This Workplace Risk Is Hiding In Plain Sight
July 2026
The storm and the calm exist in the same sky. So do you. Photo by Mike LeMay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/clouds-at-sunset-over-lake-12183137/
Fueling the atmosphere
Have you ever been in the room when a leader, with a sharp edge and biting tone, publicly snaps at and silences one of your colleagues for an uninvited comment or question?
Or have you personally been on the receiving end of a terse email directive from your boss with a not so subtly shaming “you should have known or done this already” message.
If so, then you know all too well how a leader’s energy can suck the oxygen right out of a room.
In the same way that a warm smile, praise, or empowering demonstration of trust from a leader can open up the skies, a harsh word from an overwhelmed, frustrated leader creates a typhoon.
Recently my friend, Andrea Butcher, podcaster and co-founder of Abundant Empowerment, reframed this in a powerful way after experiencing one of my workshops:
“Your nervous system response doesn't stay private when you're leading a team. It becomes the environment.”
She was expertly riffing off a Brené Brown quote I heard at the Bamboo HR Virtual Summit that I’ve been sharing everywhere:
“If I can’t manage my nervous system, I can’t manage a team.”
The idea that a dysregulated leader isn’t capable of leading should stop every leader dead in their tracks. It gives language for the reality that the most dangerous leader in your organization is the one who pushes through their own exhaustion.
Why?
Because “dysregulation” simply means someone who is overwhelmed and not pausing to recognize or calm the state they are in.
And that is a clear risk that is likely rampant in your organization... and not being named.
The Exhaustion Contagion
What is “nervous system regulation” anyway?
The first thing we need to name is that it seems like everyone and their cousin is referencing "nervous system regulation" these days. You may be jumping on board that buzzword bandwagon with both feet, or you may be blowing it off as just another fluffy spiritual woo-woo thing that doesn't apply to the workplace.
Here's the truth: we all have a nervous system, and it is doing one primary job, keeping us alive. Those who talk about “nervous system regulation” are referring to our body's ability to move between a state of threat response and high alert vs a state of rest and recovery. And dysregulation simply addresses the real time moments when our body gets stuck in that "threatened, high alert”, which it's commonly doing most or all of the time. This is NOT intended to be our natural state. And, in a word, it is exhausting.
Why do I feel so exhausted all the time?
The second thing we need to name is that the world around us - society, culture, work, technology, the economy, media, politics, even the weather - are collectively creating an environment that is unflinchingly volatile and uncertain. No one knows what's coming next. And our nervous systems interpret this tumultuous uncertainty as a threat.
Having to discover a new path every day is exhausting.
Which means that as humans with nervous systems, we are all in a chronic state of threat and dysregulation. This applies to you whether you are the CEO, a mid-level leader, a solo entrepreneur, or a frontline employee.
We are all feeling it: the heaviness, the exhaustion, the overwhelm. It's more than burnout; it's systemic suffocation.
This brings us to the third thing we need to name.
The Unseen, Underrated Workplace Hazard
The biggest risk to the success of your organization right now is not your AI strategy. It's not your sales funnel. It's not operational efficiency. It's not even just your workplace culture. The most dangerous weak link in your company right now is the leader who is pushing through their own exhaustion and is simply unaware of their own overwhelm.
The dysregulated leader is quietly chipping away at your organizational success
This leader is quietly chipping away at your short-term and long-term success for three compelling, science-backed reasons (see references at the end of this essay):
A dysregulated leader loses their capacity to think clearly and doesn't know it.
The part of the brain that leaders need most. The part that makes good decisions, connects to others and reads the emotional energy around them, stays calm and curious under pressure. That part of the brain partially goes offline under the threat response caused by chronic stress.
Chronic dysregulation impairs the prefrontal cortex in measurable ways, reducing cognitive flexibility, working memory, and the capacity for nuanced decision making. Tunnel vision replaces strategic thinking. Reactivity replaces responsiveness, The entire team downstream of that leader feels and absorbs that energy.
Nervous systems are contagious — not metaphorically, literally.
Not only does the team feel it, our brains contain specialized mirror neurons that automatically mimic facial expressions, posture, and vocal patterns of the people around us. When teams see their leaders tense, rushed, or visibly stressed, their brains literally mirror those states. They're not necessarily choosing to feel stressed, but their nervous systems are automatically synchronizing with their leaders. People absorb the emotional states of authority figures automatically and unconsciously. When a leader walks into the room regulated, the team regulates. When they walk in dysregulated, the storm expands.
Leaders drive the bottom line more than any other segment.
Gallup has been tracking global employee engagement for 15 years, and their most recent State of the Global Workforce report indicated that global employee engagement has declined for the second year in a row, while manager engagement has dropped nine percentage points since 2022. Gallup estimates that disengagement costs the world economy more than $10 trillion in lost productivity alone, the equivalent of 9% of the global GDP. As we've probably all heard many times, managers account for 70% of the variance in team-level engagement, so when managers disengage, their teams follow.
Gallup's chief workplace scientist Jim Harter put it this way: "Manager engagement affects team engagement, which affects productivity. Business performance — and ultimately GDP growth — is at risk if executive leaders do not address manager breakdown."
Coming Home to Yourself
The good news? It doesn't have to be this way.
We were not meant to lead from empty. And depleted, reactive leaders are not inherently flawed. Most aren’t waking up saying “How can I create fear and chaos on my team today?” The danger comes from the gap between what their nervous system can hold and what the role and pressures demand.
Fortunately, as the body of knowledge about the cost of stress and dysregulation has grown, so has our understanding of how to regulate individually, and CO-regulate collectively, to guide our way back to balance and capacity. This is why I say that the root cause of burnout isn’t workload, it’s mis-alignment.
I invite you to name what you've been feeling: the heaviness, the overwhelm, the cost. And then sit with one more quiet truth: You can choose a different path. You create the environment. Which means you can create one that heals when the world around us is hurting.
The real question is:
Where have you become disconnected from yourself?
You can begin by asking yourself three questions:
How do you know when you’ve pushed past your edge?
Where am I trying to do ALL things instead of what I’m naturally good at?
What about my choices right now feel unethical - like I’m silencing a quiet voice in my own soul?
Those inner constrictions are signals and they can lead you back to a more spacious place of curiosity, clarity and compassion.
Most of us have probably become conditioned to push past exhaustion. I know I used to.
But it’s time to come home. Let’s do this.
P.S. If this essay resonated, the friend I mentioned at the beginning, Andrea Butcher, will likely land with you too. Her podcast “On Being at Work” shares powerful, practical, personal insights like this weekly and her “Daily Doses” are perfect bit sized motivators. You can find the episode that inspired this piece here and follow her podcast here. She is worth your time.
Resource Links:
Cambridge University Press. (2024, October). Catching on: Work stress, employee wellbeing, and the moderating role of team-level emotional contagion. Journal of Management and Organization. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-management-and-organization/article/catching-on-work-stress-employee-wellbeing-and-the-moderating-role-of-teamlevel-emotional-contagion/0FC740E43C644E74AE7659EA84B9563F
Gallup. (2026). State of the global workplace 2026.https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press.
PMC / National Library of Medicine. (2022). The contagious leader: A panel study on occupational stress transfer in manager-employee dyads.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9540037/
Sullivan, P. (2026, June). The neuroscience of leadership stress. Tampa Coaching. https://www.tampacoaching.com/blog/the-neuroscience-of-leadership-stress
