This week’s podcast was prompted by a recent conversation I had with a client.

She was talking about something many leaders experience but rarely name. Wanting to be genuinely helpful and present with her team, while also needing uninterrupted time to think, decide and do her own work well. What she’s finding challenging isn’t leadership itself - it’s the constant internal switching between those two modes, and the quiet toll that seems to take.

In this episode, Presence Has a Price: The Leadership Switch No One Trains You For, we explore that often-unseen internal work of leadership.

The cognitive and emotional demand of moving repeatedly between deep focus and relational leadership - often without warning - and what happens when leaders are never taught how to make that switch cleanly.

We look at why capable, thoughtful leaders can finish a full day knowing they worked hard, yet feeling like their own thinking never quite had the space it needed. And why this isn’t a failure of skill or discipline, but a natural consequence of how leadership actually works.

This is a conversation for leaders who want to understand the real work of presence without losing clarity, momentum or themselves in the process.

I also share a Soft Strength leadership tool designed to help train this internal switch more intentionally and sustainably.

In this episode, we explore:

• The internal labour of leadership that often goes unnamed
• Why switching between deep work and people leadership is demanding
• How presence carries a real cognitive and emotional cost
• Why time management doesn’t address this particular challenge
• How leaders can learn to manage their internal state more skilfully
• A practical way to support cleaner transitions between leadership modes

A Soft Strength leadership tool

If this conversation resonates, you may find the short visualisation and meditation I’ve created helpful.

It’s designed to support leaders in resetting after conversations, regaining clarity after interruption, and moving between depth and presence without carrying one into the other.

You can find it for free on the Insight Timer app, or CLICK HERE.

And, learn more about Janelle's work HERE.