“Real leadership isn’t about carrying the load for everyone — it’s about showing that achievement and care can coexist.”
— Sue Johnston
This time of year, many leaders are running on fumes.
Work deadlines, tired teams, year-end pressures — it’s a lot.
And for good leaders, the instinct is often to protect the people around them.
So they stay late, pick up the slack, and tell their teams, “You take a break — I’ll handle this.”
It comes from care and integrity.
But here’s the catch: it doesn’t actually build resilience.
When leaders protect everyone by overworking themselves, they send an unspoken message — that wellbeing and achievement can’t coexist. That one has to be sacrificed for the other.
In the short term, things get done.
In the long term, everyone loses.
Because people don’t just listen to what leaders say — they watch what leaders do.
And what we model teaches more than any wellbeing initiative ever could.
Resilient leadership means showing how achievement and wellbeing can sit side by side.
That looks like:
Setting boundaries that protect your focus and your energy.
Celebrating progress, not perfection.
Making rest part of the work, not a reward for finishing it.
It’s not about doing less — it’s about doing it differently.
At LifeStar, we talk about five points that together create sustainable energy: Move, Stop, Care, Connect, and Achieve.
When these five are blended and balanced, your energy system stays replenished — you have reserves to draw on, perspective to lead from, and capacity to keep others steady.
Sometimes, one or two points stand out more than others. In this case, it’s Achieve and Care — the reminder that performance and wellbeing belong together, not in competition. When both are active, leaders build regenerative resilience — the kind that replenishes as it performs.
That’s what teams need most right now.
Not someone trying to carry it all, but someone showing that it’s possible to succeed without depletion.
If you coach leaders, this is a powerful conversation to bring forward.
Ask your clients what “protecting their team” really looks like — and at what cost.
Help them see that their intent to care is already a strength. The shift is in applying that same care to themselves, so it becomes sustainable.
Explore questions like:
How do you define achievement when energy is low?
What would it look like to model recovery rather than just endurance?
Which of the LifeStar points — Move, Stop, Care, Connect, or Achieve — might need attention right now?
When leaders understand that self-care isn’t selfish, but a way to keep showing up for others, they build cultures of genuine resilience.
Where are you protecting your team in ways that drain your own energy?
And what might change if you protected your energy as part of supporting them?
That’s what balance in leadership really looks like — not a trade-off, but a model for how sustainable achievement is done.