When Leadership Feels Natural — and Exhausting — at the Same Time
For a long time, I believed leadership felt hard because I wasn’t doing it well.
If I sensed the room shift before anyone spoke.
If I replayed conversations long after they ended.
If I carried the emotional weight of change more heavily than others seemed to.
I assumed that meant I wasn’t cut out for leadership.
Most leadership frameworks quietly reinforce that belief. They reward steadiness, consistency, emotional restraint, and linear thinking. If leadership feels intense, personal, or emotionally demanding, the unspoken message is clear: you need to toughen up or manage yourself better.
But over time — through experience, reflection, and writing Leading in Chaos — I’ve come to understand something different.
What I was experiencing wasn’t weakness.
It was awareness — without enough support.
The leaders who carry more
Many leaders who think and feel differently aren’t struggling because they’re fragile.
They’re struggling because they notice more.
They pick up on emotional undercurrents.
They feel responsibility not just for outcomes, but for how people experience change.
They hold complexity, contradiction, and uncertainty in their bodies — not just their heads.
This is especially true for neurodivergent leaders, but it’s not exclusive to them.
When leadership systems are built for one cognitive and emotional style, anyone outside that narrow band ends up carrying invisible load. Emotional load. Relational load. Sense-making load.
And when that load goes unsupported, it doesn’t stay internal.
It leaks into decision-making, confidence, pacing, and culture.
Emotional regulation is not self-care
One of the biggest misconceptions in leadership development is that emotional regulation is a personal hygiene issue.
“Manage your reactions.”
“Don’t take it personally.”
“Stay professional.”
But emotional regulation isn’t about calming down or toughening up.
It’s about creating the conditions where clarity, trust, and good decisions can emerge — especially under pressure.
For leaders, emotional regulation is not self-care.
It’s leadership infrastructure.
Unregulated systems produce reactive cultures.
Regulated systems create space for thinking, listening, and alignment.
And leaders set that tone — whether they intend to or not.
Leading beyond the old framework
If leadership has ever felt natural and exhausting at the same time, there’s a reason.
You may not be failing at leadership.
You may be leading beyond the limits of the framework you were given.
The solution isn’t to become less sensitive, less intense, or less human.
It’s to redesign leadership — so it works with how people actually think, feel, and operate in complexity.
That’s what Leading in Chaos is about.
Not managing chaos.
Not suppressing intensity.
But designing leadership that can hold both people and uncertainty — without burning out the leaders doing the holding.
You’re not broken.
You may just be built for a different kind of leadership.