Humanitarian Organizations: Building a New Culture of Regenerative Leadership

On my way back to Montreal from a short visit to Ukraine, I want to dedicate this second article in my series on the mental health of frontline workers to my humanitarian colleagues, friends, and clients—both national and expatriate. Several conversations I’ve had this past week reminded me of the fragile reality of this vocational work.

The most critical skill we learn as humanitarian first responders is ensuring our own safety and securing our environment before helping others. Putting yourself in danger only increases the number of victims and compromises your ability to work. Risky behavior is often one of the earliest signs of traumatic exposure and fatigue among aid workers, creating unsafe workplaces. Add to this what we know about mirror neurons: we involuntarily absorb each other’s emotional states, such as a colleague’s anxiety.

We talk a lot about employee mental health. We invest in programs, training, and policies. But what about the health of the leaders themselves? As a consultant, when I step into an organization to assess its health, the underlying problem is often the tension of a leader under pressure or the unspoken atmosphere of a team running on empty. Unfortunately, a new strategic plan or a restructuring won’t fix that.

Throughout my career in fragile humanitarian contexts, leading teams through complex operations, I’ve seen firsthand how demanding leadership has become—far more so than 20 years ago. Leaders are expected to deliver results in unstable, rapidly changing environments; make fast decisions with limited information; keep up with disruptive technology; support teams in emotionally heavy contexts; and embody strong values under pressure. And they must do this continuously. Often without the space to breathe, and without full acknowledgment of what this truly requires.

Yes, leaders matter enormously. Leaders who know themselves—who can distinguish between a personal trigger and a genuinely challenging situation, who communicate clearly, set boundaries while still caring (what I call “tough love”), and stay present under pressure—create something regenerative for their teams. Those in charge have a responsibility to lead by example and a “duty of care” toward others, but also toward themselves.

However, in the humanitarian sector, a culture of constant urgency remains deeply embedded. It’s a culture that values those who endure, who respond, who deliver, who never stop. The culture of the “Hero.” I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And without realizing it, we begin to internalize the belief that slowing down equals failing, that stopping puts others at risk, and that self-care is almost selfish. We find excuses, minimize our needs compared to those we serve, and keep going. Again and again, assignment after assignment. Until our body or mind forces us to stop.

This culture normalizes the exception and can even encourage, or reward, harmful behaviors. It keeps mental and physical health in an implicit space—rarely named, sometimes even taboo. In this context, even the most aware leaders—those who genuinely want to do things differently, to slow down, to create healthier environments—can quickly find themselves isolated or perceived as less committed.

And yet, if we look beyond our sector, change is already happening elsewhere and becoming the norm.

In technology, entrepreneurship, and even finance, more leaders recognize that sustainable performance cannot exist without recovery. Sleep is openly discussed as a prerequisite for better decision-making. Meditation is seen as a tool for clarity and focus. Stress regulation is becoming a core leadership skill. The latest neuroscience research confirms that an exhausted brain makes poorer decisions, fragmented attention reduces innovation, and a saturated nervous system limits creativity and collaboration.

While some sectors are learning to slow down to perform better, others, like humanitarian work, continue to operate on models where intensity and sacrifice remain the markers of commitment. Yes, leaders set the tone. But they are also deeply shaped by what the organization expects and values.

We often ask leaders to change—to be more present, more attentive, more balanced. But we rarely change the conditions in which they operate. Before asking leaders to behave differently, it’s worth asking: What would you need to feel safe enough to slow down? What pressures make rest difficult, even impossible? Where are we asking leaders to carry the culture without giving them the means to shape it? And are we supporting people to increase their emotional intelligence, not just their management skills?

If we want healthy organizations, we need to move from survival-based leadership to regenerative leadership—a leadership that recognizes human limits, integrates rest as part of performance (taking R&R every 8 weeks isn’t the only solution), seeks to restore as much as it produces, and supports the long-term sustainability of both people and results.

Ultimately, we cannot build sustainable organizations with exhausted leaders. It starts by giving people the means to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and by assessing their performance against those metrics. This conversation can be uncomfortable. It challenges deeply rooted norms. But it is essential—a central pillar of the “Duty of Care” toward ourselves and others.

To learn more about The Organiks, visit our program page, our services page, and our mental health in the workplace trainings page.