Your Nervous System as a Leadership Tool

Leaders who understand regulation lead differently. They can:

• Pause before reacting in crises

• Model calm and steadiness

• Respond to conflict from clarity rather than urgency

• Create safe, trusting environments for staff and clients

Regulation is not just personal—it’s organizational. When you master your own system, you shape the culture around you.

Most of us who went into teaching thought we could change the system from the inside by being different and showing up as the adults we needed when we were younger. However, we weren’t prepared for the brutality of the experience of being “part of the system” - the same system that didn’t serve us when we were children.

WE CAN CHANGE THE SYSTEM, but maybe not in the ways we thought we could. We change the system starting in our classrooms first. We change how we interact with colleagues, with administrators. We model moving from a place of regulating our nervous systems as our number 1 priority. We preserve our commitment to ourselves and what we need to do to serve from a place of wholeness. And we rise up in leadership positions, teaching others the skills we have learned.

Imagine a school system, or a mission-driven organization, where every leader embodied calm thoughtfulness. Imagine if your co-workers encouraged each other to regulate, instead of commiserating by focusing on their own dysfunction. Imagine a workplace where every adult learned to heal their nervous system dysfunction by accessing skills they were never taught. The issues we could solve!