TL;DR: Leaders are mental health multipliers—their behaviors, habits, and stress levels ripple through their entire team. Small shifts in how you model boundaries and self-care can dramatically impact your organization’s psychological safety and performance.

A burned-out leader creates a burned-out team. Culture is contagious. So is stress.

I witnessed this firsthand when working with a tech executive who prided himself on his “always-on” approach. He responded to emails at 2 AM, worked through weekends, and never took PTO. He couldn’t understand why his team was experiencing unprecedented turnover despite competitive compensation.

The answer was painfully obvious to everyone except him: his team was drowning because he was normalizing drowning.

The Leadership Ripple Effect
Leaders don’t just set expectations for deliverables, they set the psychological tone for their entire organization. This happens in three critical ways:

• Your team is watching how you treat yourself, not listening to what you say about self-care. When you tell your team to “take time off when needed” but haven’t taken a vacation in three years, you’ve created an unspoken rule more powerful than any HR policy.
• Your response to stress becomes their response to stress. A leader who catastrophizes, displays constant anxiety, or becomes reactive under pressure teaches their team to do the same. Even if they have the best intentions.
• Your boundaries (or lack of them) become the template. If you regularly send midnight messages, your team will feel pressure to do the same, regardless of what your employee handbook states about work hours.

What’s particularly dangerous about this dynamic is how invisible it becomes. No leader deliberately sets out to deteriorate their team’s mental health. Most are genuinely surprised when they discover they’ve been the source of the cultural contagion.

The Costly Consequence
The numbers tell a sobering story. Gallup research shows that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement. Disengaged employees cost companies 34% of their annual salary in lost productivity.

But the most alarming statistic? Leaders themselves are more likely to burn out than individual contributors. We’re creating a self-perpetuating cycle of distress that moves from the top down.

Breaking the Cycle: Two High-Impact Strategies
Transforming an entire culture feels overwhelming. Instead, focus on these two high-leverage behaviors that create outsized positive impacts:

1. Public Recovery Rituals
   Recovery isn’t just about vacation time, it’s about demonstrating regular, visible reset moments. Try this: implement a personal “recovery ritual” that your team can see.

   For me, it has been as simple as a 20-minute walk with my dog after lunch without my phone. I block it on my calendar and decline meetings during this time. I don’t hide why I’m unavailable; I’m transparent that this is my mental reset time.

   The key is consistency and visibility. When your team sees you prioritizing recovery, not just preaching it, they internalize permission to do the same. 

2. Stress Transparency
   Most leaders hide their stress, believing vulnerability shows weakness. The opposite is true. Practice “stress transparency” by:

• • Naming when you’re feeling overwhelmed: “I’m feeling stretched thin this week, so I’m being intentional about which meetings I take.”
  • Sharing your management strategy: “I’ve got a lot on my plate, so I’m scheduling focused deep work blocks and turning off notifications until 2 PM.”
  • Modeling course-correction: “I realized I’ve been working late too often, so I’m recommitting to logging off by 6 PM for the next month.”

    This approach doesn’t burden your team with your emotions, it gives them a template for handling their own stress constructively.

The Leadership Paradox
Here’s the counterintuitive truth: by acknowledging your limitations, you become a stronger leader. By visibly practicing self-care, you create higher-performing teams. By setting boundaries, you foster greater creativity and commitment.

You’ve read this far. Why don’t you do it: Identify one recovery ritual you can practice consistently and visibly over the next two weeks. Block it on your calendar, communicate it to your team, and stick to it religiously. Notice how your team responds.

What’s one small shift you’ve made as a leader that positively impacted your team’s mental health?

Share this post on your social media and tell me what you’ve done. We build better workplaces through collective wisdom.