Leadership requires rest

Leaders are inevitably exhausted

Many of the leaders around me are perpetually exhausted. This seems to be part of the burden of leadership; a leader shoulders many burdens, and a servant leader - the penultimate kind of Christian leader - shoulders even more.

This seems like a problem to me. A leader bears many burdens, and thus is exhausted. A leader who is exhausted is expected to still bear many burdens, and therefore cannot lead effectively. This lack of effective leadership creates problems within the organization, which create burdens that bubble up to the leader. Is this not a vicious cycle?

The easy answer is that the leader should delegate, of course. I’ve listened enough to various leadership gurus to know this is an ideal. In reality, the leader does not always feel they can delegate, for many reasons. Sometimes there is simply no one to delegate to; they are the only one with the required skill or knowledge or position. Sometimes they do not trust their subordinates enough to delegate to them; there may be good reason for this too. And so on…

The hard answer, I think, involves rest.

Rest is hard

Why is rest hard?

It’s hard for leaders, because they have burdens that no one else does. Their actions - and in fact even their inaction - make a direct impact on the people they are leading and the things the organization achieves. To quote John Maxwell, leaders see more than their subordinates, and they see before. And when you do, often you feel more. More responsible, more worried, more… tired.

Often leaders are those within an organization who are simply better. They are often more capable, more passionate, more experienced… But leaders are human still. And humans need rest. (even if we have spent centuries trying to invent ways to avoid it)

The problem, if you ask a leader, is that this takes time, and time is a scarce resource.

What is rest?

I think this is not wrong. Time is indeed a scarce resource. But I also think our perspective matters here.

Firstly, life is not made up only of our productive moments. Some simple and naive math; a worker who works hard for 5 years, and then is hospitalized for 1 year, could have just spent 1/6 of their time resting and probably be better off.

Secondly, rest is not being idle. Rest can look like writing a blog, or training a skill, or volunteering in the community. Rest can be productive, but probably in a different vein than work.

Leaders need rest

So for leaders, I think the answer is rest. Every individual’s rest is going to look different, but the need for rest is universal.