Leading Is Emotionally Draining. Here’s How to Recover by Dina Denham Smith
FACILITATED DISCUSSION BY ALYSIA KEHOE, KEHOE CONSULTANTS | Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Part 2 of our series builds on Dina Denham Smith’s bestseller, sharing her recovery strategies for leaders. We move from defining emotional labor to practical strategies to recover, with Alysia Kehoe adding “Big Hints” along the way to help you reflect, reframe, and build resilience after emotionally demanding events. [Read Part 1 HERE.]
Now that we’ve discussed the emotional labor of leadership, let’s dive into how to recover from it. After a challenging event or period, use these proven practices to process your emotions and replenish your energy.
Reflect: Don’t just move on—make meaning.
While revisiting weighty times may sound undesirable, taking the time to reflect on them is key to moving forward. When we ignore or suppress our emotions, they don’t disappear—they accumulate in the background, resurfacing later as increased stress, reactivity, and health issues. Reflection helps us process and metabolize what we’ve experienced so that we don’t unintentionally carry it around.
Building on Smith’s insights, Alysia Kehoe shares a practical way leaders can apply this reflection in daily life:
Big Hint / Idea from Alysia #1
Try a mindfulness exercise. I was taught this technique during my education and have used it ever since:
The 5-5-5 Method
First, sit in a quiet spot.
- Spend 5 minutes listening to some instrumental music (of your choosing, without words). I personally love classical music, but jazz or anxiety-reducing frequency music works, too. Examples include: 365 Tao: Daily Meditations Book by Deng Ming-Dao / Searching books, magazines and journals on mindfulness and reading what speaks to you / The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday (book, also in podcast form)
- Then, spend 5 minutes reading a meditation or inspirational excerpt. If you are religious, daily scripture is also great.
- 5 minute meditation practice: Choose a simple positive phrase / one line meditation… Take a piece of paper and a pencil and put a timer on for 5 minutes. In silence, repeat the one-liner to yourself. When your mind wanders, put a tic mark on the paper. Then go back to your silent mantra, repeating your one-liner in your head. At the end of the 5 minutes, count your tic marks. Some days are better than others, with less tic marks and less distractions! To note: The practice is in bringing your mind back to your mindfulness mantra, so don’t be frustrated by your wandering mind. These are essentially “reps” and the more reps you do, the stronger your mind gets.
Carve out a few minutes after a challenging moment or day, and ask yourself:
- What do they reveal about what matters to me?
- What am I feeling?
- Where do I feel it in my body?
- What are my emotions trying to tell me?
Acknowledge and accept your feelings without judgment. All emotions—even the unpleasant ones like frustration, sadness, or anxiety—offer valuable insights into our values, needs, and limits.
Big Hint / Idea from Alysia #2
Review your Passions, Values, Possibilities, and more with “The Purposeful Life Formula” deep-dive exercise on page 15 of my book, Design Your Career, Determine Your Future, and also on page 20 of Reinventing Yourself.
You can see the formula posted on my LinkedIn HERE.
Judging and resisting them only escalates the feeling and increases your reactivity.
Consider writing down your responses to these questions. Writing creates space between you and your emotions, allowing you to identify meaning and purposeful next steps. Furthermore, research has shown that writing about your feelings for just 20 minutes a day over three days can improve both mental and physical health, reduce anxiety, and even boost job performance.
If writing isn’t your cup of tea, try leaving yourself a voice memo instead. What matters most is giving your thoughts and true feelings space to surface without editing or filtering.
Alternatively, share your experience and challenges with a trusted peer or other sounding board.
Big Hint / Idea from Alysia #3
Create your own personal “Board of Directors” made up of friends & associates that have known you for a long period of time. Keep a list and check in with them occasionally. Reach out to them about new ideas and ask their advice. These are people you trust to provide sound advice, emotionally and/or financially.
Social support not only helps us make sense of and process difficult events but also enhances our resilience to stress, protects us from burnout, and promotes our mental and physical well-being.
Leadership is often a lonely experience, and having trusted peers, mentors, and other support can be a powerful source of connection and clarity.
Reflection doesn’t require a lot of time. It just takes discipline to pause amid the busyness. Even a few intentional minutes can help you build the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and resilience essential for effective leadership in today’s complex and challenging world.
Reframe: Shift the narrative.
Reappraising emotionally taxing experiences can also speed recovery by reducing our distress and freeing up our cognitive resources.
Reframing doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the difficulty of a situation; instead, it’s about shifting your perspective to find new meaning or possibility.
Smith explained… ‘For example, after successfully leading a major turnaround, my client Jacob was blindsided by a reorg that reassigned his team and left his role uncertain. Understandably, he was both frustrated and stressed. But over time, Jacob began to see the situation differently: as a chance to recharge after an intense chapter, and an opportunity to stretch into something new. By finding a silver lining, Jacob shifted his emotional state and was able to show up with more steadiness and optimism, while the organizational changes and his new role solidified’.
On the backside of a tough event, consider asking yourself:
- What are the possible silver linings in this situation?
- What are the potential long-term benefits despite the short-term costs?
- How can I grow from it, or use it to build something better in the future?
When you change the story, you change your experience—and you gain access to new energy, insight, and direction.
Sometimes, however, it’s not just the situation that needs reframing; it’s how you see yourself in relation to it. Many emotionally intense leadership moments involve performing “necessary evils,” making decisions or taking actions that cause discomfort or harm to others, such as delivering tough feedback, letting someone go, restructuring a change-fatigued team, or implementing layoffs.
Even when these actions are necessary for the greater good, they can leave leaders feeling anxious, guilty, and questioning their self-image as a fair and moral person.
In these moments, self-compassion is a critical tool. It doesn’t mean lowering your standards or avoiding responsibility. In fact, research shows self-compassion improves leadership, increasing emotional intelligence, composure under pressure, and resilience. Further, it enhances our psychological well-being and increases the compassion we show to others.
Practicing self-compassion simply means treating yourself as you would a friend: acknowledging the challenge, recognizing that anyone in your position might feel the same way, and responding with kindness instead of criticism.
After hard moments, ask yourself: What would I say to a colleague struggling with this same situation?
Then extend that same support inward. This quiet act of self-kindness will help you feel better, recover faster, and lead more effectively.
Restore: Replenish your emotional reserves.
When we push through emotionally difficult events without pausing to recover, we slowly drain our emotional and physical reserves. Over time, this can lead to emotional exhaustion / feeling overwhelmed.. and damage our mood, health, and effectiveness.
Just like athletes need rest after an intense game, professionals must replenish after emotionally demanding situations at work.
Without replenishment, the risk of burnout and long-term health issues climbs. Ironically, the more depleted you become, the less likely you are to engage in the very behaviors that would help.
This is known as the recovery paradox (portraying the complex interplay between job stressors, lack of recovery, and poor well-being): when you need a break the most, you’re least likely to take one.
Critically, recovering isn’t just about taking time off. It’s about engaging in the right kinds of experiences. Research highlights four that are particularly effective:
Smith’s further suggestions:
- Detachment, or giving your mind a true break. Resist checking email after hours and avoid replaying the workday in your head.
- Relaxation, or building in moments like taking a walk without your phone, listening to a calming playlist, or spending quiet time outdoors.
- Mastery, or doing something that challenges you in a positive way. Try a new recipe, pick up a hobby, or learn something unrelated to your role.
- Control, or protecting pockets of time where you choose what to do, even if it’s just saying no to one more commitment.
Big Hint / Idea from Alysia #4
Excerpt from my most recent book, Design Your Career (see full page 97):
Contributor: Rachel Maxwell, franchise owner of Hot Worx in Lexington, SC. Maxwell is a health & wellness exercise instructor.
The Four Pillars of Wellness
Nutrition
- Fueling your body with high-quality food.
Physical Activity
- Build movement into your routine: walk at lunch, stretch away from your desk, and choose protein-rich, heart-healthy snacks.
- Statistically, a sedentary lifestyle increases your risk of cardiovascular disease by 147%; diabetes by 112%; some types of cancer by 66%; and overall death rate by 77%, to name a few.
Adequate Sleep
- Overlooked and undervalued in our culture of workaholics. The average adult needs 7–9 hours of sleep most nights so the body can repair and heal.
Managing Stress
- Maintaining good mental health; your ability to regulate emotions and keep stress and anxiety under control. Strategies include exercise, deep breathing, and meditation.
If you think you don’t have time to relax, or worry that it might seem selfish, think again.
Research shows that when leaders spend time on hobbies, relaxation, or other enjoyable activities after work, both they and their teams feel and perform better the next day.
Intentionally investing in recovering after an emotionally demanding stretch isn’t just helpful; it’s essential to leading today.
Reflecting, Reframing, and Restoring don’t just help you reset in the short term; they also help you build the emotional muscle to handle future challenges with more steadiness and strength. Because your team doesn’t just need you today—they need you to last.
Dina Denham Smith is an executive coach to senior leaders and teams at top global companies such as Adobe, Netflix, PwC, Dropbox, Goldman Sachs, Stripe, and numerous high-growth startups. A former business executive, she is the lead author of the bestselling book Emotionally Charged: How to Lead in the New World of Work.
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Alysia Kehoe and Kehoe Consultants specialize in leadership resilience, emotional intelligence, and trust-building workshops, plus customized coaching for managers navigating burnout and change. Our work helps leaders and organizations build stronger, healthier teams with higher trust, better performance, and less turnover.
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