What happens when high-achieving leaders neglect to lead themselves? In this eye-opening conversation, executive coach Irene Ortiz-Glass pulls back the curtain on the hidden struggles of top performers and reveals the profound connection between personal history and leadership effectiveness.
Irene shares her powerful personal journey from childhood trauma to corporate success to complete burnout, demonstrating how our origin stories shape our leadership approaches. "What got you here didn't start today—it started 10, 20 years ago," she explains, highlighting how early experiences create the mindsets we bring to our leadership roles.
The discussion explores our "maladaptive" modern work environment, where constant connectivity and back-to-back meetings trigger chronic stress responses that impair decision-making. Leaders who thrive have learned to be intentional about energy management, creating clear boundaries while maintaining high performance. Irene provides practical insights on creating psychological safety for teams, explaining how threat responses trigger the "amygdala hijack" that prevents authentic engagement and strategic thinking.
For listeners feeling overwhelmed, Irene offers a starting point: ask yourself what you truly want, examine your core values, and honestly assess whether your daily activities align with those values. "The happiness factor in life is feeling connected to what matters to you," she notes, challenging the notion that success requires sacrificing personal well-being.
Whether you're leading a team through organizational change or seeking greater balance in your own leadership journey, this conversation provides both the neuropsychological framework and practical tools to become more effective. Ready to transform your approach to leadership? Start by understanding your own story.
More About this Episode
Why Leadership Starts With You: The Human-Centered Path to Building Resilient Teams
In the modern business world, where agility, speed, and constant reinvention are the norm, there's a crucial truth that often gets left behind in the noise: you can’t lead others well if you’re not leading yourself.
This idea formed the foundation of a compelling conversation I had recently with Irene Ortiz-Glass, founder and CEO of Leadership Advisory Group LLC. As a seasoned executive coach with two decades of experience working with C-suite leaders, global organizations, and high-performing teams, Irene brings a human-first approach to executive development that doesn’t just scratch the surface—it dives deep into what truly makes or breaks leadership in today's world.
In our discussion, we uncovered not only the silent struggles many high-achievers face but also the necessary internal work that sets the foundation for sustainable success and team excellence. If you're a leader, an aspiring executive, or even someone evaluating your professional trajectory, this is your call to look inward. Because if your goal is to build and sustain resilient teams, it starts with cultivating a resilient self.
The Burnout Nobody Sees—Until It’s Too Late
Irene’s personal story is both powerful and familiar to many high-performing professionals. Her career trajectory—rising quickly through the ranks of global consulting firms and enterprise tech companies like SAP was defined by drive, precision, and constant acceleration. But underneath the accolades and promotions was an undercurrent of anxiety, exhaustion, and the kind of burnout that doesn’t announce itself until the body quite literally shuts down.
As Irene shared, she hit a wall that many executives never see coming. “Burnout is real. I was sick. My adrenal glands had stopped producing cortisol. I had all the success, but I wasn’t okay,” she recalled.
This wasn’t just career fatigue—it was a physiological breakdown brought on by years of unmanaged stress and a “more is better” mentality that had roots far deeper than the workplace. Irene’s story isn’t unique; it’s quietly mirrored by thousands of leaders who are powering through their days while slowly unraveling behind the scenes.
And here's the truth: you can’t outrun yourself.
Self-Leadership: The Real Starting Point of Resilient Leadership
One of the most powerful insights Irene brought forward is that leadership is deeply personal. It doesn’t begin with strategy decks or management models—it begins with your own story.
“Who you are now is just what’s happened through the course of a journey. To really understand how you lead, you have to understand your origin story,” Irene said.
For Irene, the childhood trauma and early independence she experienced shaped a mindset of fierce self-reliance and unrelenting drive. It made her successful, yes—but it also left her vulnerable to perfectionism and chronic stress. Through her journey, she learned that resilient leadership isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about healing, integrating, and aligning your personal story with your professional path.
When leaders ignore the work of self-examination and emotional awareness, they not only risk their own well-being, they model an unsustainable version of leadership to their teams. That’s how cycles of burnout perpetuate in organizations.
The Corporate World Is Maladaptive—And You Can’t Let It Define You
Irene introduced a concept that stuck with me: we live in a maladaptive world.
Remote work, Zoom fatigue, always-on calendars, and digital overload have created a professional environment that clashes with the very design of the human body and mind. The result? We're constantly in a state of hyper-stimulation, reactive decision-making, and cortisol spikes.
“We weren’t made to sit in front of screens all day or rush from meeting to meeting without pause. The body starts to scream, but we override it with caffeine, alcohol, or sheer willpower.”
So what’s the antidote?
Intentional living. Prescriptive rest. Conscious time design. And most importantly, the courage to choose self-regulation over self-destruction.
Irene emphasized that every leader has a responsibility—not just to their organization, but to themselves—to get clear on:
- What they want in life and work
- What their values are
- How their daily choices align (or don’t) with those values
From Self to Team: Building High-Performing Teams with Human Insight
Of course, leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The goal of doing your own inner work is not just self-actualization it’s to show up more effectively for your team.
And that’s where the magic happens.
When leaders understand themselves, they lead with more empathy, clarity, and courage. They’re able to create psychological safety, which according to numerous studies is one of the most important factors in building high-performing teams.
“Leadership is about creating trust in an environment where people can be who they are. And also helping people grow without putting them under threat,” Irene shared.
She also raised a crucial point about the emerging generational divide in the workplace. Today’s younger professionals aren’t chasing promotions the same way previous generations did. They prioritize balance, purpose, and well-being. And rather than resist that shift, leaders must learn to adapt.
We also touched on the erosion of structured leadership development in corporate environments. Legacy programs like Macy’s rotational development track or SAP’s sales academy used to shape well-rounded professionals. Today, those experiences are rare and organizations are feeling the gap.
Leaders now have to be intentional culture builders and development architects helping their teams learn, grow, and navigate complexity with clarity.
Tactical Steps for Leaders on the Edge
If you’re feeling like you’re at the edge of burnout, or you're just disconnected from the kind of leader you want to be, Irene shared some practical entry points to begin the realignment:
- Ask yourself: What do I want? This isn't just a career goal. It’s a life goal. What are you actually building? For what purpose?
- Clarify your values. Write down your top five. Are you living them? Are they showing up in how you spend your time, energy, and attention?
- Track your energy. Leadership is energy and focus. Where is yours going? What restores it? What drains it?
- Create space. You don’t have to overhaul your calendar overnight. Start with 15-minute buffers between meetings. Protect a lunch break. Carve out non-negotiable personal time.
- Do the work. Whether it’s therapy, coaching, journaling, or mentorship, don’t go it alone. Self-awareness is the greatest leadership advantage you can cultivate.
The Future of Leadership is Human
We closed our conversation on a powerful note: Leadership today is harder than it’s ever been. But it’s also more impactful, more rewarding, and more transformational—if you’re willing to do the inner work.
Gone are the days when leadership was just about KPIs and executive presence. The best leaders today understand that they are human first, and that embracing that humanity is not a liability it’s their greatest strength.
The workplace of the future won’t just reward performance. It will reward presence, clarity, empathy, and the ability to create environments where people thrive.
And that starts with you.
If this resonated with you, take a moment today, not tomorrow, to pause and reflect. Where are you in your own leadership journey? And what’s one small step you can take to lead yourself better, so you can lead others with greater impact?
Because real leadership? It starts from within.
