One of the more disappointing discoveries about moving up is that the promotion does not come with additional energy.
More responsibility? Absolutely. More decisions? Certainly. More people who would like “just five minutes” of your time? Somehow, yes.
An upgraded internal battery to handle all of this? Apparently that was not included in the compensation package.
Most leaders eventually discover this. You can become more experienced, more efficient and considerably better at managing complexity, but you’re still doing all of it in a human body. That body needs sleep. It needs food, movement and recovery. Hormones change. Health changes. Stress accumulates. And sometimes the fatigue you’ve been attributing to leadership deserves a closer look.
This matters for more than feeling better at the end of the day. Energy affects how we think, listen and respond. It affects patience, concentration and the amount of effort it takes to make yet another decision when the day has already required fifty of them.
So maybe we should talk about the leader’s energy before we’re running on fumes.
The 3 P.M. Problem Isn’t Always Coffee
There is a particular kind of tired that can become normalized when you’re responsible for a lot.
You wake up already thinking about the day. There are meetings, decisions and problems that need your attention, along with the actual work you were supposed to accomplish between all those meetings, decisions and problems. Then there is the life waiting outside of work, because apparently becoming a leader does not exempt anyone from groceries, family, relationships, appointments or figuring out what’s for dinner.
By midafternoon, the coffee starts looking less like a beverage and more like a strategic resource.
The occasional exhausting day isn’t particularly mysterious. The question becomes more interesting when exhaustion begins to feel like your normal operating condition.
Sleep is an obvious place to look, but not simply whether you went to bed. Are you actually sleeping well? Are you waking throughout the night? Snoring? Working across irregular schedules? Staying up because nighttime is the only part of the day when nobody wants anything from you? Poor-quality or insufficient sleep can affect daytime alertness, concentration and functioning, and sleep disorders such as sleep apnea can leave people tired even when they appear to have spent enough time in bed (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [NHLBI], 2022).
Then there is food. Leaders can spend an entire morning discussing organizational priorities and somehow fail to prioritize lunch. A breakfast built around caffeine, a meeting that runs through lunch and something grabbed late in the afternoon can leave almost anyone wondering where their energy went.
Add sustained stress and the mental load of making decisions all day, and fatigue begins to make considerably more sense.
But we shouldn’t stop the investigation there.
Hormones Don’t Check Your Job Title
One of the easiest things to do when you’re busy is explain away changes in how you feel.
Of course I’m tired. Look at my schedule.
Maybe.
But a demanding schedule doesn’t make you immune to everything else happening in your body.
For women, perimenopause and menopause can bring changes that affect sleep and daytime energy. Night sweats are an obvious culprit, but sleep disruption, mood changes and other symptoms can make an already demanding life considerably harder to navigate (National Institute on Aging [NIA], 2024). Someone may spend months trying to become more disciplined when what she actually needs is a conversation about what has changed in her body and what treatment options might help.
Men can have a similar tendency to write off changes as the inevitable cost of getting older or working too much. Clinically low testosterone can be associated with symptoms including changes in sexual desire and energy, but fatigue alone doesn’t diagnose testosterone deficiency. Clinical guidelines recommend diagnosing testosterone deficiency only when compatible symptoms or signs occur alongside consistently low testosterone concentrations (Bhasin et al., 2018). Sleep apnea, depression, medications, metabolic conditions and other health issues can produce overlapping symptoms.
Thyroid disorders, anemia, vitamin deficiencies and other medical conditions can affect energy too.
The point isn’t to turn every afternoon slump into a medical investigation. It’s to recognize when something has changed enough that “I’m busy” may no longer be a complete answer.
There is no leadership award for successfully ignoring your own body.
And Since We’re Talking About Energy…
Once you’ve been tired long enough, you start paying attention when somebody mentions something that might help. That’s usually how peptides find their way into the conversation.
Maybe you’ve heard MOTS-C and wondered what on earth another set of letters has to do with getting through your day with something left in the tank.
Here’s the interesting part.
MOTS-C is a mitochondrial-derived peptide encoded by mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are central to cellular energy metabolism, and research on MOTS-C has explored its relationship with metabolic signaling, glucose metabolism, exercise and aging (Lee et al., 2016; Wan et al., 2023).
So when researchers start looking at a peptide connected to how those little powerhouses communicate about energy and metabolism, you can probably guess why people start leaning in.
Could this help me use energy better? Could it support my metabolism? Could it help me function better as I get older?
That’s the hope, and that’s why MOTS-C is getting attention. Research has examined its relationship with metabolism, insulin sensitivity, exercise and aging, but much of the evidence for administering MOTS-C therapeutically still comes from laboratory and animal studies. Human research has demonstrated relationships between naturally occurring MOTS-C and exercise, but we don’t yet have sufficient clinical evidence to call administered MOTS-C an established treatment for fatigue (Lee et al., 2015; Reynolds et al., 2021).
But if energy and metabolic health are things you’re thinking about, now you understand why MOTS-C keeps entering the conversation.
Then you may hear CJC-1295 and ipamorelin, especially when people start talking about recovery, muscle and body composition.
These work in a different neighborhood. CJC-1295 is an analog of growth hormone-releasing hormone, while ipamorelin is a growth hormone-releasing peptide. Human studies have demonstrated that these compounds can stimulate growth hormone release; CJC-1295 has also been shown to increase insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1 (Raun et al., 1998; Teichman et al., 2006).
Growth hormone participates in processes involving metabolism and body composition, so you can see where the curiosity comes from: Could supporting that pathway help with recovery, maintaining muscle or some of the physical changes that come with aging?
Again, there’s possibility here, but evidence that these peptides improve energy, recovery, muscle or healthy-aging outcomes in otherwise healthy adults is not established. That’s a reason to understand what you’re considering, not necessarily a reason to walk away from the conversation.
And for a leader, I think that’s the important part.
We spend a great deal of time figuring out how to get better performance from organizations, teams and systems. We’re allowed to be curious about what might help us function better too.
Maybe the answer is sleep. Maybe hormones deserve a look. Maybe nutrition or stress is part of the problem. Maybe an emerging therapy is something you want to explore with a qualified clinician.
Just don’t start with What can I take so I can keep doing this?
Start with Why am I running out of energy in the first place?
Before You Buy a Bigger Battery, Find Out What’s Draining This One
That question may be the most useful place to begin.
When we’re tired, we’re naturally drawn toward things that promise more energy. Coffee. Supplements. Hormones. Peptides. A new routine. Something that will help us keep going.
But perhaps we should begin one step earlier.
Maybe you genuinely aren’t sleeping enough. Maybe you’re in bed long enough, but your sleep isn’t restorative. Perhaps you’ve been skipping meals, under-eating or relying on caffeine to cover an energy deficit caffeine cannot actually solve.
Maybe menopause is disrupting your sleep. Perhaps low testosterone deserves evaluation. Maybe your thyroid, blood counts or another part of your health needs attention.
Or perhaps the problem isn’t primarily biological.
Maybe you are carrying too much.
That possibility deserves consideration too.
A treatment may help an underlying health problem. It cannot permanently make an unsustainable life sustainable.
This becomes especially important for people who are very good at functioning while depleted. Competence can hide exhaustion remarkably well. You continue producing, leading and meeting expectations, so everyone assumes you’re fine. Eventually you may start making the same assumption.
Until your body begins disagreeing with you.
Energy Is a Leadership Resource
We talk about leadership resources in terms of people, money, time and information. We don’t talk nearly as often about the physical capacity of the person doing the leading.
But your body is in every meeting you attend.
When you’re chronically exhausted, concentrating can become harder. Patience can become thinner. The conversation requiring nuance arrives when you have very little nuance left. Decisions that would normally be straightforward can feel disproportionately difficult simply because you’ve been making them all day.
This isn’t about expecting leaders to achieve some ideal state of wellness. Nobody needs another standard to fail.
It is about acknowledging that taking care of ourselves supports the work we’re trying to do.
That may mean protecting sleep more deliberately, eating before the 4 p.m. realization that you haven’t, moving your body regularly or finally getting the preventive care you’ve been postponing. It may mean addressing a symptom you’ve been explaining away, exploring whether hormonal changes or another health condition could be affecting how you feel, or discussing an emerging therapy with a qualified clinician after asking the more important question: What is actually going on?
Sometimes improving energy means adding something. Sometimes it means treating something. And sometimes it means taking something off the calendar.
Knowing which one you need is far more valuable than simply learning how to push harder.
Take Care of the Person Doing the Leading
There will be demanding seasons. Leadership sometimes requires us to stretch, stay late, solve the problem and show up when we’d much rather go home. That isn’t necessarily unhealthy. It can be part of accepting responsibility for something that matters.
But temporary intensity shouldn’t quietly become the permanent price of being good at what you do.
Leadership asks us to take responsibility for a great deal. Our own capacity has to make the list—not because leaders deserve special treatment, but because the way we care for ourselves eventually shows up in the way we care for everyone else.
The people we lead and serve benefit when we have enough capacity to listen, think, make thoughtful decisions and remain present for the work that matters. They benefit when we model that health isn’t something we attend to only after everything else has been handled.
So if your energy has changed, notice it. If you’re tired all the time, get curious about why. Look at sleep, nutrition, stress and the amount you’re carrying. Pay attention to hormonal changes and symptoms that deserve evaluation. Be curious about new possibilities without asking them to compensate for problems they were never designed to solve.
The goal isn’t to find something powerful enough to help you tolerate being depleted.
It’s to help the person doing all this leading have enough health, energy and capacity left to enjoy some of the life they’re working so hard to build—and to keep showing up well for the people they lead and serve.
Your title didn’t come with an extra battery.
Fortunately, running on empty isn’t the only option.
References
Bhasin, S., Brito, J. P., Cunningham, G. R., Hayes, F. J., Hodis, H. N., Matsumoto, A. M., Snyder, P. J., Swerdloff, R. S., Wu, F. C., & Yialamas, M. A. (2018). Testosterone therapy in men with hypogonadism: An Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 103(5), 1715–1744.
Lee, C., Kim, K. H., & Cohen, P. (2016). MOTS-c: A novel mitochondrial-derived peptide regulating muscle and fat metabolism. Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 100, 182–187.
Lee, C., Zeng, J., Drew, B. G., Sallam, T., Martin-Montalvo, A., Wan, J., Kim, S.-J., Mehta, H., Hevener, A. L., de Cabo, R., & Cohen, P. (2015). The mitochondrial-derived peptide MOTS-c promotes metabolic homeostasis and reduces obesity and insulin resistance. Cell Metabolism, 21(3), 443–454.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2022). Sleep deprivation and deficiency. National Institutes of Health.
National Institute on Aging. (2024). What is menopause? National Institutes of Health.
Raun, K., Hansen, B. S., Johansen, N. L., Thøgersen, H., Madsen, K., Ankersen, M., & Andersen, P. H. (1998). Ipamorelin, the first selective growth hormone secretagogue. European Journal of Endocrinology, 139(5), 552–561.
Reynolds, J. C., Lai, R. W., Woodhead, J. S. T., Joly, J. H., Mitchell, C. J., Cameron-Smith, D., Lu, R., Cohen, P., Graham, N. A., Benayoun, B. A., Merry, T. L., & Lee, C. (2021). MOTS-c is an exercise-induced mitochondrial-encoded regulator of age-dependent physical decline and muscle homeostasis. Nature Communications, 12, 470.
Teichman, S. L., Neale, A., Lawrence, B., Gagnon, C., Castaigne, J.-P., & Frohman, L. A. (2006). Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of growth hormone-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 91(3), 799–805.
Wan, W., Hua, F., Fang, P., Li, C., Deng, F., Chen, S., Ying, J., & Xiao, J. (2023). Mitochondria-derived peptide MOTS-c: Effects and mechanisms related to stress, metabolism and aging. Journal of Translational Medicine, 21, 36.
Sources reviewed: August 17, 2026.