Sleep Is a Leadership Skill
How a 22 hour flight taught me that the hard way...
I was sitting on the biggest plane I’d ever been on. About to take off on the longest flight I’d ever been on - My first trip to Australia. I was super tired though. I hadn’t slept much
Right behind me, there was this lovely family from Sydney who were visiting Canada for the Rockies (classic! 🏔️ ). Two rows behind them, a mom and her young child. The kid was miserable. Ugly crying. No, that’s far too understated. This child was screaming like a banshee in the middle of the night. It was simply stunning the pitch this kid was hitting. I thought to myself “holy f… this is gonna be a long, long flight…”
I earned a lot from that experience. Of course as a disclaimer, check all this stuff out with your trusted healthcare practitioner…
Melatonin can knock your socks off...
Avoid drinking wine on long flights (headaches, air pressure… emotions elevated by screaming kids… and maybe the most important,
How irritable I was because of something so silly; lack of sleep.
I’ve been on teams where I’ve seen this too:
The coach loses his sh**t in the dressing room.
The manager rips a new one in an employee for missing a deadline…
The bassist quits the band… just ‘cause… (bass players…)
I got to thinking…
Leadership runs on capacity.
Capacity is built in recovery.
Sleep is the primary recovery lever.
This is physiology. It is measurable. It is structural.
Leadership Is Neurological Work
Leaders manage:
Strategic decisions
Emotional tone
Conflict resolution
Risk calibration
Long-range planning
All of these functions rely heavily on the prefrontal cortex.
Research from Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania shows that sleep restriction impairs executive function, working memory, and cognitive flexibility after even one night of reduced sleep.
A study published in Sleep found that participants limited to 6 hours of sleep for two weeks performed at cognitive levels comparable to being legally intoxicated.
Executive function governs:
Impulse control
Emotional restraint
Complex reasoning
Decision speed
Sleep restores executive capacity.
Sleep and Emotional Regulation
A landmark study from UC Berkeley demonstrated that sleep deprivation increases amygdala reactivity by up to 60%.
The amygdala governs emotional threat detection.
In leadership terms, this translates to:
Increased irritability
Heightened defensiveness
Reduced tolerance for ambiguity
Faster escalation during conflict
Teams mirror the nervous system of the leader. (I imagine this had at least something to do with the airplane kid and his mom…)
Emotional tone is contagious.
Recovery stabilizes tone.
Decision Velocity and Sleep
A 2016 RAND Corporation report estimated that sleep deprivation costs the U.S. economy up to $411 billion annually in lost productivity.
At the individual level, insufficient sleep is associated with:
Slower decision-making
Increased error rates
Reduced problem-solving accuracy
Higher workplace accidents
In performance environments — sport, music, business — error density compounds under fatigue.
Sleep protects decision velocity.
Immune Function and Absenteeism
Research from Carnegie Mellon University found that individuals sleeping fewer than 6 hours per night were over four times more likely to develop a cold when exposed to a virus compared to those sleeping 7+ hours.
Sleep supports:
Immune regulation
Hormonal balance
Inflammation control
Reduced immune resilience influences sick days.
Sick days influence operational continuity.
Recovery influences reliability.
The Capacity Loop
High performance follows a repeatable cycle:
Regulate → Recover → Load → Integrate → Repeat
Sleep anchors recovery.
Recovery expands cognitive and emotional capacity.
Expanded capacity increases load tolerance.
Integrated load becomes growth.
This loop applies equally to:
Founders
Athletes
Musicians
Executive teams
Different roles. Same biology.
Structural Audit for Leaders
Before adjusting strategy, review:
Average nightly sleep duration
Sleep consistency across the week
Evening cognitive stimulation
Weekly decision density
The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7–9 hours for adults. Performance studies consistently show cognitive decline below 7 hours.
I know. I’m living proof. This is what my WHOOP (my performance tracking wearable) data shows me. Sleep is simply non-negotiable.
Over the last two months, my best leadership days have a very specific physiological fingerprint. On those mornings, my WHOOP Recovery is in the green (typically 80–90%), my overnight HRV sits around 110–130 ms, and my resting heart rate drops into the mid‑40s. Those are the days my calendar is stacked with what I’d call “leadership work”: four to six hours of coaching and strategy calls, long-form writing, and extended journaling blocks. In my journal on those days I routinely tag “flow state,” log high energy, and note that I felt socially fulfilled. Same job, same calendar… and a very different nervous system running it.
Good Sleep = Information
A single high-quality night of sleep reliably shows up in my data as a “leadership day” the next day. For example, on January 4th I slept 8 hours and 41 minutes out of 8 hours and 48 minutes needed, with 95% sleep efficiency and almost no physiological stress during sleep. WHOOP scored that night’s Sleep Performance at 92% and my Recovery at 89%, with an HRV of 110 ms and a resting heart rate of 48 bpm. That same day I did 65 minutes of deep journaling, hit my Zone 2 aerobic work, and still had the bandwidth for meaningful social time and spiritual practice. I had more patience, more nuance, and more “coach brain” available.
Bad Sleep = Information
The contrast is just as clear on the bad nights. On December 30th, I slept 5 hours and 34 minutes when my body needed about 9 hours and 23 minutes. Sleep Performance was only 60%, and WHOOP flagged 54 minutes of high physiological stress during that sleep. The next morning my Recovery dropped to 14%, my HRV fell to 49 ms, and my resting heart rate jumped to 59 bpm. I still showed up for coaching and even got a walk and sauna in…and I felt like that day was more about surviving my schedule, instead of leading through it. Email got done. Big thinking did not.
What’s been more important than a single heroic night is rhythm. In the week of January 6–11, my sleep–wake times were within about an hour of each other most nights; WHOOP scored my Sleep Consistency in the 80% range and my Sleep Performance above 80% almost every night. During that same stretch my Recovery averaged in the high 70s to high 80s, HRV lived in triple digits, and my calendar was full of multi-hour client calls, offer building, and long-form writing. The data matches the subjective experience: when my sleep is consistent, I feel like I’m steering the week instead of hanging on.
One thing WHOOP has made uncomfortably obvious is that my non‑exercise stress is high even on “normal” days: it’s common for me to log four to eight hours of high stress from coaching, content, and decision-making alone. The difference is what happens overnight. When I sleep well—high Sleep Performance, high consistency, and green Recovery—my nervous system can hold that load as clarity, presence, and creative output. When Sleep Performance sinks into the 60–70% range and Recovery drops into yellow or red, the same amount of stress shows up as reactivity, brain fog, and shallow work. Same inputs, different leadership capacity.
At this point I use a very simple rule of thumb: for me, “sleep as a leadership skill” looks like Sleep Performance above about 85%, Sleep Consistency above about 80%, and a green WHOOP Recovery with HRV over 110 ms and resting heart rate in the mid‑40s. When those boxes are ticked, I can reliably plan deep work, hard conversations, and high-stakes coaching. When they’re not, I don’t pretend I’m the same leader. I deliberately ratchet down the ambition of the day.
Forget indulgence.
Sleep is infrastructure.
Leadership Stability
Authority reflects regulation.
Regulation reflects recovery.
Recovery begins with sleep.
A leader’s nervous system sets cultural tone.
Stable leaders build stable teams.
Performance compounds through structure.
Sleep belongs inside performance architecture.
And the only thing worse than a 22 hour flight, with some kid screaming bloody murder two rows behind you is a 22 hour flight, with some kid screaming bloody murder two rows behind AND you not sleeping for 3 days.
I’d invite you to start paying closer attention to your sleep hygiene. It’s the best exercise.
