Between the two of us, we have spent more than 50 years working with leaders across industries—healthcare, education, climate, finance, ministry, and beyond—navigating rapid change and leadership burnout. What we are witnessing right now, in our clients and in ourselves, is something we haven't seen before: both the greatest possibility and the greatest strain, arriving at exactly the same time.

Ambitious, capable, deeply caring leaders are feeling more disconnected, more overwhelmed, and more on the verge of leadership burnout than ever before. And the conditions aren't subtle. Artificial intelligence is reshaping entire industries. Geopolitical instability is a daily presence. The pace of change is relentless. Nervous systems are on overload.

The answer, we've come to believe, is not to work harder. It is to live and lead differently.

We Are Nature: A New Model for Sustainable Leadership

Here is the truth that modern working culture has largely forgotten: we are not separate from the natural world. We are part of it. And nature, by design, does not operate at a constant peak. It moves through seasons. It has growth spurts and resting periods, ebbs and flows, great blossoming and necessary dormancy.

The "always on, always at peak performance" culture of today's workplaces runs directly counter to how human beings are actually made. This creates a persistent, low-grade pressure—a sense of falling behind a standard that was never realistic to begin with. When you add the magnitude of current global change to that pressure, the result is what we are seeing everywhere: leaders who are exhausted at a cellular level, not because they are weak, but because they are human beings trying to function like machines.

Sustainable leadership has to begin somewhere else entirely. It has to begin with the self.

Identifying Your Season of Need as a Leader

We use the phrase season of need to describe the particular moment you are in right now—not the moment you think you should be in, or wish you were in, but the one you are actually living. A season could be a single difficult week, a stretch of months, a chapter of your career, or a larger arc of your life. The need within it might be personal or professional—something about how you are thinking, how you are processing emotion, how you are caring for your body, what gives your work meaning, or how you are tending the relationships that matter most.

When you are in harmony with your own nature, you create harmony around you. When you are out of harmony—pushing past your own signals, ignoring your own rhythms—you create discord, in yourself and in the systems you lead.

The question that changes everything is a simple one: What season am I in right now?

A 10-Minute Daily Leadership Practice: The 3Cs

What follows is one of the foundational practices we teach: a self-coaching practice we call Check-in, Center, Connect. It takes 10 minutes and can be done at your desk, in a quiet corner, or outside. The goal is not productivity—it is presence. Use it at the start of your day, or whenever you sense yourself becoming reactive, depleted, or disconnected. This simple 10-minute leadership practice includes three steps:

Step 1: Check in With Yourself

Take a full inventory of where you are. Notice without judgment what is present in your thoughts, your feelings, your body, and your immediate environment. 

What am I thinking? How am I thinking about the situation in front of me? How am I feeling? What do I notice in my body as I ask these questions? What do I notice in my environment—at home, at work, in my relationships? If you are outside: What does it feel like to be here? What do you notice about the earth, the sky, the quality of the air 

Simply notice what surfaces. Pay attention to what shifts as you sit with these questions.

Step 2: Center Yourself

Place both feet on the ground. Rest your hands in your lap. Close your eyes or soften your gaze. Breathe slowly in and out through the nose—at least four counts in, four counts out—for one full minute.

As you breathe, notice what shifts from your initial check-in. Where is there tension? Where is there ease, opening, or energy? Both are information. Both belong to this moment.

Step 3: Connect

From this quieter, more grounded place, ask yourself: Is there something within me, in my relationships, or in my work that is asking for attention right now? If so, is there a small action or shift I want to make? If nothing specific arises, is there a thought worth developing, or a feeling worth sustaining and carrying into the day?

Choose one insight or intention to take with you. Let it be a thread—something that connects and nourishes you as you move through the hours ahead.

Why This Leadership Practice Works

We are not offering a productivity hack. We are offering a reorientation—a more resilient and mindful leadership approach—a way of coming back to yourself so that you can lead from wholeness rather than depletion. The 3Cs practice works not because it is complicated, but because it is consistent. Done regularly, it begins to rewire the habitual relationship most leaders have with their own inner life: one of neglect, override, or hurry.

Who you are shapes how you lead. How you lead shapes the culture your people live inside. This is not metaphor. It is the mechanism by which individual well-being and collective health are linked—and why tending to yourself is never a selfish act. It is, in fact, one of the most consequential things a leader can do.

We invite you to begin today. Not with a grand transformation, but with 10 minutes and three questions. Notice what season you are in. And let that honest recognition be the start of something different—a simple step toward more grounded, resilient leadership.

Rev. Suze Shaner-Brodax and Sarah L. DeWitt are leadership advisors working at the intersection of personal transformation and organizational change.