By Dr. Abiola Salami, Worldclass Performance Strategist This article is the second in a four-part series exploring the unseen costs of leadership, inspired by my book T.I.T.L.E. – Taming the Invisible Toll of Leadership & Expectations (A Performance Tool for Healing the invisible burnout behind leadership success).
How High Performers Experience The Five Drains Without Noticing By Dr. Abiola Salami, Author of T.I.T.L.E. – Taming the Invisible Toll of Leadership & Expectations (A Performance Tool for Healing the invisible burnout behind leadership success).
Introduction
Let us be brutally honest. Most leaders do not wake up tired because they worked too hard. They wake up tired because leadership is leaking from five places they were never trained to watch. And February is when those leaks become undeniable.
By now. the optimism of January is gone, the Nigerian market has stopped “adjusting” and started demanding, the new tax realities are hitting home, FX assumptions are being questioned in real time, cost structures are under scrutiny and teams are anxious, suppliers are impatient, regulators are alert, and boards want certainty. Consequently, leadership pressure has intensified.
Yet the drain leaders feel is still being misdiagnosed as stress, burnout, or personal weakness. That is a dangerous mistake. Because what is actually happening is far more precise. Leadership is quietly, predictably, and cumulatively draining you in the following five specific ways:
1. Cognitive Overload: When Leadership Fragments Your Mind
This is the most common leak and the least understood. Cognitive overload is not about having too much work. It is about thinking without closure. It shows up when decisions keep coming back because nothing is truly final; when strategy conversations never end, they just migrate to WhatsApp; when meetings multiply but thinking time disappears and when you are constantly “catching up” mentally.
In February 2026, Nigerian leaders are experiencing this acutely. New tax frameworks are forcing pricing, payroll, and compliance decisions that are interconnected. FX stability is still fragile, making every assumption provisional. Policy interpretation is happening faster than policy clarity. So leaders are thinking all the time but rarely deeply.
The cost? Judgment slows. Patience thins. Strategic creativity dies first. You are not losing intelligence. You are losing mental bandwidth.
2. Emotional Drain: When Leadership Turns You into a Shock Absorber
This leak is invisible because it is mistaken for “good leadership.” Emotional drain happens when you carry everyone’s fear but have nowhere to place your own; when you regulate the room while suppressing yourself; when you absorb disappointment, anger, anxiety, and uncertainty daily and when you become the emotional firewall between reality and your team.
In Nigeria today, this is extreme with rising living costs, job insecurity, business uncertainty and compliance anxiety. Leaders are expected to translate instability into calm. And yes they do. But calm without containment becomes depletion.
Emotional drain does not look like breakdown. It looks like reduced empathy, irritability, emotional flatness and withdrawal disguised as professionalism You are still present but not fully alive.
3. Relational Strain: When Authority Costs You the Truth
Leadership does not isolate you by removing people. It isolates you by changing what people tell you. Relational strain emerges when candour feels dangerous, when disagreement is softened or delayed, when people manage your emotions instead of sharing reality and when loyalty replaces honesty.
In Nigerian corporate culture, this is amplified by hierarchy and deference. People respect leaders but often fear consequences. So they filter. They delay. They avoid. They perform alignment. And leaders don’t notice until decisions fail downstream.
Relational strain doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels like fewer surprises shared early, more surprises discovered late, growing loneliness in leadership and a quiet sense that “I don’t really know what’s going on”. Power without truth is not power. It is exposure.
4. Physical Depletion: When the Body Pays for the Strategy
This leak is normalized and therefore dangerous. Physical depletion happens when sleep is sacrificed repeatedly for urgency, when meals become accidental, when recovery is postponed indefinitely and when the body is treated as an inconvenience.
By February, adrenaline is gone. What remains is sleep debt, chronic fatigue, reduced emotional regulation and slower reaction and recovery times.
In Nigeria’s high-pressure environment, leaders wear this as a badge of honour. But the body is not impressed by ambition. It keeps score. And when energy drops, leadership quality drops quietly, consistently, and measurably with it.
5. Identity Fracture: When Success Stops Feeling Like You
This is the most painful leak and the one leaders rarely admit. Identity fracture happens when you win in ways that contradict your values; you compromise repeatedly “just for this season”; you become effective at a cost you never intended; you no longer recognise yourself in your leadership style.
By February, the direction of the year becomes clear. And some leaders feel a quiet dread: If this continues, who am I becoming?
This is not impostor syndrome. It is misalignment. And misalignment is exhausting.
Because you can sustain pressure; you can sustain effort but you cannot sustain self-betrayal.
Why These Leaks Go Unnoticed
Because none of them shut down performance immediately. You still deliver. You still lead. You still win. But you are paying interest mentally, emotionally, relationally, physically, and existentially. And February is when that interest compounds.
A Dangerous Lie We Need to Kill
Here is the lie: “This is just the cost of leadership.” It is not. These five leaks are not personal failures. They are design failures.They happen when organizations rely on heroic improvisation, undefined decision rights, unbounded emotional labour, energy-blind schedules and values-free success metrics When systems are poorly designed, leaders pay with themselves.
Naming Is the First Rebellion
Before tools. Before strategies. Before change. Leaders must name what is draining them clearly and without shame. That act alone shifts power. These five invisible leaks form the diagnostic spine of my book: T.I.T.L.E. – Taming the Invisible Toll of Leadership & Expectations (A performance tool for healing the invisible burnout behind leadership success). Because leadership should not require quiet self-erasure to succeed.
The Peak Performer Africa App was built for this exact moment. It is not built to flood you with content, but to guide you daily. From Sunday to Saturday, the app delivers focused performance insights that tell you what to prioritize, how to think, and how to execute one disciplined day at a time. It closes the dangerous gap between yearly ambition and daily action by providing clear direction, consistent alignment, and access to essential resources that support execution, not distraction. While others drift, delay, or depend on motivation, users of the Peak Performer Africa App move with calm clarity and daily precision. If you want February to build momentum instead of damage and March to reward you instead of expose you, download the Peak Performer Africa App now and stop leaving your year to chance.
Visit www.tppafrica.com to read the full article.
About Dr. Abiola Salami
Dr. Abiola Salami is the Convener of Dr Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp ; The Peak PerformerTM Festival Made4More Accelerator Program and The New Year Kickoff Summit. He is the Principal Performance Strategist at CHAMP – a full scale professional services firm trusted by high performing business leaders for providing Executive Coaching, Workforce Development & Advisory Services to improve performance. You can reach his team on hello@abiolachamp.com and connect with him @abiolachamp on all social media platforms.
For private coaching, boardroom recalibration, or executive healing strategy, connect email me directly at hello@abiolachamp.com to begin your private Executive Coaching Session.
