Resilience Training: What 2,430 Leaders Told Us

By Ashley Leach | Founder, Leda | 450+ leadership programs across 150 companies

I've read thousands of leader reflections over the past decade. In 2024, something shifted. The word "overwhelmed" started appearing more often. Then "drowning." Then "at capacity."

These weren't leaders facing unusual circumstances. They were facing ordinary leadership demands—the kind that never let up. And they were describing what happens when resilience runs out.

We asked 2,430 of them directly: How does being under pressure impact you, your energy and health, and your performance?

The language was consistent. "Drained." "Exhausted." "Depleted." Leaders describing energy crashes, disrupted sleep, abandoned exercise routines, shortened fuses. One put it like this:

That one has stayed with me. Not because it's unusual — because it isn't. After 700,000 data points, I've stopped being surprised by what pressure does to capable people. What still strikes me is how consistent the pattern is.

Most leaders aren't struggling because they lack ability. They're struggling because they've depleted the resources that make ability sustainable.

That's what resilience at work actually is. Not toughness. Not pushing through. It's a set of learnable behaviours that determine whether pressure makes you sharper or slowly wears you down.

And it predicts leadership success more reliably than most things we measure.

What Resilience at Work Actually Looks Like

Two leaders face the same difficult quarter. Same demanding stakeholder, same team conflict, same pressure. One emerges drained and reactive—making decisions they wouldn't make when calm, snapping at people, sending emails they later regret. The other emerges tired but intact, having learned something useful.

The difference isn't personality. I've watched this play out across 450 programs now. It's not who they are. It's what they do — or don't do — to protect their capacity.

Resilience at work shows up as:

• Sustained focus when demands compete for attention
• Emotional regulation when pressure escalates
• Faster recovery after setbacks
• Adaptability when plans fall apart
• Perspective that prevents small problems from feeling catastrophic

None of these are fixed traits. They're skills—and they depend largely on factors we can control. That's what makes resilience trainable, and why we've built two full development Journeys around it.

How Your Brain Responds to Pressure

Understanding what happens neurologically explains why some leaders maintain their edge under stress while others lose access to their best thinking.

Your stress mindset—how you think about stress itself—changes your body's chemical response to it. This isn't motivational talk. It's measurable.

When you experience stress, two hormones activate: cortisol and DHEA. The ratio between them is called the Growth Index, and it's directly influenced by whether you believe stress is harmful or potentially useful.

When the Growth Index is low (high cortisol, low DHEA), you tip into what we call a Red Brain state. Reactive. Defensive. Unable to think strategically. The part of your brain responsible for complex reasoning goes partially offline, and older, more primitive responses take over. This is associated with the belief that stress is fundamentally harmful.

When the Growth Index is high (high DHEA, low cortisol), you stay in Green Brain. Calm. Focused. Able to respond deliberately rather than react automatically. This is associated with viewing stress as something that can be harnessed.

You can shift your stress mindset, and when you do, you change your hormonal response. We've watched leaders learn this in real time—recognising when they're sliding into Red Brain and using specific techniques to interrupt the pattern before it hijacks their behaviour.

That skill is called Mindshifting, and it's one of the two core components of resilience we develop.

What 2,430 Leaders Told Us

The language was remarkably consistent. "Drained." "Exhausted." "Depleted." "Worn out." Leaders describing what happens when the pressure doesn't let up.

Energy drain appeared in nearly every response. Not just tiredness—something deeper. The kind of fatigue that doesn't resolve with a weekend.

Then there's what we call the resilience paradox. Under pressure, leaders abandon the very habits that would help them cope:

I see this in every cohort. Sleep goes first. Then exercise. Then eating properly. The things that would actually help get sacrificed to the thing causing the problem. It's a cycle that accelerates its own damage — and almost nobody notices it happening until they're already deep in it.

Red Brain symptoms showed up throughout the responses. Leaders described becoming "impatient," having a "short fuse," feeling "intolerant" and "anxious." Several mentioned "brain fog" and impaired decision-making:

"Influences your inability to think clearly and can cause misjudgement or distraction."

Physical symptoms followed. Headaches. Muscle tension. Disrupted sleep. Getting sick more often. The body signals what the mind tries to push through.

About 15-20% of responses described thriving under pressure. But even these often mentioned the crash afterwards:

"I am energised in the moment but feel tired when the adrenaline has worn off."

The pattern is clear: without deliberate resilience practices, pressure erodes performance, health, and wellbeing. The leaders who maintain effectiveness aren't tougher than others. They're the ones who protect their fundamentals instead of sacrificing them.

What Actually Predicts Leadership Resilience

We've been studying this long enough to know what holds up.

Resilience predicts performance under pressure. The consistency is striking. Leaders with stronger resilience practices maintain cognitive function, decision quality, and interpersonal effectiveness in conditions where others deteriorate. Same pressure, different outcomes.

Exercise creates measurable professional advantages. Research shows that regular exercisers earn 6-10% more than sedentary peers—after controlling for other factors. The benefits aren't just physical. They're cognitive and, ultimately, economic.

Sleep deprivation impairs leadership directly. Quality sleep enhances creativity, problem-solving, memory, focus, willpower, and emotional self-control. While 8 hours is the standard recommendation, research shows that regularly getting closer to 10 hours is associated with higher alertness and performance.

Signs you're chronically sleep-deprived: consistently getting fewer than 8 hours (including weekends), falling asleep instantly when you get into bed, and needing an alarm to wake up. If all three apply, your baseline resilience is already compromised.

These habits are linked to brain function. Sleep, exercise, nutrition, and social connection don't just help you feel better—they're linked to neurogenesis (growing new nerve cells) and neuroplasticity (forming new neural connections). Resilient habits literally help your brain adapt and learn.

This is why we treat resilience as a leadership fundamental, not a wellness add-on.

The Two Sources of Resilience

Resilience comes from two distinct sources. Both can be developed—but they work differently.

Your baseline: habits that build capacity

These are the routines that give you energy and help you recover from stress. They're not glamorous, but they're predictive.

Sleep. Quality sleep lets your mind and body function at their best. It enhances creativity, problem-solving, memory, focus, willpower, and emotional self-control. Leaders who protect sleep outperform those who sacrifice it. Every time.

Exercise. Both aerobic and resistance training improve memory and higher-order cognition. 75 minutes of intense exercise weekly (the kind that makes you sweat) or 150 minutes of moderate exercise (the kind that increases your breathing) creates a measurable cognitive edge. That's as little as a brisk 15-minute walk to and from work each day.

Nutrition. Blood sugar instability affects mood and focus. Leaders who eat erratically or rely on caffeine and sugar create unnecessary volatility in their own performance.

Relaxation. Deliberate recovery—not just the absence of work, but active practices that restore energy. This is where most leaders fail. They confuse "not working" with "recovering."

Social support. Connection with others buffers stress. Leaders who maintain relationships and seek support handle pressure better than those who isolate. This is especially true for leaders who tend toward self-reliance.

Your response: managing pressure in real time

Baseline habits build your reservoir. But you also need skills for managing your stress response when it's happening—what we call Mindshifting.

Mindshifting is the ability to:

• Recognise when you're entering a Red Brain state
• Interrupt the stress response before it escalates
• Consciously shift back to Green Brain functioning

We teach a technique called Catch and Calm: as pressure builds, you catch yourself—acknowledge the stress mentally before it takes over. Then you calm your response using specific techniques before reacting.

This isn't about suppressing emotions or pretending stress doesn't exist. It's about having enough self-awareness and technique to choose your response rather than being hijacked by your reaction.

Leaders who develop this skill can navigate difficult conversations, high-stakes decisions, and unexpected crises without losing access to their best thinking.

Signs Your Resilience Is Running Low

How do you know if resilience is a development priority?

You're in Red Brain more often than you used to be. Small frustrations trigger disproportionate responses. You snap at people, send emails you later regret, make decisions you'd handle differently when calm.

Recovery takes longer. A difficult day used to be forgotten by evening. Now it lingers. Weekends don't feel like enough. You start Monday already behind.

Your habits have slipped. You're sleeping less, exercising rarely, eating erratically. The fundamentals have become casualties of the stress itself—which is exactly the resilience paradox in action.

You can't switch off. Work follows you home. You think about problems constantly. Relaxation feels impossible or unproductive.

Physical symptoms are appearing. Tension headaches, disrupted sleep, digestive issues, persistent fatigue, getting sick more often.

None of these make you a bad leader. They make you a normal human whose resilience resources have been depleted. The question is whether you recognise it early enough to do something about it.

How Resilience Training Actually Works

I've seen the aftermath of dozens of one-day resilience workshops. Inspiring in the room. Forgotten within weeks. The problem isn't the content — it's the model. You can't change behaviour in a day.

Resilience is central to our Emerging Leaders Program. We dedicate two full Journeys to building this capability—shaped by insights from over 82,000 participant responses.

The science behind our approach: Leda's methodology was co-developed with Professor Anne Lytle, who spent 30 years teaching leadership at Kellogg, Melbourne Business School, and Monash University. Her research background — neurobiology and behaviour (Cornell), organisational behaviour (Kellogg PhD) — shaped the science-based approach that still underpins the platform today. The methodology was recognised by AACSB's Innovations That Inspire — the global standard-setting body for business education.

Why our approach works: Our completion rates of 88-93% (compared to the industry average of 3-15% for digital learning) come from a different model entirely.

It's impossible to simply tell someone these things are important and expect sustainable behaviour change. Leaders must first be convinced of the relevance of change. Then they must learn the skills. But most importantly, they must practice and apply the behaviours repeatedly, over months, to embed them into habit.

Participants begin with a Resilience Survey to understand their current baseline—not a vague sense of "I'm stressed," but measurable data on where they are now.

From there, daily activities build habits over weeks and months. Around 10 minutes a day. Not content to consume once, but practice that compounds.

Monthly mentor sessions create accountability. Participants work through real challenges with an experienced facilitator and a cohort of peers facing similar pressures.

In Raise Resilience by Building Your Self, participants:

• Understand stress and resilience at a neurological level
• Complete the Resilience Survey to assess their baseline
• Revisit their values and connect them to their work
• Build positive emotions toward the research-backed 3-to-1 ratio
• Learn Mindshifting through the Catch and Calm technique

In Raise Resilience by Changing Your Habits, participants examine the external factors:

• Sleep quality and practices
• Exercise and physical activity
• Nutrition and energy management
• Relaxation and recovery
• Social support and connection

The Journeys are part of our 6 or 9-month cohort-based program. Participants develop resilience alongside peers facing similar challenges—not alone in a self-paced course that quietly gets abandoned.

Ready to build your resilience?

Explore the Emerging Leaders Program →