Leader Wellbeing Starts Within: How Self-Regulation Transforms Early Childhood Teams
- Sarah Moore
- 19 hours ago
- 5 min read
In early childhood education, educators speak the language of self-regulation fluently. Children learn to pause and breathe, to name their feelings, to find calm before solving a problem.
Environments are created to support emotional balance, calm spaces, predictable routines, and moments of connection, because evidence shows that these practices nurture learning, relationships, and wellbeing.
Yet in our sector’s growing focus on children’s emotional regulation and mental health, there remains an overlooked link in leadership practice: how we support the adults, the educators and leaders, to experience and sustain these same states of regulation for themselves.
The unseen load of early childhood leadership
Early education leaders are navigating extraordinary complexity. Shifting policy reforms, workforce shortages, and family pressures, combined with the emotional demands of post-pandemic recovery, have created sustained stress across the sector.
Global data from the World Health Organization shows that 12 billion working days are lost each year due to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy more than USD 1 trillion annually. In Australia, mental-health-related workers’ compensation claims now account for nearly 10 percent of all serious workplace cases.
These numbers are more than statistics. They reflect what we see and hear every week in our work with leaders and educators, the exhaustion, the holding of everyone else’s emotions, the quiet question whispered at the end of a session: “Who’s here for me?”
Over the past several years through programs like the Conscious Leaders Mastermind we’ve witnessed early childhood leaders reconnect to calm, clarity, and purpose by learning to regulate from the inside out.
One director described the shift as “finding my breath again”, a simple but profound reminder that self-regulation isn’t a luxury. It’s a leadership necessity.
When leaders are able to stay centred under pressure, teams become more cohesive, communication more open, and decisions more values-aligned. Educators report feeling safer to speak honestly, and families notice calmer, more connected environments for their children.
This is the overlooked link in early childhood leadership: the wellbeing and self-regulation of the adults who create psychologically safe, high-quality learning environments for children and teams.
The science beneath the calm
As Michael Bunting, author of Mindful Leader, reminds us, self-regulation isn’t self-control, it’s self-leadership. It’s the ability to stay grounded in purpose and values when challenges arise. When we’re regulated, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for empathy, reasoning, and problem-solving, stays online. When stress dominates, the amygdala takes over, narrowing perspective and fuelling reactivity.
Judith E. Glaser’s work in Conversational Intelligence® shows that our internal state shapes every interaction. When we communicate from calm and curiosity, our brain releases oxytocin, the chemistry of trust and connection. When we lead from fear or frustration, we trigger cortisol, which drives defensiveness and disconnect.
Our nervous system sets the tone for the entire environment. The more regulated we are as leaders, the more others, educators, families, and children, feel safe, seen, and supported.
In every leadership conversation, your nervous system is either opening or closing the space for trust.
Co-regulation and emotional contagion: the invisible dynamics of leadership
Every relationship, with a colleague, an educator, a child, or a family, involves co-regulation.
Our nervous systems are in constant conversation. When a leader enters a room calm and grounded, others naturally settle. When a leader is anxious or rushed, tension rises, a process psychologists call emotional contagion.
Research in early childhood and educational neuroscience confirms that adult stress is contagious. In classrooms where educators report high stress, children’s cortisol levels rise. The same is true for leadership: when leaders are dysregulated, their teams mirror that energy. Tension multiplies. Safety contracts.
Communication becomes transactional rather than relational. But the reverse is just as powerful. A regulated leader becomes a co-regulating presence, an anchor of psychological safety.
When leaders pause before reacting, listen deeply, or name emotions with calm honesty, they communicate: “You are safe here. We can think, learn, and connect.”
In our mentoring and leadership coaching work, we’ve seen this shift ripple through whole services. One Educational Leader shared, “When I started practising regulation before difficult conversations, our whole communication culture changed. Meetings feel safer. People take more responsibility instead of shutting down.”
This is not abstract theory. It’s the living science of relational leadership and it’s measurable in how people feel at work.
From teaching self-regulation to living it
Across early childhood education, we’ve become highly skilled at teaching children to regulate their emotions. Yet the same compassionate focus is rarely extended to educators and leaders. We know how to scaffold children’s big feelings, but we often overlook the need to consciously regulate our own.
Consider these everyday examples:
A director walks into the staff room after a morning of interruptions and starts venting. The room contracts. Now imagine the same leader pausing, taking one slow breath, and saying, “It’s been a big morning, how’s everyone travelling?” The tone shifts instantly.
An educator calls in sick for the third time in two weeks. One response comes from frustration “I can’t keep covering people.” Another from regulation: “Something’s going on for her. Let’s check in when she’s back.”Same situation, two entirely different team climates.
A family meeting can spiral into defensiveness or become an opportunity for partnership and the difference lies in whether the leader’s body is in fight-or-flight or in calm presence.
These moments accumulate into the emotional culture of a service. They determine whether teams feel psychologically safe or perpetually on edge; whether families feel welcomed or wary; and whether children experience an atmosphere of calm or quiet tension.
In short: adult self-regulation and wellbeing are quality practices. They are essential leadership skills that shape educator retention, family trust, and children’s learning outcomes.
A reflection for early childhood leaders
Pause and ask yourself:
How much importance do I place on my own regulation as part of my leadership?
Do I see wellbeing as self-care or as a professional responsibility that directly influences educator performance and team culture?
How does my emotional presence affect the tone of my workplace?
Leaders who develop these skills report noticeable changes not just in how they feel, but in how others respond to them. One leader from our Conscious Leaders Mastermind reflected, “I used to leave work completely depleted. Now I leave grounded. The work is still busy, but it doesn’t take me with it.”
When leaders strengthen their internal regulation, they extend that steadiness to others. They communicate with more empathy, make better decisions, and create workplaces where people feel safe to think, speak, and grow.
This is how trust-based, resilient early learning teams are built one regulated conversation at a time.
The next chapter: Conscious Leaders Mastermind 2026
This understanding that leadership begins in the body will be the foundational focus of the Conscious Leaders Mastermind 2026.
We’ll explore the art and science of self- and co-regulation as the foundation of conscious communication, educator wellbeing, and sustainable leadership in early childhood education.
Participants will not only learn the neuroscience of conversations, but they will experience it through breathwork, reflection, peer mentoring, and applied leadership practice.
Because before we can guide others with clarity and compassion, we must first learn to guide ourselves.
In addition to the March CLM workshop we'll also be holding a very special one day event The Regulated Educator: Breath, Presence and Practice Workshop. More details at the link below, we'd love to see you there, everyone is welcome to attend.
A closing reflection
The most transformative thing you can offer your team isn’t quickly responding to needs, fixing problems and offering supportive words, it’s your presence. Your calm is a significant contributor to your team's success. Your steadiness becomes the condition for growth, trust, and belonging.
In a sector where speed and pressure often dominate, slow, self-regulated leadership is not a good thing to have, but it’s a responsibility. It is the overlooked link that connects educator wellbeing, early learning quality, and sustainable leadership, the kind of leadership our sector, our teams, and our children truly need.
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