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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.236: Finding Rest in a Busy World, Women’s Health, Burnout and a Challenge to Leadership, with Lesley Waldron, click here to listen now.

This week on the podcast I spoke with Health Coach and Menopause specialist, Lesley Waldron about women’s health, health at work more generally, from burnout to mental to physical, work culture and beyond. It was an important topic and an educational one, and I’m now reflecting on why understanding biological cycles is essential for preventing burnout and keeping our best people.

Whenever I ask fellow leaders if their careers ended up exactly where they expected when they first started out, the answer is almost always a resounding no. Across my working life, I don't think I’ve met more than one or two people who could honestly say their path followed a completely straight line (and usually, those people have been in careers that require that single-minded focus because they’re so challenging, competitive, etc. The fighter pilots, for example!).

It makes me wonder why we still design our workplaces as if human lives and human health, operate on a perfectly predictable, unchanging track. There’s a relevant example unfolding in the UK this very week: how many bosses are saying to their people something along the lines of “I don’t care how hot it is, I’m not buying you a desk fan.” or “Even if it is 30 celsius and there’s no air con in the building, we do still expect you to be here.”

It’s easy to question whether these organizations are truly providing adequate support for the health of their people, or if they’re simply making it harder for to stay well while doing the jobs.

Chatting with Lesley, an integrative women’s health coach, this exact tension sat right at the center of our conversation.

Lesley shared an anecdote from her youth that perfectly frames how we misjudge our career journeys. When she was fourteen, an English teacher asked her class to draw a path as a psychological exercise to signify their future career expectations. Lesley initially drew a straight line, but then she replaced it with a wiggly one. Even at that young age, she knew she didn't want a singular, uniform career; she wanted to experience a variety of different things across her life. This open mindset eventually led her to teach English in Madrid and Argentina, and later to manage international student recruitment for a university.

Yet, a winding path doesn't shield you from intense structural pressures. Twelve years ago, while leading a government policy project under a coalition government where nobody could agree on clear objectives, Lesley hit a wall of total burnout. At the same time, her youngest child wasn’t sleeping through the night, waking up every hour and a half. Lesley became trapped in a vicious cycle: running on pure adrenaline by day, relying heavily on sugar and caffeine to survive her working hours (that’s a familiar story, isn’t it?) and finding herself far too wired to rest when she actually had a rare moment to sleep.

Lesley told me about an alarming incident from that time where, entirely sleep-deprived, another car crashed right into her during her morning commute. Instead of stopping to process the shock, the intense pressure to appear present forced her to drive straight to the office and sit at her desk, only to burst into tears a few hours later when her adrenaline finally ran out. It reminded me of my own experiences with unsupportive management, like an old boss who berated me for not checking text messages while I was driving. When we operate in cultures that demand constant availability regardless of basic human limits, burnout isn't a risk; it's a certainty.

One of the most valuable insights from our conversation was the idea that rest isn't simply what happens when we close our eyes at night. Lesley described true rest as "non-doing time." Or in other words, deliberate space where your brain is released from deep focus and allowed to function differently, sparking creativity and cognitive recovery.

To show how modern offices have systematically stripped these moments away, Lesley recalled a charity she worked for years ago that still maintained an old-fashioned "tea lady". Twice a day, the tea trolley would move through the building. The entire organization, including the chief executive, would pause, gather around, grab a drink and talk. It was a built-in, culturally normalised (and, admittedly extremely British) pocket of rest that broke the momentum of a stressful day. When the charity moved into a new building with a standard kitchen, that collaborative rhythm, that small but impactful part of the work culture completely disappeared. Presumably the tea lady lost her job, too.

When a workplace lacks these built-in buffers, individuals must instead find small, intentional rituals to protect their sanity. Lesley shared a story of a client who was balancing a senior role, a young child and a partner with a disability. Completely exhausted and struggling with perimenopausal symptoms, the client started a five-minute morning ritual called a "sit and sip". Before starting her day, she would sit in her favorite chair, look out at the garden and focus entirely on drinking her coffee; no phone, no distractions. That tiny pocket of mental space broke her high-adrenaline state.

Within six months, that single habit snowballed, in a good way. She gained the confidence to establish firm boundaries, put buffers in her calendar, and arrange to work from home weekly. She didn't have to stall her career to protect her health, she actually advanced because she gave herself the room to think.

We need to talk honestly about the massive disconnect between corporate wellness initiatives and genuine structural flexibility. Many organizations today are quick to tick compliance boxes by setting up internal menopause networks or supplying sanitary products in restrooms. While these are positive steps, they often act as a band-aid over a deeply unsupportive corporate culture.

Lesley highlighted a telling example from her recent market research involving a perimenopausal woman whose organisation publicly championed women's health. Yet, when this woman asked to adjust her contract from forty hours a week to thirty-seven, her management flatly told her no. She felt completely trapped, unwilling to give up a career she had worked incredibly hard to build, but acutely aware that the rigid schedule was breaking her physical and mental health.

This happens because our professional structures are still anchored to an industrial-era model that assumes work must be tied to a rigid block of time spent at a desk or other physical location.

Worse, these systems are fundamentally designed around male physiological patterns. As Lesley pointed out, men experience a relatively stable, linear level of testosterone day-to-day and month-to-month. In stark contrast, the sharp drops in estrogen and progesterone that women experience at the end of every single menstrual cycle are biologically equivalent to about 125 years of gradual testosterone decline happening all at once.

To expect a workforce to deliver uniform energy every single day, completely ignoring these profound cyclical shifts, is scientifically absurd. True equity in the workplace isn't about giving women a specific label; it's about acknowledging that human biology fluctuates. Just one example, but Lesley made the point extremely well!

When businesses refuse to adapt to these biological realities, the organizational cost is devastating. Earlier this year, I read a diversity report showing that out of the FTSE 100 companies, fewer than ten currently had female chief executives. While the reasons behind that statistic are no doubt layered and complex, we can't ignore the fact that many highly qualified women in their forties and fifties choose to step away from corporate advancement or exit the workforce entirely, and they’re often navigating severe perimenopausal symptoms.

When these professionals walk out the door, an organization doesn't just lose a head count; it loses decades of deep institutional wisdom, leadership capability and strategic experience that cannot be easily replaced through a standard recruitment drive.

This loss of talent is entirely preventable if people are supported through the transition. Lesley explained that once women pass through menopause, their hormones settle into a steady, balanced state. Many traditional cultures recognize this transition beautifully; Chinese culture refers to it as the "second spring,". It’s marked by grounded confidence, clear boundaries and exceptional leadership potential (not by any means to suggest that premenopausal women lack such potential! See past episodes of the podcast on this topic…).

Women can absolutely thrive in senior roles, but part of making that possible, practical, even routine, has to include companies/employers doing more to value and protect them during the midlife transition.

To do that effectively, we have to move past the commercialised myths of the wellness industry. Modern professionals are bombarded with marketing messages telling them that managing their health is simply a matter of accumulating supplements. To borrow Lesley’s turn of phrase: women can end up “practically rattling” from a daily routine of pills, mushroom gummies and green powders without ever addressing the root causes of their symptoms.

True wellness can’t be purchased in a pill bottle, it requires deep inner work: tracking your energy cycles, recognizing how habits like alcohol consumption sabotage sleep and firmly holding your boundaries with work, at work and about work.

At the end of our conversation, I asked Lesley to name a figure who in her opinion perfectly embodies leadership, she chose a fictional character that beautifully illustrates the exact qualities we need in modern management: Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lesley highlighted his quiet approach to leadership, his unwavering commitment to his core values, his empathy and his ability to understand people who held completely opposing views. He chose to lead by example and stood firm, even when he knew the immediate outcome wouldn't go in his favor. Those values; compassion, integrity, clear boundaries, morality, are exactly what it takes to change a workplace culture.

The clear takeaway here is that exceptional leadership can’t be separated from human biology. True leaders don't expect their teams to override their physical limits to hit an arbitrary desk-time metric, nor do they rely on outdated industrial frameworks that favor visible presence over actual value delivered.

Instead, they lead with integrity and by example… by normalising rest, encouraging open conversations about health realities like menopause or mental health, they actively protect the boundaries of their people.

By designing our workplaces around the real, fluctuating rhythms of human life, we can build more sustainable organisations where our best talent can genuinely thrive for the long haul.

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Thanks so much to Lesley for her time, insights and patience! You can catch the whole episode now, find the links (or a web-player) here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-236-finding-rest-in-a-busy-world-women-s-health-burnout-and-a-challenge-to-leadership-with-lesley-waldron

If you prefer video then you can watch on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/JFrpjkdmwJk

Tune in again next week for a chat about some of Joel Miller’s contrarian leadership views... and the lessons he’s learned from running a small business, among other things!

I’ll talk to you then, and in the meantime: THANK YOU for reading, for listening, for supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show or newsletter, no future of leadership without each and every one of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help you turn away from the dark side of management!

If you’re a new manager or first-time leader in a tech, expertise or specialist driven workplace and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉