13 Feb 2026
Brain-smart habits
Brain-Smart Habits
Practical strategies to reduce leadership and change fatigue (part 2)
In part 1, we argued that the core issue facing New Zealand and Australian organisations is not too much change, but too little change fitness – and that leadership fatigue and change fatigue are predictable brain responses to an overloaded system.
Part 2 is about the how: practical, neuroscience-aligned habits leaders can use for themselves and their teams to sustain performance without slowly eroding the very capabilities leadership depends on.
Imagine the scene:
It’s late in the day.
A senior leader is still responding to messages, still making decisions, still “on”.
Nothing is on fire.
But the quality of thinking has slipped.
Judgement is slower. Irritation leaks out. Trade-offs feel heavier than they should. The leader knows this isn’t their best work, but there’s no obvious stopping point.
This moment won’t appear in engagement surveys or post-change reviews. Yet repeated often enough, it quietly becomes the norm.
Neuroscience has a name for it.
Most organisations call it leadership.
In volatile, high-demand environments, I believe many leaders are missing a critical strategy. We pour energy into navigating change, managing pressure, supporting our people and delivering strategy. All necessary. All outward-facing.
But there’s a quieter question that rarely gets asked:
What is my personal strategy to stay clear-headed, effective and human over the long haul of leadership?
About forty years ago, a mentor handed me a cassette of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and introduced me to Stephen Covey’s seventh habit: Sharpen the Saw.
The image stuck. Being so busy cutting down trees that you don’t have time to sharpen the saw.
The longer I work with senior leaders, the more convinced I am that this is the habit most quietly abandoned. We throw everything into cutting while our own saw gets duller by the week.
How do we expect to lead better in more complex conditions if we’re steadily degrading the brain systems leadership relies on?
Modern neuroscience backs this intuition. If you don’t actively protect and renew the parts of the brain responsible for judgement, empathy and self-control, they don’t fail dramatically.
They simply become less reliable.
Here are some tried and tested ideas of what you can engage with to find out what improves things for you.
- Daily Brain Hygiene for Leaders
Think of the prefrontal cortex – the brain’s “CEO” – as a high-performance battery, not an endless power source. Every decision, interruption and context switch drains it. When it’s depleted, leaders default to avoidance, overly safe choices or knee-jerk reactions.
Exactly what complex change does not need.
Habit 1: Guard Your “Clear-Brain” Time
When the prefrontal cortex is over-taxed, we see more reactivity and fewer wise trade-offs.
What to do
– Block your sharpest 60–90 minutes for complex thinking
– Use it for strategy, people decisions and scenario work, not email
– Treat it as a non-negotiable meeting with your most important stakeholder
– Batch low-stakes decisions into set windows.
– Use simple rules or checklists so fewer decisions are made from scratch.
Provocation:
If everything can interrupt your best thinking time, you’re not really leading. You’re just reacting faster than everyone else.
Habit 2: Build a Recovery Architecture (Not Just “Take a Break”)
Neuroscience is blunt here. Without regular recovery, stress systems stay switched on and executive functioning degrades.
What to do
– Micro (daily)
Three to five times a day, step away from screens for 3–5 minutes. Walk, stretch, or use slow breathing with a longer exhale than inhale.
– Macro (weekly)
Protect at least one meeting-free half-day for thinking and reset. White space like this is strongly linked to creativity and problem-solving.
– Rule of thumb
Avoid locking in major decisions when tired, hungry or straight after back-to-back heavy meetings. Insert a reset first.
Most leaders are trying to train like elite athletes while refusing to schedule recovery – then wondering why their form collapses under pressure.
Habit 3: Train Your Brake Pedal
Regulation practices are the brake pedal that stops stress spilling straight into the team.
What to do
– 5–10 minutes a day of simple breathwork or mindfulness
– Before difficult conversations, use pause–breathe–label–choose
– Pause and notice your state
– Name it (“I’m tense / frustrated / anxious”)
– Choose your response rather than reacting
Over time, these micro-practices shift default responses from threat and reactivity to curiosity and choice – the inner game that underpins effective leadership.
- Brain-Smart Habits Leaders Can Model for Their Teams
Teams don’t just listen to leaders. They catch their nervous systems. If you’re running hot, they will too.
Habit 4: Weekly “Clarity and Load” Check-In
Ambiguity and overload create a constant background hum of threat.
In 15–20 minutes each week, ask:
– What’s changed since last week?
– What does that mean for our top three priorities?
– What will we drop, delay or delegate to make space?
Make trade-offs visible. Work coming off the plate matters as much as work going on.
Habit 5: Make Psychological Safety Deliberate
Psychological safety isn’t “soft”. It stops people wasting cognitive energy on self-protection.
What to do
– Frame meetings: “We expect challenge and questions – it improves decisions.”
– Ask, then listen: “What am I missing?”
– Thank people for dissent or risk-raising
– Protect those who speak up
Lower social threat keeps more of the brain online for learning and problem-solving.
Habit 6: Feed the Reward System with Small Wins
Long change without visible progress is like running a race with no kilometre markers.
What to do
– Close meetings with one concrete win or learning
– Celebrate experiments and early risk-raising, not just polished outcomes
You’re not being nice. You’re balancing stress chemistry with motivation chemistry.
- Team Practices That Reduce Load Without Lowering the Bar
The aim is not to make work easier. It’s to remove pointless friction so the hard work gets the best of people’s brains.
Habit 7: Monotask Together
Multitasking is like running eight heavy programs on an old laptop. Everything slows. Crashes increase.
What to do
– Introduce 45–60 minute focus sprints with notifications off
– Quick check-in at the start, brief debrief at the end
– Set a norm: no email or side tasks during critical decision meetings
Habit 8: Turn Boundaries into Team Guardrails
Telling people to “manage their boundaries” while the system ignores them is like removing road signs and blaming drivers.
What to do
– Agree response-time expectations
– Protect meeting-free blocks
– Set norms for after-hours communication
Then honour them. Midnight emails quietly undo everything.
Habit 9: Use Coaching Micro-Skills Under Pressure
When pressure spikes, many leaders jump in and solve. It feels efficient. Neurologically, it disengages everyone else.
What to do
– Ask before telling: “What options do you see?”
– Reflect back what you’ve heard
– Acknowledge emotion without rushing to fix it
Being heard lowers threat and activates shared problem-solving.
- Habits as the Operating System of Change Fitness
Individually, these 9 habits are small. Together, they compound to form a new personal leadership operating system.
– Mindset: regulation and coaching shift default reactions
– Muscle: clarity, focus and learning become routine
– Connection: trust strengthens and truth surfaces earlier
This is the neuroscience difference. It’s not about working harder you are redesigning leadership around how brains actually work.
- Getting started: A 30-Day Brain-Smart Experiment
Rather than launching another program, treat this as an experiment:
– Week 1: Practise one personal habit daily
– Week 2: Add one team habit to an existing meeting
– Week 3: Introduce one work-design habit
– Week 4: Use coaching micro-skills in at least three tough conversations
Then ask:
If this much shifts in 30 days from a handful of small changes, what are we leaving on the table by running leadership like it’s still 2005?
A different leader. Same complexity.
Their calendar looks slightly emptier, but their thinking is sharper. They pause before responding. They ask one good question instead of offering three quick answers. In meetings, priorities are clearer and work comes off the list as often as it goes on.
Nothing dramatic has changed. No new role. No extra resources.
Just different habits.
Over time, those habits compound. Judgement improves. Energy stabilises. The team feels less frantic and more focused, even as change continues.
This is what change fitness looks like in practice.
Not heroic effort – but leadership designed to last.
Like to know more about how to use practical neuroscience to drive more impact?
Register for one of our Public leadership Programmes. Leadership Collective – Mantle
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