Gina Mastantuono challenges sleep sacrifice as a status signal. Reported research links leaders’ behavior with employee sleep.
On October 16, Fortune reported that ServiceNow president and CFO Gina Mastantuono had criticized leaders who present extreme work hours and minimal sleep as proof of commitment. A separate October 17 Harvard Business Review article, republished by Infobae, reported research linking supervisors’ sleep-sacrifice signals with poorer employee sleep.
Mastantuono spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, California, on October 13. She described the idea that working 14-hour days and sleeping four hours demonstrates exceptional commitment as a “terrible example” for colleagues.
Fortune framed her remarks around a contrast with athletics. Rest is commonly treated as part of preparation in sports. Mastantuono argued that recovery has not fully entered business leaders’ vocabulary or habits.
Together, the remarks and research raise a management question: what does a leader’s behavior tell employees about whether rest is acceptable? The useful discussion is about the expectations executives communicate through their own conduct.
The HBR article reports three studies by organizational-behavior researcher Christopher Barnes and colleagues. These examined supervisor behaviors that signaled sleep should be sacrificed for work. According to the article, those signals were associated with poorer employee sleep.
The report also connects worse employee sleep with a greater likelihood of violating workplace ethical norms the following day. The relevant outcomes were therefore employee sleep and subsequent workplace behavior. This places the research within organizational behavior rather than individual sleep routines.
A separate randomized trial described in the same article examined leadership training across 39 U.S. Army platoons. Leadership teams received one hour of sleep-leadership training. After one month, their subordinates were more than twice as likely to sleep over seven hours per night as soldiers whose leaders did not receive the training.
The distinction between these research approaches matters. The supervisor studies examined relationships between leadership signals and employee outcomes. The randomized trial tested a leadership intervention against a comparison group. Its reported endpoint was sleep duration.
For a founder or investor assessing the evidence, the central question is where leadership enters the picture. These reports move attention beyond employees’ private habits toward the messages supervisors send about acceptable behavior. That is the bridge between Mastantuono’s criticism and the empirical research.
For operators concerned with sustained energy and clear thinking, the immediate issue is what the organization asks people to demonstrate. Is commitment evaluated through the work itself or through visible willingness to go without rest?
As a practical interpretation of Mastantuono’s argument, leaders should examine whether their behavior matches their stated support for recovery. An endorsement of balance means little as a management standard if exhaustion remains the behavior that earns recognition. The aim is consistency between expectations and example.
Late-night messages are one of the signals identified in the research discussion. The useful management question is whether a message communicates information or creates an expectation of immediate availability. Leaders can make that distinction explicit rather than leaving employees to infer it from the sender’s seniority.
This is a concrete way to examine where work extends into personal time. The point is not to declare every after-hours message unacceptable. It is to separate genuine urgency from an unstated requirement to remain constantly available.
Mastantuono’s criticism targets the idea that restricted sleep makes someone more deserving. A practical response is to avoid presenting fatigue as evidence of superior dedication. Recognition can focus on the work delivered without turning the sacrifice of rest into a credential.
For ExecuFuel, the useful distinction is between demanding work and making exhaustion part of professional identity. High standards need not be expressed through praise for how little someone slept.
A boundary deserves scrutiny when normal expectations make it difficult to use. Leaders can examine how workplace demands compare with available resources rather than treating recovery only as an employee’s responsibility.
That review should also leave room for recovery alongside family responsibilities. The leadership question is whether employees can step away without having to perform exceptional commitment first. This keeps the discussion focused on expectations rather than personal virtue.
These are operational interpretations of the leadership-signal argument: clarify availability, reconsider praise for exhaustion and make stated boundaries credible.
The survey described in the HBR article adds context to the leadership question. It reported that 60% of leaders said their organizations treated functioning on little sleep as a sign of commitment.
The article also reported that 94% of leaders in those organizations had hidden their tiredness at least once in the previous month. The corresponding figure among leaders elsewhere was 57%. That comparison makes concealment part of the discussion alongside sleep duration itself.
A further comparison concerned permission to prioritize sleep. Among leaders who said their organizations did not allow them to prioritize enough sleep, 51% reported insufficient sleep on four or more nights a week. The figure was 35% among leaders who said they could prioritize it.
For executives reviewing these results, the useful distinction is between what an organization says about recovery and what respondents believe it permits. The survey places that perceived permission within the management conversation.
Mastantuono’s remarks are a leadership judgment. Her 14-hour and four-hour example is not a description of her own schedule or a measured employee average. Fortune’s coverage does not establish a new ServiceNow recovery initiative or company-wide sleep policy.
The HBR material is reporting on research rather than a full methodological account in the supplied coverage. It does not provide enough detail to assess study effect sizes, survey representativeness or all potential confounding factors. The supervisor findings and survey comparisons should not be interpreted as causal effects or universal workforce estimates.
The randomized trial provides a different kind of evidence but took place in military platoons. Its result does not establish that equivalent training would produce equivalent outcomes in corporate teams. Neither source establishes that modeling recovery improves corporate productivity, produces calmer decisions or increases financial performance.
These boundaries define the appropriate response. Leaders have a basis for examining the signals they send about availability and rest. They do not have a proven formula for better execution or a quantified business return from these practices.
For personal decisions involving persistent sleep difficulties or health concerns, qualified care is the appropriate route. A leadership article is a basis for reviewing workplace expectations, not for diagnosing or treating an individual sleep problem.
The next useful research would test leadership approaches in corporate settings. It should distinguish changes in communication from changes in workload and assess employee sleep over time. That would help identify which management practices deserve attention beyond the military context.
Decision quality and execution would also need their own measures. If recovery is to become part of a serious performance discussion, those outcomes should be evaluated directly rather than assumed from changes in sleep duration. That is the standard an executive would reasonably apply to another proposed management intervention.
For companies, the shift worth watching is whether public support for recovery becomes a change in expected availability and recognition. A statement against exhaustion culture is a starting point. The more consequential question is whether ordinary working expectations reflect it.
Mastantuono’s remarks bring that question into a C-suite conversation. The reported research gives it an empirical foundation worth taking seriously. Stronger corporate trials would help show which leadership changes support employee sleep and whether their effects persist under demanding business conditions.
Stay connected for research and practical guidance on executive performance, energy, focus, sleep, recovery and longevity. Ideas built for people who want to stay sharp, capable and effective for the long run.
Build habits and systems that support clear thinking, steady energy and long term capacity throughout a demanding career.
explore the Blog
