Switching off to switch on: The leadership strategy every business leader needs

If you’re leading a team, or supporting those who do, you’ve likely felt the ongoing pressure, writes Tara James.

Boards expect sharper margins, investors demand faster growth, and digital transformation and AI are compressing timelines. In this environment, leaders can feel like they’re constantly running on fumes, and it can show in their decision making, focus, and, ultimately, organisational performance.

Across the organisations I’ve worked with globally, leaders have been telling me the same anecdotes of the pace feeling relentless, with the consequential people and financial cost being real. The question I often ask is simple but powerful. How can we drive change that genuinely adds value, and where should they, as a leader, pause to think first?

Achieving long-lasting, sustainable change that reduces the human and financial cost of fast growth is a marathon, not a sprint. This is where the simple act of pausing can become so powerful, and where the principle of “switching off to switch on” becomes an effective leadership strategy.

It sounds counterintuitive in a world obsessed with speed, but stepping back isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing better. Leaders who intentionally pause build clarity, sharpen judgement, and make decisions that stick. They protect both themselves and their teams from burnout.

Why HR needs to pay attention

“Always-on” leadership doesn’t just come with a personal and wellbeing cost; it impacts the bottom line, too. Deloitte and UNSW BusinessThink estimate that burnout costs Australia $14 billion annually in direct absenteeism, rising to $39 billion when lost productivity and turnover are included.

Globally, we see the same patterns of talent loss, disengagement, and shrinking capacity to innovate. As a result, teams, and even boards, can get stuck repeating the same processes, while collective risk appetite diminishes. When risk appetite drops too low, opportunities are missed, competitors move ahead, and organisations can find themselves trailing – often too late to catch up.

Unfortunately, HR teams are still often treated as a separate arm of the business, operating in isolation. HR leaders become the sole point of support for employees, without anyone internally to turn to themselves. As long as HR is viewed primarily as an administrative or compliance function rather than a strategic driver of innovation and growth, these perception gaps persist.

What organisations need to recognise is that HR leaders are on the front lines of engagement and innovation. These insights are visible in engagement scores, attrition trends, and productivity metrics. With the support of the executive team, HR is uniquely positioned to intervene – to create space for reflection, guide strategic people decisions, and ensure the organisation maintains the clarity, energy, and risk appetite needed to thrive.

When HR leaders make time to switch off strategically and intentionally, and share this practice with their team and broader departments, it often creates a ripple effect. Teams feel permission to focus deeply, make better decisions, and contribute meaningfully without being burnt out. HR can play a strategic role by designing operating rhythms, protecting leadership reflection time, and embedding recovery as a business priority, not a wellness “nice-to-have”.

What science tells us

The science shows that when under time pressure, the brain shifts into stress mode. Cognitive research shows that sustained urgency narrows attention, reduces working memory, weakens analytical thinking, and increases the risk of making decisions based on biases. Daniel Kahneman’s research on fast and slow thinking highlights this risk, where instinct dominates, and reflection falls away.

Even brief pauses can re-engage the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for planning, ethical reasoning, and long-term judgement.

Additionally, studies from the University of London show multitasking can reduce cognitive performance by up to 40 per cent, while negotiation research in the Journal of Applied Psychology finds that short pauses before responding improve analytical thinking and reduce emotional reactivity. For leaders, these small pauses translate into smarter, safer, more strategic decisions.

Switching off in practice

“Switching off to switch on” is a practical business strategy. Jeff Bezos has said he makes many decisions with roughly 70 per cent of available information, reserving deeper analysis for high-consequence choices. The same principle can guide HR and organisational strategy, where not every decision requires maximum speed.

Leaders can apply this by:

• Scheduling deliberate reflection before major initiatives.
• Structuring checkpoints for high-impact decisions.
• Protecting time for strategic thinking.
• Stress-testing assumptions before scaling.
• Reviewing whether operational tempo matches organisational capacity.

These habits create a culture of thoughtful speed, where clarity and pace coexist, and high performance becomes sustainable for the long term.

Why it matters

“Switching off to switch on” is an important strategy for HR leaders because the stakes are high. Millennials and Gen Z now make up the majority of new leaders, and these generations value purpose, clarity, and wellbeing. Organisations that model “switching off to switch on” aren’t just protecting their leaders; they’re creating cultures that attract, retain, and engage talent. They are enabling teams to work smarter, not harder, while building resilience across the business.

Switching off is not a pause in ambition. It’s a strategy that allows leaders, and their organisations, to switch on fully, delivering smarter decisions, healthier teams, and sustainable long-term success.

Tara James is the founder and CEO of Small and Mighty Group.

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