Real Leaders Take Vacation

Rest isn’t weakness, it’s fuel for future success

Like lilacs blooming, or the Leafs finding a way not to win the Stanley Cup, there's a conversation I seem to have every June: A leader tells me they're taking a vacation. And then, almost as an afterthought, they add: "But I'll still be checking my email." 

If you’re still working on checking email, you’re not really on vacation. Part of you is still available for work, and the rest of your body, mind, and spirit don’t feel fully out-of-office either. 

How did we get here? These days, productivity is so prized, it’s little wonder we’ve convinced ourselves that being constantly available is a sign of commitment. We wear busyness like a badge of honour and measure our value by how indispensable we appear to be. The harder we push, the more successful we think we’ll become.

But leadership doesn’t work that way. In fact, some of the best evidence suggests the opposite.

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) article Don’t Work on Vacation. Seriously. highlighted research showing that many employees continue to work during weekends, holidays, and even official vacation time. As the lines between work and home continue to blur, truly disconnecting has become increasingly rare. But rest isn’t a luxury. It’s an investment. 

Nurture innate leadership traits 

At WhiteWater, we talk a lot about the defining leadership traits of courage, curiosity, and caring. These characteristics aren’t steady-state; they run on physical energy, mental clarity, quiet confidence, and empathy, none of which are available if you’re exhausted and overwhelmed. 

You can’t be curious when your mind is cluttered with a hundred unfinished tasks. You can’t genuinely care for others if you haven’t taken care of yourself. And you can’t be courageous if your tank is running dry. Seen in this light, recharging and rest aren’t the enemies of effective leadership, but its prerequisites.

But too many leaders think recovery is something they’ll get around to once the work is finished. (News flash: the work is never finished!). There will always be another customer to call, another proposal to review, another crisis waiting around the corner.

So the next time you think you can’t afford to take time away, try framing it another way: Can you afford not to? 

Performance, promotion, retention 

The HBR piece cited studies finding a positive link between taking vacations and intrinsic motivation. Employees who took more vacation time actually performed better, were more likely to earn promotions, and were less likely to leave their organizations. Other research suggests that stepping away improves creativity, mental clarity, mood, and even physical health.

I understand this in my bones. 

My best thinking rarely happens in an airport lounge or staring at a PowerPoint deck. It happens when I slow down. It might be out on the links, as I try to salvage a shank into the rough, much to the entertainment of my golfing buddies. Or it happens as the sun sets over the Kennebecasis River, a highlight of our gorgeous and preciously short Atlantic Canadian summers. Sometimes it’s nothing more complicated than firing up the barbecue with Heather and Aidan, and laughing about something completely unrelated to strategy, clients, or deadlines.

Another HBR piece, "How Taking a Vacation Improves Your Well-Being," cites Lin-Manuel Miranda, who famously conceived the idea for Hamilton while on vacation. 

“The moment my brain got a moment’s rest,” he said, “Hamilton walked into it.”

Who knows what great idea might arrive in the whitespace you give yourself on vacation?  

Your vacation sends a message

Curiosity is one of the key themes I've been exploring in Care to Lead (my book that’s getting dangerously close to publishable form). We often think of it as asking better questions or challenging assumptions, but curiosity needs open, unstructured time to thrive. If every minute of every day is consumed by execution, meetings, emails, and travel, there simply isn't any space left for the kind of thinking that leads to breakthrough ideas. Daydreaming is generative.

And caring requires the same thing. One of the biggest misconceptions about caring leadership is that it means constantly giving more of yourself. In reality, caring leadership means making sure you have something left to give. You can’t show up with empathy, patience, and presence if you’ve been running on empty for six months.

There’s another reason leaders should pay attention. The way you treat your own vacation sends a message to everyone around you. If you answer emails from the beach, your team notices. If you join every meeting from the cottage, your people assume they should too. If you proudly tell everyone you haven’t taken a real vacation in five years, you’re creating a culture where exhaustion becomes the standard. It impacts performance, showing up as burnout, poor decision-making, or the loss of talented people.

When you permit yourself to disconnect, you implicitly give it to your team, too. And if you’re one of the many leaders I know who genuinely feel they can’t step away because everything depends on them, that’s a signal that something needs to change. 

Still having trouble shutting down? The HBR piece has a solution: reframing time off as “work time” can help people maintain intrinsic motivation for their work.

Can you do it? 

This summer, I have a challenge for you: take the vacation.

Not the half-assed getaway where you’re secretly answering messages when everyone else is waterskiing, or the kids are tucked in the tent. The real one. Here’s how: 

1. Turn on your OOO. 

2. Turn off the notifications. 

3. Close the laptop and leave it in the office.

4. And open the door to… well, whatever fills your cup!

This summer, see a break for what it really is: an act of courage to step away, an act of curiosity to create space for new thinking, and an act of caring for yourself, your family, your team, and everyone who counts on you.