If you had asked me a few years ago what health meant, I would probably have given a slightly different answer from the one I would give today. I am a pharmacist, and a large part of my professional journey has been linked to the pharmaceutical industry. For that reason, and despite the fact that the WHO has defined health since 1946 as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease”, in practice, for me, talking about health meant talking primarily about diagnosis, treatment, prevention, risk and pathology. It was the language of the academic and clinical environments I knew best.
Over the years, however, I began to realise something that today seems impossible to ignore: there are many people, and many women in particular, who continue to function… even when they are no longer truly well. In my own personal story, this perspective was anything but theoretical. There was a time when, although everything appeared “normal” and I felt functional, I was no longer well. I remained productive, delivering, leading and doing what was expected of me. But internally I was exhausted, distracted, apathetic and disconnected. It was a personal burnout, together with the careful observation of similar situations around me, that led me, more than ten years ago, to explore and deepen areas such as mindfulness, emotional intelligence and more conscious leadership. Not because I had stopped believing in “clinical” health, but because I realized that real health begins long before any illness appears and continues far beyond it.
The state from which we lead
So what do health and wellbeing have to do with leadership? A great deal. For years, we have looked at leadership mainly in terms of technical skills, vision, strategy, influence, decision-making and team management. But today we know that leadership does not happen only through skills. It happens through the person who exercises them, through their physiological, mental and emotional state.
Anyone who leads teams knows this intuitively. Our state enters the room before any PowerPoint does. It shows up in the quality of our presence, in the way we listen and relate to others, in our ability to focus and even in how we interpret a threat or an opportunity.
Perhaps that is why I am so interested in exploring leadership through the lens of wellbeing. And, through my personal and professional experience, allow me to do so from a female perspective.
The female experience of leadership
Leadership can be discussed in the abstract, but no one leads from the abstract. We lead from a body, a story and a social context. And when we are women, there are specific dimensions that shape the way we experience leadership.
Some are biological, such as the different hormonal and reproductive stages that can influence energy, sleep, attention, thermoregulation and concentration throughout life. Recognising this reality does not mean considering women less capable of leading; it means better understanding the human experience through which many women lead. Ignoring the female body in leadership contexts is not neutrality; it is looking at only part of reality.
From a psychosocial and cultural perspective, women tend to assume more invisible organisational and emotional responsibility. Even in households where both partners work full-time, women continue to carry a larger share of unpaid work and have less genuinely free time. This reality often translates into cognitive fatigue, fragmented attention, reduced recovery and a more continuous state of activation.
At the same time, we develop an extraordinary capacity to adapt to context, social expectations and judgement. Many of these abilities are, in fact, valuable leadership skills. But there is a cost. This ongoing adaptation consumes energy, wears us down and, at times, becomes so sophisticated that it is no longer visible — either to others or to ourselves.
For a long time, professional success for women meant adapting to leadership models designed without fully considering the female experience of the body, care and health. Yet I believe female leadership now has an important opportunity: to stop bearing witness only to vision, strategy and performance, and to begin, in parallel, bearing witness to presence, awareness and care.
The culture we create
Over the past few years, working with leaders and teams across different organisations, I have observed that culture is created, above all, by the behaviours that are repeated every day.
There are organisations where everyone talks about wellbeing, yet leadership continues to reward constant urgency, hyperavailability and self-imposed pressure. And there are others where the topic may be discussed less, but where leaders model something different: clearer boundaries, more honest conversations, legitimacy to recover and the psychological safety to say “I’m not okay” before reaching breaking point.
For this reason, I like to ask a simple question: what kind of culture am I creating through the way I care for my own wellbeing? If I live in a state of constant acceleration, my team learns acceleration. If I turn hyperavailability into proof of commitment, that becomes what is normal and expected. If I live in self-abandonment, it is likely to be mistaken for maturity or dedication.
But when a leader cares for herself consciously, she is also teaching something about what is acceptable, healthy and sustainable for others. Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of leadership is precisely this: creating environments in which people do not have to become ill in order to be legitimately cared for.
Self-care begins with attention
This is where self-care becomes so relevant. It begins with the way I start to notice. When I pause long enough to ask myself who I am at this stage of my life, how I am in this body, this week, this moment, and where my attention is. Am I on autopilot, or am I acting from a conscious and intentional presence?
Perhaps this is precisely where one of the greatest opportunities for contemporary female leadership lies: in stopping the confusion of sustainability with endurance.
For a long time, women have been praised for enduring, continuing and carrying one more layer. But that is not sustainability. It is, very often, socially rewarded exhaustion. Sustainability is being able to continue caring, deciding, leading and serving a project without losing contact with ourselves, while nurturing our health and wellbeing.
I would like to finish with the questions I most often ask the leaders I work with:
From what place within yourself have you been leading lately? From fear? From urgency? From exhaustion? From a constant need to prove yourself? Or from a place that is a little more regulated, clearer and more whole?
And perhaps even more importantly: What within you today needs more care than demand?
Because, ultimately, leadership begins long before strategy. It begins in the relationship we have with ourselves. And the better we understand the connection between health, energy, recovery and human performance, the better and more sustainable our leadership will be.
