Why Nervous Systems and Ethics Are Now Leadership Issues - Newsletter #51

I’ve been thinking a lot about how people are coping right now. I am looking at how I am coping right now. How is my team at work coping right now? How are my communities coping right now? My friends, family, neighbors, and strangers? 

Not in the big, visible ways—but in small, adaptive ones. Day-to-day. Interaction by interaction.

What I’m noticing is that coping has become micro. Fragmented. Improvised. And it is deeply personal.

People aren’t asking, “How do I build a perfect future?” They’re asking, “How do I get through today without burning out, freaking out, burning bridges, or being harmed?”

For those on the front lines—healthcare workers, educators, service workers, first responders, organizers, and observers, this question isn’t theoretical. It’s physical, emotional, and often unavoidable. Coping isn’t about optimization or balance. It’s about endurance. In these roles, emotional regulation is part of the job description, and the cost of depletion shows up immediately, not abstractly.

And the closer someone is to the point of impact, the more weight each interaction carries. When systems are strained, the ethical trace of leadership decisions doesn’t stay abstract; it shows up in our bodies, shifts, and outcomes. There’s less margin for dysfunction upstream, and far less room to absorb pressure that should never have trickled down in the first place.

These human questions matter to leaders, founders, and business owners because they reveal something important: the nervous system is now a business variable.

We’re operating under overlapping pressures of economic uncertainty, rapid change, unrelenting fight-or-flight moments, constant visibility, the courage to speak up, and a nervous system that doesn’t distinguish between a market shift and a moral one. It just knows when it hasn’t felt safe in a while.

This is where oxytocin becomes relevant not as a wellness buzzword, but as infrastructure.

Oxytocin is often described as the “connection” or “trust” hormone. More accurately, it’s what allows people to lower threats enough to collaborate, think clearly, and act ethically. When it is present, people are more open, more generous, and better able to think long-term. And that’s not soft. That’s operational.

Ethics doesn’t live in mission statements.

They live in our bodies.

I’m not a doctor or a therapist, and yet I believe that: when people feel chronically pressured, unseen, or disposable, moral bandwidth shrinks. Self-protection takes over. That’s not a culture problem, it’s a biological one.

I heard the words ‘ethical trace’ from the brilliant historian Timothy Snyder during a deep and thoughtful *interview/lecture he gave last week in Brussels. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you watch it - "This should take him down."

I noodled on that phrase for a few days. At Burning Man, one of the tenets is ‘leave no trace’ to basically clean up after yourself. Leaving a trace, to me, is also about legacy: what you leave behind that lingers or points someone back to you and your story.

A positive ethical trace is what you leave behind in someone after an interaction:

·       Do they feel steadier or more activated?

·       More capable of decision-making or more defensive?

·       More trusted or more cautious?

Oxytocin is often the medium through which that trace is written.

But here’s the leadership edge: oxytocin can support trust or be used manipulatively.

Warmth without clarity becomes confusion. Connection without consent becomes extraction.

So the ethical question isn’t “Did this interaction feel good?” It is “What did it enable afterward?”

A clean ethical trace has a few markers:

·       Consent: trust isn’t rushed or emotionally leveraged

·       Clarity: warmth without obligation or hidden pressure

·       Autonomy: people leave with more agency, not dependence

If the connection is ethical, people don’t feel hooked.

They feel resourced.

This matters right now because many people are coping quietly, holding teams, families, friends, neighborhoods, and cities together. People are managing extreme uncertainty, absorbing more than they should, while assuming their exhaustion or fogginess is a personal failure instead of a systemic one.

The most effective leaders I see right now aren’t louder or faster. They’re regulating the room. They’re creating environments where people can think, not just react. They are circular, not hierarchical. They give direction, protection, and correction without leaping to a power grab.

When I give certain speeches I ask “who in this room is a leader, raise your hand if you feel so moved.” A third of the room usually does, I always say, “Well, you should all have your hands up. I believe that every person is a leader to someone.” However, I believe this moment isn’t about LEADERSHIP POWER; it is about sharing the power, sharing the caring, and truly connecting.

Which brings me to something I’ve been watching closely.

There’s a noticeable shift happening in where people are choosing to connect online.

Twitter/X increasingly feels like a high-friction environment (some say a dumpster fire) optimized for outrage, trolls, speed, and performative certainty. I held my account name there but took it off my phone over a year ago. (and I used to love it, I miss our community's interactions there). 

TikTok, for many creators and business owners, has started to feel unstable: algorithmic volatility, political uncertainty, unclear leadership, privacy and ethics issues, and the real possibility that years of work could disappear overnight. A large mass exodus from the app has led to a ~150% increase in deletions over the past 5 days. I recently downloaded my own videos, slowly and deliberately. Not as a dramatic exit, but as a strategic one. (and it takes forever over wifi). Ownership matters. And so does where you place your voice. I’m deleting it this week.

At the same time, I’ve noticed a rise in actual conversation on Threads. Owned by Meta (which has its own issues), but the exchanges seem less influencer-y. Less posturing. More listening. It’s not perfect—but it feels less cortisol-driven and more oxytocin-friendly.

That’s not a tech trend. It’s a nervous-system response.

People are migrating away from platforms that extract attention and intrude on one’s privacy, and toward spaces that allow presence. Away from performance and toward participation. Away from surveillance and control.

For business leaders, this raises a strategic question:

Not “Where can I get the most reach?”

But “Where can I build trust without burning people out, including myself?”

Coping, leadership, ethics, and platform choice are no longer separate conversations. They’re the same one.

Some of the favorite brands on Threads are ones that are bringing joy (resistance), levity, and helpful information:

@pbs

@calm

@chryslernyc

@thisoldhouse

@grand_canyon_conservancy

@mapquest

@sesamestreet

@beyondmeat

@kingarthurbaking

In moments like this, leadership isn’t measured by reach, volume, or speed. It’s measured by whether people can think more clearly, decide more confidently, and act with more steadiness after interacting with you. And people are looking at what you are choosing to put out into the world.

A riff on the the famous Maya Angelou quote…

People will remember how it felt to work with you during uncertain times. Not the strategy decks. Not the talking points.

They will remember whether conversations created clarity or confusion, whether pressure was reduced or quietly transferred. Whether you took a minute to check in with people, or if you barreled through like status quo and didn’t notice or acknowledge our democracy being eroded.

Every interaction leaves a mark, especially when systems are strained. That mark accumulates over time, shaping trust in ways no metric fully captures.

You can measure the 12 hours of video calls I was on yesterday, but did it capture that I start and end every meeting with gratitude and checking in? Empathy analytics should be a future trend and something we tout like opens, clicks, and likes.

Leadership, in the end, is less about being seen and more about what remains after you leave the room.

What ethical trace do you want to leave with people? You leave a trace whether you want to or not. What do you think yours feels like?

We all have the capacity to bring more kindness, care, and common decency into a room, our businesses, our neighborhood, our cities, our country, and the world. It is a choice.

Empathy makes us human; actions make us warriors.

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To follow me on my speaking and travel journeys, connect with me on Threads, Instagram, GOODBYE TikTok, LinkedIn,  and my Podcast! My Linktree has all kinds of articles, accounts, and offers too: https://linktr.ee/heddamaven

*Meet The Thinker: Timothy Snyder | Bozar Brussels - The conversation was moderated by Pieter Lagrou, Belgian historian specializing in the history of the Second World War. The event was organized by Bozar, in collaboration with the Hannah Arendt Institute and the VUB, as part of its 'Ties That Bind Us' series filmed on January 16, 2026.