How sleep impacts leadership - Part 3: Better sleep enables leaders to navigate change

This is part three of our series: “How sleep impacts leadership,” where we explore how sleep actively impacts the skills and qualities that make leaders more effective in six main ways.

• For the previous post in our series see: “Part 2: Better sleep drives more rational decision-making.”
• For the full playbook, including insights on how to implement Sleep Leadership at your organization, see here.
• Coming soon: “Part 4: Better sleep fosters trust and more ethical behaviors.”

How Sleep Impacts Leadership - Part 3:

Better sleep enables leaders to navigate change

Leadership requires situational awareness—knowing what’s happening in your environment and what your employees are experiencing.

Situational awareness is especially important during challenging times when employees may be hesitant to voice opinions or contrary viewpoints. As a leader, you need to be able to “read the room” and interpret non-verbal cues.

When sleep-deprived, you're more likely to overreact to events and express feelings in a negative way. You’re also more likely to come to a decision based on emotion rather than facts.

As a leader who relies on healthy negotiations, compromise, and effective discussion to build trust with your teams, this type of emotional decision-making can be problematic.

Better sleep allows you to retain more awareness of what's actually happening in your workplace, so you can have more appropriate and measured responses during challenging times.

For the full list of how sleep impacts leadership, and how you can apply the findings to become a more effective leader, check out the full playbook here.

And stay tuned for Part 4, where we explore how the best leaders build trust.

About Chorus

Chorus is a sleep-focused employee benefit. We improve employee productivity and well-being through better sleep, enhanced employee sentiment analysis, and practical organizational best practices.

First, the employee side is a mobile app and coaching program that helps employees and their families sleep better.

Second, the employer side provides a measurement tool that allows HR leaders to collect objective, anonymous data that measures the health and sentiment of their employee base, and customized organizational best practices.

🧩 If you're an HR or business leader interested in learning more about supporting your organization with better insights and improved sleep, please reach out!