Rest as Strategy: The Leadership Case for Switching Off This Summer
This summer has brought political upheaval in several markets, record-breaking heat across large parts of the world, and a world that seems to lurch from one uncertainty to the next. It would be easy to conclude that leaders simply can’t afford to switch off right now. In our experience, and increasingly in the research, the opposite is not just true. It is key.
Occupational psychologists have spent two decades studying what’s known as psychological detachment: the ability to mentally switch off from work during non-work hours. The findings are remarkably consistent. People who detach properly report lower exhaustion, better sleep and sharper focus when they return, with no drop in engagement. The catch, sometimes called the recovery paradox, is that the people under the most pressure are precisely the ones who find it hardest to step back. Left unmanaged, that gap doesn’t disappear. It resurfaces later, as poorer decisions, shorter tempers, higher turnover at the top and, critically, increased health issues.
There’s a second finding that matters even more for leaders specifically: how a manager switches off shapes how their whole team switches off. Studies following leaders and their direct reports have found that when a leader properly detaches from work in their own time, the people who report to them detach more too, and are less exhausted for it. A leader who never switches off doesn’t just wear themselves down. They set the tempo for everyone beneath them, whether they mean to or not. Modelling rest is, in itself, a piece of leadership.
It’s a principle worth recognising from the mountains, too. No serious expedition succeeds on relentless forward motion alone. The strongest teams build in rest days, retreat to lower camps to recover, and treat acclimatisation as part of the plan rather than a delay to it. Push too hard for too long at altitude and judgement is the first thing to go, and on a mountain, that is exactly when you can least afford it. Boardrooms may have different stakes than the death zone, but the underlying physiology isn’t so different.
None of this is an argument against ambition. It’s an argument for pacing it properly. As we head deeper into the summer, our view is simple: taking real time away, with family, away from a screen, properly switched off, isn’t abdication of leadership. It’s part of the job. We’d encourage every leader reading this to take that time fully at least once this summer, and to give their own teams explicit permission to do the same.
– Jake Meyer, CEO, Inspirational Development (and passionate mountaineer)
Here’s how a few of us properly switched off…
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