Healing Is Leadership: A Conversation with Dominic Malone on Rest, Presence, and Sustainable Leadership

For many school board members, leadership can feel like a constant state of urgency. The work is deeply personal, the pressure is relentless, and too often, the expectation is simply to endure.

But what does it look like to lead from a place beyond survival?

In his recent reflection, SBP CEO Ethan Ashley challenged leaders to think differently about healing, not as something soft or secondary, but as intentional work that allows people to move through challenge without being controlled by it.

That reflection immediately brought to mind the work of Dominic Malone, Co-founder of Arise Energy Wellness and a longtime partner in shaping wellness and restoration experiences at Our Collective Power (OCP). Through movement, reflection, breathwork, and community-centered practice, Dom helps create spaces where leaders can reconnect to themselves and each other in the midst of demanding work.

We spoke with Dom about healing-centered leadership, why joy and community matter in sustaining movements, and what today’s leaders need in order to endure without losing themselves in the process.

Ethan recently wrote that healing is not about pretending pain doesn’t exist, but about learning how to move through it differently. What resonated with you most in that reflection?

I really connected with the idea of repurposing what trauma can steal from you. At Arise, we believe deeply in the ability to transform energy into clarity, positive action, and purpose.

And then there’s the question Ethan raises about the concrete itself. Have we been taught the wrong things about ourselves? About how much we’re supposed to endure before realizing we have the power to shift the narrative in our own minds and in our communities?

What stood out to me most was this movement from concrete to soil. The soil is what we should be teaching from the beginning, not as a reaction to trauma, but as the first layer of understanding about who we are and what we’re capable of becoming.

Too often, people are asked to perform or produce before they even know who they are. The real question is whether we’re creating environments where people can grow without being pushed into survival mode in the first place.

A lot of people think of healing or restoration as separate from leadership. Why do you see them as deeply connected?

There’s no way to take the human layer out of leadership. But for some reason, we still operate as though getting the job done is all that matters.

People are burning out because they haven’t been given the skillset to deal with themselves in a humane way, and then that gets projected outward in how they lead and how they treat others. We’ve prioritized technological development, productivity, and execution, but skipped human development.

Leadership culture often celebrates depletion. As long as the work gets done, we assume the cost is acceptable. But when leaders are disconnected from themselves, when they’re exhausted, reactive, or operating purely in survival mode, that energy transfers to the people around them.

The leader dictates the culture of an organization. The way you communicate transfers to the team. The way you care for yourself transfers to the team. The way you respond under pressure transfers to the team.

If we want healthier organizations and healthier communities, we have to start with the people others are following.

What role do joy, presence, and community play in sustaining people for the long haul?

We tend to treat joy and community as things we earn after the work is finished. “I’ll rest once this is over.” “I’ll reconnect with people after I hit this milestone.”

But I think we have the equation backwards.

Joy and community are actually sources of energy that help us do difficult work in the first place. We’ve all experienced spending time with people we love and walking away feeling more energized, more grounded, more capable. That isn’t a distraction from the work. That’s fuel for the work.

Even the military understands this. Soldiers aren’t sent into battle endlessly without restoration. They’re pulled away from the front lines so they can recover, reconnect, and regain energy before returning.

We should think about leadership the same way. Joy is not a perk. Community is not a reward. They are part of what allows people to sustain themselves through difficult and meaningful work.

So much of leadership culture celebrates endurance. How do we help leaders move beyond survival mode into something more sustainable?

I actually think endurance and depletion are two different things.

Endurance can come from living well. It can come from clarity, preparation, and health. If I’m preparing to run a marathon, I don’t deplete myself beforehand and hope I survive 26 miles. I train. I recover. I nourish myself so I can endure.

But right now, many people believe depletion is proof that they cared enough or fought hard enough.

What if we flipped that idea entirely?

What if endurance came from wellbeing instead of neglect? What if leaders understood that their ability to sustain the work depended on their mental, physical, and spiritual health?

That’s why I connected so deeply with Ethan’s reflection on healing. Healing is about being aligned with your purpose and your health at the same time.

For a school board member reading this who feels exhausted or disconnected right now, what would you want them to hear?

You are better when you are healthy. You are better when you are rested. You are better when you are whole.

A lot of us believe change only happens through constant external fighting. But often, the deeper fight is within ourselves. If we can trust that endurance does not require self-neglect or suffering, everything changes.

You become a better leader when you have clarity. When you have rest. When you can think with precision and discernment instead of constantly reacting to the anger and chaos around you.

And this work is generational. Most of us are not individually carrying the entire movement. We are each pushing one boulder that eventually moves another, and another, until something larger shifts.

What you are doing right now matters. But you will do it better if you are clear, grounded, and well.

You’re a better fighter, liberator, and educator when you’re healthier.

When you think about the future of leadership in education, what gives you hope?

What gives me hope is seeing people finally recognize that taking care of the human layer of leadership matters.

That’s part of what I appreciate about what SBP is building. When organizations create spaces where people can sustain themselves, leaders are able to go out, do meaningful work for humanity, and still return home to lives that feel grounded and whole.

I think that’s the future of leadership. People taking care of people.