49: Rest Is a Leadership Skill: What Most Design Execs Miss About Impact

“When leaders rest, permission ripples outward.”

I used to think outstanding leadership meant being endlessly available—first in, last out—in the details, on every call, solving every fire, and saying yes to the stretch project, the keynote, the mentorship, and the roadmap review. Until the year, I couldn’t hear myself think.

Between launching a new loyalty ecosystem and onboarding multiple new team members, I realized I was running on instinct. The calendar looked like Tetris blocks, and the results looked great, but I wasn’t. My decisions felt reactive, and my creativity was stale. Worst of all, I was modeling a version of quietly unsustainable leadership—for me and the people looking up to me.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how rest became a strategic lever and how creative pursuits helped me redefine success in the mid-career plateau. But this shift wasn’t just personal. It began to reshape how I led. If I could unlearn the hustle narrative in my own life, I had to ask: What was I unconsciously teaching my team about impact, urgency, and worth?

That’s when I started thinking differently—not just about how we lead teams but also how we sustain them. It is not just about how we scale design but how we regenerate it.

The Problem with Infinite Contributors

Tech loves infinite scale—systems that grow, code that deploys, infrastructure that expands on demand. But design is human work: it demands time, focus, and creative energy. Unlike servers, designers don’t “spin up” without cost. Push them to operate like a feature factory, and what you’re scaling is burnout—sacrificing depth for velocity, trading insight for output.

The irony? Leaders often enable this. We mistake motion for progress, urgency for importance. However, sustainable creativity requires boundaries: saying no to protect yes, prioritizing outcomes over activity, and treating creative energy as a finite resource. Scaling design isn’t about adding more people but designing systems where great work can thrive without breaking the people who make it.

The Shift: From Extraction to Regeneration

We don’t need another lecture on “work-life balance.” We need a paradigm shift—from extraction to regeneration.

Regenerative leadership flips the script. Instead of asking, “How do I maximize output?” it asks, “How do I create conditions where my team can replenish—so they do their best work, not just their fastest?” The principle is borrowed from nature: in thriving ecosystems, resources are renewed, not just consumed. Health isn’t a luxury; it’s the foundation of sustainable growth.

This isn’t idealism—it’s strategy. Research by the Energy Project (Tony Schwartz) proves that humans perform best in rhythmic cycles of effort and recovery. Studies on psychological safety by Amy Edmonson show that teams innovate more when not in survival mode. And data from Google’s Project Aristotle confirms that sustainable cultures retain top talent.

The lesson? We can’t fuel long-term impact with short-term depletion. If we want breakthroughs, we must design environments where energy is restored, not just extracted. Because creativity isn’t a resource to mine—it’s a flame to tend.

How I Began Leading Differently

Here’s what changed for me as a design leader:

I built Slack into the system: I stopped filling every hour with meetings and started protecting blocks for deep work and deep rest. I normalized “thinking time” on my calendar, made it visible to my team, and asked them to do the same.

I made multiplicity visible by openly discussing my art practice, writing, and the audiobooks I listened to while sketching. These weren’t side hobbies; they were essential to my resilience. And when I shared them, something shifted: my team started sharing their passions and protecting time for them, too.

I reframed performance: Instead of measuring productivity by visible output alone, I asked: Where is the energy flowing? What’s bringing clarity, not just motion? We created space for emotional metrics. We tracked team health alongside project velocity. It changed what we prioritized—and how we delivered.

I modeled saying no: Boundaries are contagious, and so is burnout. When I said no with clarity and context, others felt empowered to do the same. We began to trade frantic overfunctioning for focused, intentional momentum.

Regenerative Practices for Design Leaders

If you’re a design executive looking to build sustainable creativity, here’s where to start:

Audit your team’s creative recovery time with rigor. Track not just project hours but the space between them. Are there moments for reflection after critiques? Is there white space between sprints? Like any high-performance system, creative teams need recovery cycles to maintain quality. The best ideas often emerge in these in-between spaces.

Make energy management a leadership metric. The map that projects which drains your team versus which ones light them up. Notice patterns - are there certain types of clients, phases, or collaboration modes? Use these insights to balance workloads strategically, not just equally. Energy is your team’s most valuable currency.

Architect time with intentionality. Treat your team’s schedule like a design system. Block deep work sessions in natural creative rhythms (morning for some, evening for others). Protect “low cognitive load” periods for subconscious processing. The most innovative solutions rarely emerge in back-to-back meetings.

Celebrate and leverage whole human complexity—the designer who DJs understands rhythm and audience engagement. The PM who surfs reads subtle environmental patterns. These aren’t just hobbies but professional assets that fuel a creative perspective. Make space for these identities to inform work.

Lead through visible evolution. When leaders share their recalibration—a canceled meeting to recharge, a changed mind on a strategy, or a boundary set—it implicitly gives the team permission to do the same. A model that growth isn’t about constant perfection, but conscious adaptation.

What Happens When You Lead Regeneratively?

The impact goes beyond productivity metrics—it transforms how your team creates, why they stay, and who they become.

The Work Improves: When designers aren’t running on fumes, they solve problems with nuance, not just speed. Creativity thrives in the space between “done” and “good.” Teams with room to breathe produce fewer rushed iterations and more breakthrough ideas, because innovation requires incubation.

Retention Becomes Organic: People don’t leave jobs; they leave unsustainable conditions. A regenerative culture silently but powerfully reduces attrition by making “staying” feel energizing, not exhausting. When work replenishes instead of depletes, loyalty grows naturally.

The Culture Shifts: You stop glorifying burnout and start measuring what matters: energy, engagement, and enduring impact. Sustainability becomes your competitive edge—a magnet for talent who want to do great work without sacrificing themselves to do it.

You Rediscover Your Purpose: Regenerative leadership has a quiet side effect: it heals the leader, too. When you stop equating “busy” with “valuable,” you reconnect with the joy of creating. You remember why you chose this work, not to manage exhaustion, but to build something meaningful.

Final Thought: Design Systems vs. Human Systems

We obsess over creating scalable, resilient design systems yet often neglect the most important system: the human, made up of tired eyes, overworked minds, and creative spirits (including yours).

So before asking, “What’s next on the roadmap?” try asking:
“What needs restoring—in my team, in myself—to meet what’s next with clarity, not chaos? With creativity, not just compliance?"

Because the future of design leadership isn’t about optimization.
It’s about oxygenation.

The best leaders don’t just ship—they sustain.
They don’t just extract—they energize.
They’re not just architects of products.
They’re architects of vitality.

Footnotes & Further Reading

If this resonated with you, explore the first two pieces in this series on rest, reinvention, and sustainable creativity:

4: Rest as a Strategy: How Stepping Back Leads to Big Ideas
Why stepping away isn’t weakness—it’s a design decision that fuels deeper creativity, sharper leadership, and long-term success.

31: The Moment the Climb Slows Down
A reflection on the mid-career plateau and how creative pursuits and multiplicity help us expand our identities beyond job titles.

Together, these essays form a conversation about sustaining ourselves, evolving our roles, and leading without losing our spark.