How Conscious Leadership is Transforming Workplace Culture – Interview With Natasha Wallace

Natasha Wallace is an award-winning leadership expert, executive coach, speaker, and creator of the Conscious Leadership Performance System™, a scientifically validated methodology for building healthy, high-performing organisations. After a cataclysmic burnout while leading the people function of a market-leading consulting firm, Natasha set out to answer one question, "Why do leaders suffer, and what would it take to build cultures where they don't have to?" That question became her life's mission, to uplift humanity through conscious leadership and help 100 million people thrive.

Formerly a Chief People Officer, Natasha has spent almost a decade advising boards and senior leaders on performance, wellbeing, and burnout prevention, working alongside senior academics at University College London to validate her system. Her work has been adopted by organisations including Xero, Kraken Technologies, the NHS, JP Morgan Chase, Alvarez & Marsal, and the UK Ministry of Defense. She is the author of The Conscious Effect and a friend of Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford and Boeing, who has said her work is the clearest articulation of the leadership approach that guided his own career.

Natasha Wallace, CEO and Executive Coach

Who is Natasha Wallace?

I am a mum first and foremost to two wonderful daughters who teach me how to be a better human every day. My role as a mother is closely followed by the activist and humanitarian in me, which is where I spend the majority of my energy when I’m not with friends, going out for dinner, at the cinema, or walking the dog with the kids.

I am a prolific self-developer and love to journal, meditate, find time for reflection, and buy lots of books, although I don’t find quite enough time to read them all.

I love music, and I try to find time to sing when I can. I was in an acoustic duo called Grateful for a while, and I love spending time with family and friends, usually in forests, in deep debate, or eating good food.

I have become more spiritual over the years, as my awareness of the world around me has evolved. I am currently reading The Bhagavad Gita, but I have read plenty of books teaching us the power of self-understanding.

I am often awake at night, scribbling down ideas about how we can evolve the way we lead society and how we lead ourselves. I have made it a lifelong mission to help 100 million people through Conscious Leadership. I believe all of my experiences to date have led me towards this mission, and while there is fire in my belly, I will do everything in my power to help make the world a better place.

What inspired you to dedicate your work to conscious leadership and workplace wellbeing?

About ten years ago, I led the people function at a market-leading consulting firm. I was totally dedicated to my job and worked long hours to make sure we delivered something incredible for the people who worked for us. I took it seriously.

Then, without much warning, I burnt out. It was a cataclysmic burnout. In the end, I was a shadow of my former self.

Now, if I had known anything about burnout, I would have seen it coming. The anxiety, panic attacks, bad back, migraines, regular breakdowns, inability to think straight, self-doubt, cynicism. I would have known that these were all symptoms of a hyper-stressed system.

When one of the senior leaders suggested I take some time off, I would have said yes. When I sat on the living room floor all morning in a catatonic state, after a Board presentation, I would have questioned whether something was a bit off. When I found the thought of setting up my new iPhone totally overwhelming, I knew it wasn’t a healthy response.

The fact was, I was in such a crisis that I didn’t see I was on the brink of destruction. Then one day, after my final plea for us to be better as leaders fell on deaf ears, I walked out.

The realisation was that I was one of the few leaders who were brave enough to challenge the status quo. Although I thought I was surrounded by friends and allies, once I started to speak more honestly about change, I was on my own. That isolation and disconnection from being able to live my values at work became a death by a thousand cuts. No matter how much I loved my work, the culture broke my spirit. Eventually, it broke me too.

That led me on a quest. Firstly, how to stop fellow leaders from burning out and suffering the same fate. Secondly, how to build environments that enable us to fulfill our potential as people. That then became my mission and led me to create a framework of leadership called Conscious Leadership.

In your experience, what is the biggest reason leaders and teams burn out today, and how do you help them reverse this?

It's rarely what organisations think it is. They look at workload, at hours, at resources. Yes, those things matter. But the root cause I see most consistently, in the research and in the coaching room, is something far more internal.

It's the combination of masking your true feelings, making sure everyone else is OK, and pouring your energy into relationships that don't pour back. Leaders are expected to be the steady ones. The ones who hold it together. So they perform wellness while quietly falling apart. The leaders most at risk aren't the disengaged ones. They're the deeply committed ones. The ones who care too much to say they're struggling.

So being safe enough to tell the truth about how you are feeling at work matters. Most of the time, leaders don’t tell the truth or express themselves honestly because safety is missing. When the problems that leaders are facing become internal battles, it’s an issue.

When I work with a leader who's burning out, the first thing I do is make it safe for them to tell the truth. That sounds simple. It isn't. Most of these leaders haven't told anyone. Not their team, not their partner, not themselves. Just being heard by someone who isn't going to judge them or tell them to push through is often the beginning of everything.

When I was going through my own burnout, my coach gave me what she probably thought was tough love. Put up or shut up. She told me that I hadn’t been given the mandate to make the changes I wanted to make and so not to bother. I think she felt that by taking the pressure off myself, I would be happier at work. It couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Your Conscious Leadership approach is widely recognized. How does your methodology transform the way people lead?

I've worked with many leadership models over the years. There are frameworks for managing change, communicating effectively, and having direct conversations with care.

All of them, in their own way, are useful. All of them share the same fundamental design flaw. They're fixing downstream problems. They're action-oriented approaches that tell leaders what to do, without first addressing who the leader is and what's going on inside them. They build capability. They rarely build the person. You have to get to the heart of values, beliefs, and self-view to move the dial when it comes to leadership behaviour.

I remember running a leadership program many years ago and an engineer saying something that stopped me in my tracks. "This is all fine, referring to the theory we were teaching, but none of us are actually self-aware, so how do we do any of this?" She was right. Nobody in the room had a good answer.

Development programs might introduce the concept of self-awareness, but they almost never reach the belief level. It's beliefs that drive everything. The way a leader sees themselves, the assumptions they carry about what leadership requires of them, and the deeply held convictions they hold. Not frameworks. Not capability models. It’s why behaviour often fails to change as a consequence of development programs. They float on the surface of who a person actually is, and it’s not the surface where the change happens. Not in any material sense, anyway.

When I work with leaders, we go to the core. What they value. What excites them? What limits them? How they see the world. We work on the being of leadership, not just the doing. That is a fundamental shift. When you help a leader to put their own oxygen mask on too, it’s a focus on wellbeing that no other leadership model has been developed to do. Conscious Leadership sits at the intersection of performance and wellbeing, and that’s a game changer.

Can you share a company transformation that shows the impact of Conscious Leadership on performance?

I have had the absolute pleasure of spending time with Alan Mulally, who I came to learn, through our friendship, is one of the greatest leaders of our time. Alan was responsible for one of the biggest corporate turnarounds of all time.

He took Ford from a $12.7 billion loss in 2006 to a $6.6 billion profit by 2010 in one of the most extraordinary corporate turnarounds in American business history. But what struck me most, having spent real time with Alan, is that it wasn't the financial engineering that saved Ford. It was his mindset. He operated as a Conscious Leader long before either of us had a name for it.

At the heart of the turnaround was "Working Together," Alan's own leadership and management system, built on one simple principle, everyone knows the plan, the status, and where attention is needed. He gave Ford one plan, a compelling vision, and a weekly business plan review where telling the truth about barriers was expected, not punished. A clear purpose moved everyone in the same direction, avoiding competing agendas and siloed working.

But clarity alone doesn't turn around a business on the brink of collapse. Alan built resilience into the culture itself and made it psychologically safe for people to tell the truth, long before either term was fashionable. He told his people to "expect the unexpected and deal with it, positively," and gave them permission to be honest about what wasn't working. He wanted everyone to feel "seen," to know he had their back, and he was famous for his expression "love 'em up." That combination of high standards held together by genuine care is what saved Ford.

That's the long-term impact I care about most. Alan didn't save Ford through sheer force of will. He built a belief system that let Ford save itself, one that people still use today. It's the clearest proof I've seen that sustainable performance isn't a personality trait or a turnaround tactic. It's what happens when purpose, resilience, self-awareness, growth, and togetherness get embedded into how an organisation actually operates. Alan is, quite simply, the embodiment of Conscious Leadership.

What are the early warning signs organisations often miss before culture starts to break down?

The honest answer is that culture doesn't break down because of strategy failures, market pressures, or organisational structure. They can contribute but they are not the problem. It breaks down because of the leadership mindset fuelling the business.

A healthy leadership mindset, fuelled by a human-centered approach, drives a healthy culture. That means you can optimise the potential of the organisation because you optimise the potential of the humans working within it.

Healthy cultures are led by senior leaders who aren’t threatened by the voice of the people. They are grounded and humble enough to listen, even when the going gets tough, and they welcome challenges. They are evolved enough to hear the truth because they know it’s the only way to make things better.

They have a healthy relationship with themselves and the people around them, and they achieve that through awareness and trust, trust in others, but more importantly, trust in themselves.

They create psychological safety not as a program or an initiative, but as a natural consequence of how they show up, making it OK to be human, giving people freedom to work in ways that suit them, accepting that things go wrong, and learning rather than reacting to the mishaps. They don’t punish or blame people, they recognise the imperfection of being human, and they work hard to bring out the best in everyone.

These leaders are grounded and calm under pressure. They pay attention to how people are feeling. They set clear boundaries to protect their own energy. They do what they say they're going to do. Because they're honest, they create environments where others can be honest too, where people don't have to hide things or perform a version of themselves that isn't real. They are regulated, self-aware, and they manage their ego because they understand it.

Then there's the other kind of leader. This is where culture quietly begins to die. They stop listening. They make excuses for why things aren't working. They downplay the problems people raise, or worse, label people as negative, dismiss them, or blame them. When things go wrong, they look outward for someone to hold responsible. They micromanage and remove essential resources, which makes people fearful and kills decision-making. All the while, they're not sensing the team's energy, not reading what's out of kilter, not responding to what people actually need.

What they're doing, though they may not realise it, is damaging the nervous system of their team. A stressed system performs worse, gets sick more often, and eventually breaks down.

The thing that makes this particularly insidious is that it’s often hard to spot and it spreads. A high-performing person being led in this way will often end up feeling less empowered, less able to make good-quality decisions, and less curious, with their performance impacted as a result.

What should be conditions for high performance, genuine trust, empowerment, and a growth mindset, get quietly replaced by control, reactivity, and unawareness.

The early warning signs are rarely dramatic. There's a slight drop in people speaking up. A few more excuses in leadership conversations. A little less follow-through. A little more blame. By the time it looks like a culture problem, it's been a leadership problem for a long time.

Many companies try wellbeing initiatives that fail. What do you believe they’re getting wrong, and how do you help them course-correct?

I had a leader come to a coaching session a few months ago, saying that he needed to start looking after himself and that he needed to go back to the gym. I told him that he wasn’t going to start going to the gym until he tackled the way he was feeling. He had lost his mojo. I had a feeling that until he figured out why, he would be building on shaky foundations, and so that’s where we started.

He talked about how he had built a successful business in the past, how he had so many ideas for the company he now worked for, but that his ideas were falling on deaf ears and that he’d lost his autonomy. What transpired was that he had also lost his confidence.

An old HR Director of mine once said to the CEO, about how he was leading me, not to push competence to the point of incompetence. That’s what was happening to him. He was being impacted by the executive team's direction and it was disempowering him. He saw it as a personal failure.

Having understood the source of the discomfort and once he had realised that it wasn’t his fault, his mojo came flooding back. The gym started back up as a natural consequence of his energy coming back.

I've talked about this for years, and we're still focusing on the wrong things when it comes to mental health. When we put our investment into creating healthy leaders and culture, everything else flows from that. It's the inner work that creates wellbeing, not the plasters we put on the cuts that have already been created.

A small side note here. This story doesn’t necessarily point to the fact that the executive team was ineffective. Leaders will make mistakes. They will miss cues. They will think they are doing or saying the right things, and it will have a negative impact. Leaders are humans too. However, when you have a safe culture where people can speak up about what’s not working, changes can be made.

This leader that I was coaching couldn’t tell the truth, and so the truth left unheard started to break him. That was my story too.

What core principles from your book The Conscious Effect do you most want leaders to embody right now?

If I had to pick the principle I most want leaders to sit with right now, it's this, you can't lead well until you know yourself. In the book, I call this being AWAKE. The question underneath it is simple, what is going on in and around me? "The identity we assume as a leader influences our decision-making, thinking and behaviour," and until you've done the work to actually see who you are, you're leading on autopilot. That's been the single most transformational shift in my own life. Understanding myself, my patterns, my triggers, the stories I tell myself, gave me the ability to step back and look at the world more objectively, rather than reacting to it from old wiring I never chose in the first place, from childhood, formative experiences, and so on.

I write in the book that "most of us don't really know ourselves that well," and that self-deception blinds us to the true cause of our problems. That was certainly true for me. So much of what I used to find frustrating or personally wounding in other people, in situations, and in myself, wasn't really about them at all. It was about parts of me I hadn't looked at yet. I still get things wrong. I'm still learning. But I experience far less of that frustration and annoyance now because I understand where it's coming from, and understanding it takes its power away. That's the gift of self-knowledge. It doesn't make you perfect. It makes you honest with yourself, and that honesty is what lets you finally accept who you are.

I talk in the book about the masks we all wear, the ones that "protect us from getting hurt and feeling discomfort," but that, worn too long, keep us from being our authentic selves. I know that mask well. I wore it for years before my own burnout forced me to take it off. Because I've done that work on myself, I'm now driven to build environments where other people don't have to wear theirs, where it's safe to tell the truth and be who you actually are, even when that's hard. That's the real work of Conscious Leadership. Not fixing people. Helping them find themselves, the way I had to find myself, so they can lead, and live, with a bit more truth.

What is the most valuable first step a leader or company can take if they want to create a healthier, more human-centred workplace?

The first step is to recognise the central idea that people need to feel psychologically safe to deliver sustainable results. Without believing that fundamental truth, nothing human-centered is likely to happen or stick.

I didn’t always understand that. Fifteen years ago, we talked about the change curve, communicating well, consulting with people, and taking people on the journey. We rarely talked about how people actually felt. I sensed when people weren't feeling great and knew we needed to make them feel good to allow them to perform, but I didn’t really understand the nuanced day-to-day behaviors that actually enable a team to feel consistently good, so they came to work feeling motivated to deliver.

We did a piece of research a few years ago called Project Bright Spot. A team of leaders from organisations like BT, Oracle, and St John Ambulance, supported by an incredible academic from University College London, wanted to understand the traits of outstanding leaders. We interviewed people whose lives had been positively impacted by their leader and then decoded what they did.

The leaders who had the most transformational impact demonstrated these traits, they see you, they have your back, they are present, they trust you, they set clear direction, they are not afraid of challenge, and they stretch you.

On average, the leaders we studied displayed six of the seven, and 47% displayed all seven, which told us something important. Conscious Leadership isn't one trait wearing different faces, it's the combination that makes the difference. A leader needs to understand these traits because each does a different job.

Being seen and present is what unlocks energy and builds followership. Ninety-two percent of our interviewees described feeling truly seen by their leader, and that's what made people want to perform for them, not just for a title. Having someone's back and trusting them is what builds the safety that lets people tell the truth without fear. Setting a clear direction while still being willing to challenge and stretch people is what turns that safety into growth, rather than comfort.

I don't see these as a checklist of nice-to-haves. They're the operating traits of a leader who gets the best out of people, sustainably, without burning them out in the process.

For organisations reading this who are ready to elevate performance without burning people out, what can they expect when they start working with you?

My first job is to see the leaders. That’s what makes this work different. When you create a safe space for leaders to speak up, to be themselves, to tell the truth, and when you give them permission to take care of themselves, things shift. The leader becomes the team member, the human, the person who needs to be seen. It releases the burden they carry, and it boosts their performance. It helps them to become more conscious.

In my work with senior academics at University College London, we found that when leaders become more conscious, they produce better results. They are more satisfied, they are more engaged, and they are less likely to burn out. They contribute more to their organisation.

Just sharing this story starts that journey. That is why I speak about this a lot. I was the leader who broke, and often, through my own vulnerability, it creates a big, wide-open space for other leaders to step into, and they do.

The energy that unleashes in an organisation is profound. It transforms leaders. When leaders transform, they transform their organisation. That is good for them, and it’s good for every single stakeholder, including the shareholders. When leaders are given permission to become more conscious, everyone wins.

If any of this speaks to where you or your organisation is right now, you may contact me here or visit my website. I’d love to hear from you.

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