How to return to work with presence after a long break
Not productivity. not performance. presence.
The night before returning to work after a long break often sounds like this:
I should feel refreshed… so why does my chest feel tight?
what if I’ve lost my edge?
what if everyone moved on without me?
You tell yourself you’ll just open the laptop to “check emails”.
Ten minutes later, you’re knee-deep in threads, flagged tasks, and that familiar sense of urgency creeping back into your body.
Welcome back.
This isn’t a lack of gratitude.
It’s not weakness.
It’s your nervous system responding to uncertainty, something many leaders experience when returning to work after a long break, especially when they’re trying to return with presence rather than pressure.
And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: most leaders are never taught how to return well. There’s an unspoken assumption that time off automatically resets us. That rest equals readiness. That leave magically produces clarity, energy, and motivation.
Oh well. If only.
The hidden cost of “just jumping back in”
Research backs up what many leaders quietly experience. Deloitte found that over 70% of professionals feel overwhelmed within the first two weeks of returning from extended leave, especially when role expectations have shifted while they were away.
At the same time, Gartner highlights that mid-level leaders carry the highest cognitive load during periods of change. They’re translating strategy from above while holding space for emotion, uncertainty, and performance below.
Put those two together and you start to see the issue.
When you return from leave, you’re not just coming back to tasks.
You’re coming back to pressure.
To perception.
To pace.
And often, to a version of yourself that no longer quite fits.
So the real question isn’t how do i catch up?
It’s how do I return to work with presence, without losing myself again?
Why presence matters more than confidence?
Presence isn’t about having the answers.
It’s not about feeling ready, upbeat, or energised.
Presence is about choice.
It’s the ability to pause, even briefly, before going into solution mode (yes, I know that’s uncomfortable for you). It’s choosing to respond rather than react, because you noticed the reaction forming and asked yourself, what’s actually going on here?
It’s noticing what’s changed, not just in the organisation, but in you.
Many leaders tell me that during their break, something subtle happened. Their adrenaline dropped. Their body softened. They stopped operating in constant urgency. They remembered what it felt like to think clearly, to breathe properly, to not be “on” all the time.
And then they return… and the system hasn’t changed at all.
Presence is leading from where you are now, not from where you think you should be.
When leaders skip this step, they don’t fail. They default.
Over-functioning.
People-pleasing.
Rushing decisions.
Avoiding the conversations that matter.
Within weeks, the break has vanished.
A quick context, and why I’m sharing this
I work with leaders navigating change every single day through my leadership training In Your Element. Smart, capable, committed people who care deeply about their teams and their work. Many of them return from leave determined to “do it differently this time”.
And yet, without realising it, they walk straight back into the same patterns that exhausted them in the first place. Not because they failed to learn anything, but because no one ever helped them pause long enough to integrate what the break actually gave them.
That’s why I want to share the frameworks below. They’re not theoretical models pulled from a book. They come from what I see play out in real leadership lives, in real organisations, under real pressure.
Framework one: the re-entry gap (why returning feels harder than leaving)
There’s a gap almost no organisation plans for.
The gap between:
Who you were before the break
Who you became during the break
What the workplace expects you to be now
Most systems plan meticulously for absence.
Very few plan for re-entry.
That gap creates friction.
You’ve gained perspective, but the system hasn’t.
You’ve slowed down, but the pace hasn’t.
You’ve changed, but expectations haven’t been renegotiated.
Presence starts by naming that gap, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.
A few questions worth sitting with:
- What did this break give me that I don’t want to lose?
- What patterns am I most likely to slip back into under pressure?
- What does “returning well” actually look like for me, not on paper, but in practice?
When leaders name the re-entry gap, something subtle but powerful happens.
They stop blaming themselves for feeling unsettled.
They stop trying to force themselves back into an old version that no longer fits.
And they start leading with more honesty, both internally and externally.
Practically, this often shows up as:
- Clearer conversations about expectations and priorities
- Less internal pressure to “prove” they’re back
- A stronger sense of agency around what they keep, change, or let go of
Many leaders tell me this is the first time returning to work feels intentional rather than reactive. Not perfect. Not smooth. But grounded.
Framework two: adaptive leadership, start with self, not strategy
One of the core principles of adaptive leadership, and a foundation of my leadership training In Your Element, is simple and uncomfortable:
You cannot lead others through uncertainty if you are not regulated yourself.
Returning from a long break isn’t a technical problem. It’s an adaptive one. You’re navigating identity shifts, emotional expectations, and ambiguity around role and rhythm.
Before diving into goals and deliverables, adaptive leaders do three things.
First, they pause before performance.
I once worked with a leader, Peter. On his first week back, he deliberately didn’t book a single meeting before 10am. Instead, he spent fifteen minutes each morning walking, thinking, and asking himself one question: what state am I bringing into today?
He told me later that it changed everything. He was calmer in meetings, clearer in decisions, and less reactive when things didn’t go to plan. Nothing external changed. He did.
Presence starts before the first meeting, not during it.
Second, they observe without judgement.
Another leader I worked with, Ana, noticed that every time her calendar filled up unexpectedly, her shoulders tightened and her tone sharpened. Instead of criticising herself, she treated it as data. No drama. Just information.
She started noticing patterns: when she felt rushed, when resistance showed up, when she reacted more strongly than the situation warranted.
That awareness alone softened her responses.
Third, they choose one intentional behaviour.
Not ten. One.
Because intentional behaviours interrupt autopilot. They give your nervous system something solid to anchor to.
For some leaders, it’s speaking last in meetings for the first fortnight.
For others, it’s building buffer time between meetings.
For many, it’s clarifying expectations instead of assuming alignment.
Small choices, consistently practised, rewire leadership patterns faster than motivation ever will.
A practical re-entry experiment
This is an exercise I use in In Your Element to help leaders reset their internal compass. It takes about fifteen minutes.
Take a pen and answer honestly.
Stop
one behaviour that helped you survive before the break, but now costs you energy
Start
one behaviour that reflects who you are now
Protect
one boundary from your break you are not willing to sacrifice
Then ask yourself:
What conversation needs to happen to protect this?
That question tends to surface where leadership really begins.
What most leaders don’t realise
Your team doesn’t need you to come back as the same person.
Or the hyper-capable version.
Or the permanently energised one.
They need you present.
Presence builds psychological safety.
It builds trust during uncertainty.
It builds credibility without over-explaining.
And yes, paradoxically, it accelerates performance.
A seven-day challenge
If you’ve worked with me before, you know I care deeply about accountability, not in a rigid way, but in a human one.
For the next seven days, before you focus on being effective, practise being intentional.
Notice when you’re rushing to prove yourself.
Pause before filling silence.
Name uncertainty instead of smoothing it over.
Ask yourself each day:
Am I leading from habit, or from choice?
Curious to go deeper?
This is exactly the work we do inside In Your Element, supporting leaders to build self-awareness, emotional regulation, and adaptive leadership skills so they can lead change without burning out or shrinking themselves.
If this resonated, I invite you to watch the short leadership message on confident communication and explore whether In Your Element can support you to return to work with presence, emotional clarity, and confidence, especially during change.
Sometimes the most powerful leadership shift isn’t doing more.
It’s returning differently.