At some point in every leader’s journey, there is a shift. Leadership stops being about what you do and quietly becomes about who you are. Who were you before responsibility found you, asks Jeni-Anne Campbell, founder of The Good Businesswoman and author of Feeding Unicorns.
It is a question that sits at the heart of Leadrescence, a concept she developed to describe how responsibility reshapes leaders in ways we rarely acknowledge.
We are well-trained for the external demands of leadership. Strategy, growth, financial management, performance. These are the things we are taught to measure, refine and improve. What we are not prepared for is the internal transformation that comes with being responsible for other people’s livelihoods.
Because that responsibility is not abstract. It is deeply human.
It looks like carrying the weight of payroll while managing client expectations. It looks like being the calm one at work and the strong one at home. It looks like making decisions that affect not just revenue, but stability, security and the lives of the people who depend on you.
Over time, this level of responsibility begins to reorganise you. Your tolerance for uncertainty increases, your emotional regulation is tested daily, your decision making sharpens under pressure, and without even realising it, you become more resilient, more capable and more composed than you ever expected to be.
From the outside, this is what leadership success looks like – good job! But there is another side to this transformation that is far less visible.
Leadership is not the only space where identity is reshaped by responsibility. In psychology, the term matrescence is used to describe the developmental transition into motherhood, a process where identity reorganises, priorities shift, and emotional capacity expands. It acknowledges that becoming a mother changes who you are, not just what you do.
Leadrescence builds on this idea. It recognises that leadership creates a similar shift. When you become responsible for teams, payroll, clients and livelihoods, your internal world reorganises in ways that are just as profound, but far less acknowledged.
And, if left unconscious, Leadrescence can harden identity in the name of competence.
Many women leaders wake up one day incredibly capable, but quietly disconnected from themselves. They have built strength, but lost a sense of wholeness. They are performing at a high level, but operating in a constant state of survival.
This is where the conversation becomes more complex for women.
We are still navigating a leadership narrative that asks us to hold opposing expectations. To be decisive, strategic and authoritative, while also being empathetic, likeable and emotionally available. To lead and to carry, to perform, and, while we’re doing it, to also make people feel secure.
The result is often overextension: over-preparing, over-anticipating, over-carrying. And over time, that becomes unsustainable.
This is why naming Leadrescence matters. Because once we understand that leadership is changing us, we can begin to engage with that change deliberately. Leadership pressure can either strengthen you or harden you. The difference lies in whether the transformation is conscious.
Conscious Leadrescence is the decision to actively participate in who you are becoming as a leader. It is the shift from surviving responsibility to selecting how you carry it.
What does this look like? Setting boundaries and repeating them, even when it feels uncomfortable. Allowing your team to solve problems without stepping in immediately. Resisting the instinct to fix everything, to overexplain, or to carry more than is yours to carry.
It also requires a redefinition of strength.
Many leaders operate as though strength means being unbreakable. The ability to absorb pressure without showing cracks has become a quiet benchmark for success, but sustained leadership inevitably creates pressure points. The goal is not to avoid breaking but to repair deliberately.
The philosophy of Kintsugi offers a powerful parallel. In this Japanese art form, broken pottery is repaired with gold. The cracks are not hidden; they are reinforced and become part of the object’s strength and story.
Leadership is no different. When we engage consciously with Leadrescence, we stop protecting an image of resilience and start building something far more sustainable. A version of leadership that is calm, boundaried and clear that carries responsibility without carrying everything.
This shift is particularly important in a South African context, where leaders are operating in environments that demand resilience on multiple levels. Economic pressure, social responsibility and business performance often intersect in ways that require leaders to carry more than their role description suggests.
At the same time, there is a growing recognition that performance and wellbeing are not opposing forces. The most effective leaders are not those who carry the most, but those who lead with clarity, perspective and intention. Leadrescence gives us a practical framework for that shift.
It reminds us that leadership will change us whether we engage with it or not. The real question is whether we allow that change to happen unconsciously, or whether we choose to shape it.
Because success should feel as good looking back as it does moving forward. And that requires more than capability; it requires wholeness. Leadrescence is inevitable. Conscious Leadrescence is where sustainable power lives.
THE GOOD BUSINESSWOMAN
https://thegoodbusinesswoman.com
