Work with human energy—and the whole life of your people—instead of draining it.
Most leaders are working incredibly hard.
They are problem-solving constantly, stepping into bottlenecks, pushing for deadlines, chasing accountability, following up again, and trying to keep everything moving through sheer effort. On the surface, that can look like leadership. It can even look incredibly committed.
But too often, it is actually a sign that the system is fighting its own people.
It is like trying to push a wet bag of sand up a never-ending hill. The harder you push, the more resistance you feel. The more effort you exert, the more exhausting the whole endeavor becomes. And eventually, everyone involved starts to wonder why progress requires so much force.
In many organizations, leaders assume the answer is more pressure. More oversight. More process. More approvals. More check-ins. More reminders. More insistence.
But sustainable performance does not come from erecting impossible barriers and then asking already-drained people to somehow overcome them.
It comes from working with human energy instead.
And that means recognizing something many organizations still resist: work happens within the overall fabric of a person’s life. Employees are not simply workers. They are also caring for their physical wellbeing, nurturing meaningful family and social relationships, raising children, caring for aging parents, contributing to their communities, and trying to live a life with texture, meaning, and vitality.
When leadership ignores that reality and forces people into rigid schedules, outdated assumptions, and ill-conceived policies, it does not create commitment or effectiveness. It creates resistance, depletion, and unnecessary drag.
Performance Problems Are Often Energy Problems
When work feels unnecessarily difficult, people do not simply become less productive. They become less alive in the work.
Their discretionary effort shrinks. Their creativity narrows. Their willingness to take initiative fades. Their emotional connection to the mission weakens. They stop bringing the fuller version of themselves and begin conserving energy just to get through the day.
That does not always show up immediately in the numbers.
At first, you may still see output. Deadlines may still be met. Meetings may still happen. Projects may still move.
But underneath, something more important is changing. Meaning is draining away. Trust is fraying. Energy is leaking out through friction, bureaucracy, unclear priorities, rigid work arrangements, and ways of working that make contribution harder than it should be.
Some of that exhaustion comes from the work itself. But some of it comes from leaders asking people to choose work at the expense of everything else in their lives.
That is precisely why the idea of work–life balance fell apart a long time ago. It was too improbable, too rigid, and too easy to fail at. Work–life integration brought the recognition that both worlds must coexist in a person’s day. But the term I prefer is work–life harmony, because it better captures the healthy energy exchange and flow between work and the rest of life.
When employees have no room to attend to the people and priorities that matter most to them, work becomes heavier than it needs to be. When leaders create more harmony—through flexibility, accommodation, and creativity—they make it easier for people to contribute from a place of greater fullness and wellbeing.
Extractive Leadership Creates Drag; Expansive Leadership Creates Energy
One of the key distinctions in my work is the difference between extractive and expansive leadership.
An extractive approach assumes people do not really want to work, will do as little as they can, and must be driven through control, presence, pressure, rules, and reward. This approach often creates exactly the conditions that drain energy most: low trust, little emotional intelligence, rigid expectations, and structures that force compliance rather than contribution.
It also tends to cling to outdated norms about what a “good worker” looks like—physically present, constantly available, and willing to let work dominate life. Those norms no longer match the reality of how people live or how work can be done.
An expansive approach is different.
It seeks to connect with, unleash, and elevate people. It manages and rewards by outcome. It leads through purpose and inspiration. It assumes there is more available in people than is currently being expressed—and that leadership’s role is to help bring that forward.
That includes finding what works best for the individual to bring out their best. Some people thrive working remotely. Others crave the social interaction of the office. Some value a flexible start or end to the day. Some need the occasional ability to attend a loved one’s extracurricular event and make the time up later. These are not indulgences. They are practical ways to support work–life harmony and preserve the human energy organizations depend on.
This is not about overlooking performance.
It is about becoming intelligent about what actually fuels it.
When leaders align people’s work with purpose, remove energy leaks, and create conditions where contribution can flow more harmoniously within the rest of life, they unleash what we call GUSTO: vitality with expression, passion with direction, energy aligned to meaningful results.
In that state, people do not merely comply with goals. They joyously begin to own them.
What Happens When Leaders Stop Adding Weight
I have seen teams struggle under the weight of their own operating habits.
A business unit misses targets, so leadership adds more reporting. Communication breaks down, so more meetings are scheduled. Accountability slips, so another layer of approval is added. Productivity slows, so people are monitored more closely.
Each move may appear rational in isolation.
But collectively, they often create a system that makes meaningful work harder to do.
And often, they fail to ask the more human questions: What obstacles are slowing people down? What policies are imposing terrible carnage on work–life harmony? Where are we requiring face time when productivity would suffice? Where are we punishing efficiency by piling on more work the moment someone completes something in less time than expected, rather than allowing them to replenish from hard, focused effort?
The issue is seldom laziness, lack of commitment, or lack of talent. Often, the issue is that people are trying to contribute through structures that deplete the very energy needed to perform well.
When we examine the lived experience through diagnostics, interviews, and focus groups, we can often identify the energy leakage: where policies, behaviors, leadership habits, or cultural norms are eroding trust and draining vitality.
We can also ask people directly what would create better work–life harmony for them. Leaders can poll their teams, invite them to define what harmony means, and explore possibilities like flexible scheduling or protected time for projects that fuel their passions and interests. These are concrete ways to create a healthier energy flow between work and life.
Once those leaks are addressed, something powerful happens.
People become more available to the work again.
They regain clarity. They feel more ownership. They contribute more freely. And leaders no longer have to push every ounce of movement uphill through force.
This is the shift from pressure-driven performance to purpose-aligned performance.
The Better Question for Leaders
So perhaps the question is not:
Why aren’t my people trying harder?
The better question may be:
What in the way we are leading, structuring, or operating is making good work unnecessarily heavy?
Where have we confused control for stewardship?
Where have we inserted friction where trust, clarity, and meaningful alignment were needed instead?
Where are we asking people to overcome barriers that leadership itself has the power to remove?
And where are we failing to accommodate the whole life of the people whose talent and treasure we count on?
These questions matter because the future of work belongs to organizations that know how to activate human energy, not merely consume it. Leaders will be wise to maintain the fluidity of home and work life that so many people came to value, rather than trying to force a return to norms that no longer serve.
Work can be a beautiful expression of a person’s existence and passions. The more leaders can arrange it within the tapestry of the rest of life so it flows harmoniously, the more fulfillment, wellbeing, and performance they will see.
A Question Worth Your Consideration
Where might you be working harder than necessary because your system is working against your people’s energy—and against the natural flow of their lives—instead of with it?
And what might shift if you focused less on pushing and more on removing the barriers that drain contribution, meaning, trust, and work–life harmony?
This is the work of creating a destination workplace: one where people are energized to contribute, aligned around purpose, and able to perform without burning themselves out just to keep the machine moving.
Because leaders should not have to keep pushing the wet bag of sand uphill.
Better results come when you build the conditions for human energy to move.
