Why courageous leadership not AI is the antidote to toxic work culture
We’ve normalised a version of work that goes against the grain of everything we know about how humans perform at their best.
Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index paints a bleak picture of a workforce trapped in perpetual motion.
40% of employees check their email by 6am
After-hours meetings have risen 16%
The average worker processes 117 emails and 153 Teams messages a day
This isn’t flexibility. It’s a system with no endpoint, no recovery time, and no room to think. The line between work and life hasn’t blurred, it’s been erased.
And yet, the most alarming part of this report isn’t the data. It’s what’s missing: a roadmap for how leaders can disrupt the cycle. AI can streamline workflows as Microsoft suggests, but it can’t solve a cultural crisis. And make no mistake: toxic productivity is a cultural crisis.
Flexible work was meant to give us freedom. Instead, without clear expectations or cultural guardrails, it’s created a vacuum. And in that vacuum, people fill any vacant space with more work.
When boundaries are blurry and the day never really ends, people default to hyper-responsiveness: constant emails, back-to-back meetings, and zero time to think. According to Harvard Business Review, performance drops dramatically after 50 hours per week, and after 55, it flatlines entirely.
More work doesn’t equal better work. It equals exhausted, distracted, and disconnected teams.
And yet, most leaders remain silent. Instead of defining what healthy, high-performance looks like, we allow the system to keep running on fear, urgency, and false signals of productivity.
We’ve built systems with reactionary tools like instant messaging and notifications masquerading as productivity hacks. But what they really are is disruption dressed up as efficiency. They reward reactivity over reflection. And then we wonder why innovation stalls, morale drops, and burnout climbs.
The problem isn’t just operational. It’s emotional. People are overwhelmed and under-supported. And even AI data shows us that.
According to Harvard Business Review, the top emerging uses of generative AI aren’t technical. They’re human. People are turning to AI for:
Therapy
Life organisation
Finding purpose
These aren’t process problems. They’re signs of emotional depletion. People are turning to machines for relief and perspective because they can’t find it in their workplaces.
If AI is being turned to for comfort, clarity, and existential reflection, we should be asking: what aren’t our leaders providing?
The message is clear, workers don’t just need tools. They need trust, psychological safety, and a sense that what they’re doing actually matters. That starts with leadership, not algorithms.
And here’s the part that’s often missed: leaders are overwhelmed too. They’re stuck in the same reactive system, unable to access the space and clarity they need to lead well.
Over the past seven years, I’ve delivered programs inside some of Australia’s largest companies, exploring the culture of busy and exposing what it really tells us about an organisation’s ability to innovate and create a place where people are proud to work. One of the most profound insights to emerge again and again is this: busy is often code for something else. When leaders are challenged to unpack what they actually meant the last time they said “I’m busy,” here’s what comes out:
“I’m exhausted.” “I don’t have the energy to do more.” “I don’t know how to prioritise.” “Please don’t give me anything else.” “My head is full. I’m overwhelmed.”
In other words, busy is often code for burnout, capacity limits, an inability to prioritise or a quiet cry for help.
If leaders could start decoding busy both in themselves and in their teams they’d have a far clearer view of the real barriers to performance and wellbeing. Because when someone says “I’m busy,” they’re not always telling you about their schedule. They’re revealing their psychological state.
This is where the reset begins, not with better tech, but with better leadership.
Wise Compassionate Leadership is not soft. It’s strategic. Grounded in evidence from Harvard and organisational psychology, it balances empathy with clarity and boldness with discernment. It creates the conditions to do hard things humanely by making space for deep thinking, genuine collaboration, and meaningful progress to actually happen.
And the data backs it: organisations that embrace these principles outperform peers on innovation, engagement, and long-term resilience.
But this isn’t something that starts on a whiteboard. It starts with individual leaders choosing to work differently.
That means being the first to:
Set boundaries that others won’t
Challenge the urgency culture
Prioritise what’s meaningful over what’s simply loud
It also means learning to decode “I’m busy” as a signal, not just from others, but from yourself.
It’s easy to confuse constant motion with real progress in a system that never stops.
But effective leadership isn’t about keeping up, it’s about making space for clear thinking, meaningful work, and outcomes that actually matter.
The leaders who will define the future aren’t the ones doing the most.
They’re the ones willing to lead differently cut through the noise, question the default, and prioritise deep, deliberate impact over busyness.
It’s time to look beyond to-do lists. If your team is always busy but struggling to make meaningful progress, let’s talk about how to create space for what actually matters. Book a discovery call today here.
