become currency,” she warns. And she’s right. But it’s not just an individual trap, it’s a leadership design flaw. When leaders equate visibility with value, they normalize exhaustion as proof of ambition.
Your team will follow what you model and reward, not what you preach. Show them that effectiveness is about focus and boundaries, not overload.
4. Reveal. Not Silence — Career Truths (including what’s not working).
A career you don’t have to recover from is one where you can tell the truth about what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change. People can handle uncertainty, but not abandonment. Silence breeds fear; transparency builds trust. Surface unrealistic workloads or unspoken expectations before cracks turn into fractures.
Be real. Be clear. Be caring. That’s how you create cultures where both careers and people can thrive.
5. Recalibrate. Not Just Output — Build Careers That Last.
The new world of work doesn’t reward endless output; it rewards adaptability, clarity, and connection. That’s why recalibration matters in the cadence of careers that thrive.
Don’t just ask if you’re delivering — ask if you and your team are thriving. Energy, connection, and alignment are signals of sustainability in a workplace defined by constant change.
Even small acts matter: a 15-minute 1:1 to listen deeply can ripple across a culture. Check in often: Are we energized, connected, aligned? What feels stuck? What’s worth celebrating?
As Meghan reminded me: “When people feel seen and heard by their leader, it changes how they feel about work. It’s a deceptively simple shift that can transform culture from the ground up.”
Together, these are a new rhythm of leadership. Reflect, replenish, redefine, reveal, recalibrate: the cadence of careers that last. That’s how you stop leading on autopilot and start leading by design. That’s how you build the kind of career, and culture, you don’t have to recover from.
Lead by Design. Build a Career That Lasts.
We say we want sustainable leadership, but sustainability isn’t a vibe; it’s a design decision. You can still be ambitious. You can still lead brilliantly. But you don’t have to grind yourself down to prove it.
The real measure of leadership design isn’t how much you carry. It’s whether the careers and cultures you shape endure.