Episode #392: ADHD, Leadership, and Capacity with guest expert Rebecca Tolbert

Most nonprofit leaders think their performance problems are thinking problems.

They believe they need:

• Better strategy

• Better discipline

• Better time management

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about since my recent conversation with Rebecca Tolbert

What if your performance problem isn’t primarily cognitive?

What if it’s physiological?

Because here’s the mechanism most leaders don’t account for:

When your nervous system detects danger, it reallocates energy away from the front of your brain.

And the front of your brain is where leadership lives.

Rebecca explained something in our conversation that I think every nonprofit leader needs to understand:

When you go into fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, the back of your brain takes over. Blood flow and energy move away from the executive functioning centers — the part responsible for planning, language, sequencing, and decision-making.

That’s not a mindset issue.

That’s biology!

If you’re leading in chronic stress, your brain is literally working with reduced capacity.

...and it explains so much.

• Why you can’t find the right words in tense meetings

• Why small donor rejections feel enormous

• Why you procrastinate on boring but necessary work

• Why your overwhelmed team seems scattered

This isn’t about character or discipline.
It’s about nervous system regulation.

Rebecca works primarily with women with ADHD, and what struck me most was this:

“Nothing has helped my ADHD symptoms more than learning about my nervous system and my stress responses.”

-Rebecca Tolbert

That’s powerful... and in my own experience, nothing helps me be a better leader personally than... you guessed it learning about my nervous system and my stress responses.

So, here’s the broader insight:

You don’t need an ADHD diagnosis to benefit from this understanding.

Nonprofit leaders operate in constant perceived threat:

• Funding instability

• Staff turnover

• Board dynamics

• Community need

• Political shifts

Your body reads these as danger and your ability to think critically and lead well are diminished, even when they are “just” thinking problems.

If your nervous system believes you’re about to be eaten by a bear, your brain will not prioritize strategic decision making.

It will prioritize survival.

One of the most important reminders from our conversation was this:

Logic does not calm the nervous system.

You cannot argue your way into safety.

If you are activated, the solution is not “think better thoughts.”
The solution is to signal safety to your body.

Fortunately we can use our brains to lead a process that signals safety to our bodies.

Rebecca described a simple reset practice that I believe has massive implications for leadership performance:

• Sensory engagement — intentionally activate one of your five senses

• Safety check — look around and confirm you are physically safe

• Sigh — use a physiological sigh (two inhales, one long exhale, repeat for 20 seconds)

This is deceptively simple.

But here’s the mechanism:

When you engage the senses intentionally, you anchor your body in the present moment.

When you conduct a safety check, you override vague internal narratives with concrete physical evidence.

When you sigh, you reset your autonomic nervous system.

You are reminding your body:

I am not in physical danger.

When the body believes that, energy returns to the front of the brain.

And now you can lead well again.

If you only take one thing away from this:

Performance is downstream from regulation.

If your team walks into meetings in fight mode, they will argue.
If they walk in in fawn mode, they will appease.
If they walk in in freeze mode, they will disengage.

None of those states are strategic.

This is why I often say to leaders. As a meeting gets started, first read the room, then do a segue activity to regulate the team's nervous systems and gets their brains working well.

In my work, I often talk about operating at capacity.

We usually define capacity in terms of:

• Staffing

• Budget

• Systems

• Infrastructure

But nervous system capacity is real.

When leaders are chronically activated, they are operating with partial brain access.

Fully built systems require fully online brains.

This is not soft work.
This is performance work.

If you are feeling:

• Scattered

• Reactive

• Emotionally raw

• Avoidant of important conversations

• Drained

Before assuming you lack discipline, ask:

What state is my nervous system in?

Then do something physical to reset it.

Your leadership performance depends on it.

Imagine what happens if you normalize:

• Short resets before meetings

• Naming stress states

• Sensory grounding tools

• Pauses as the reaction the fires

You increase collective intelligence.

You leverage every brain in the room.

And as I often say:

The more brains working well on complex problems, the better.

That includes yours.