ServiceNow president and chief financial officer Gina Mastantuono said leaders who work 14-hour days on four hours of sleep set a terrible example for the people around them. She made the comments Tuesday at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Mastantuono, who has long promoted fitness for both personal health and leadership, said the importance of recovery has caught on outside athletics but hasn’t fully made it into the vocabulary or habits of business leaders. Many senior employees still hold on to the idea that overwork proves dedication, she said.
“There’s always been this—if you have to work 14-hour days and you get four hours sleep, and that shows that you’re working the hardest and you deserve the most,” Mastantuono told Alicia Hatch, U.S. Sports chief commercial officer and women’s sports leader at Deloitte, according to Fortune. “And in fact, that is such a terrible example for the people around us.”
She compared it to training. “Recovery is part of the performance; it’s not secondary,” she said. “Muscle doesn’t grow when we pump out at the gym. It grows when we’re sleeping at night and letting the muscles recover.”
Mastantuono credited better work-life balance with helping her listen instead of reacting and stay calm under pressure, which she said has helped her teams execute more effectively. “When we do focus on taking care of ourselves, then we are much better bosses, much better colleagues, much better parents,” she said.
Knowing rest matters and actually taking it are different things, Mastantuono noted. Janet Evans, a four-time Olympic medalist in swimming and now chief athlete officer of LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, knows recovery well from competition but has also needed reminders to take a breather.
Evans recalled how LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover, a retired three-star U.S. Army lieutenant general, put it to her. “No one’s guns are drawn. No one is shooting each other,” she said Hoover told her. “So Janet, you’re gonna figure this out tomorrow.”
Research backs up the point. A University of Florida meta-analysis of nearly 200 studies found that recovery from work is associated with better sleep, improved mental health and greater long-term life satisfaction, Fortune reported.