Welcome to the fortieth article in the series “Be the Leader You Aspire to Be” here on The Price of Business Show, where I will focus on the trends which lie ahead of us and how they will affect humans and businesses. The articles are based on my book Energetic Leadership, which talks about 9 trends leaders must navigate to cater for employees increasing demand for more spiritual leadership and sustainable business models aligned with their life purposes. These articles are about business leadership in the new era. I hope you will find inspiration for the leader you aspire to be.
In this article I will look at how to retain energetic catalysts in the corporate world.
Your most innovative employees are suffering in silence and they’re about to leave.
The Great Resignation wasn’t just about burnout or better compensation. It was the exodus of your energetic catalysts, highly intuitive, sensory-adept people who’ve been silencing an inner voice that screams there’s something fundamentally wrong with how we work.
These are your innovators. Your culture carriers. The employees who sense problems before the data confirm them, who feel when energy is blocked in projects, who intuitively know when a customer relationship is deteriorating. And they’re suffering, especially in younger generations, trapped in systems built with the best intentions from mountains of data and knowledge but designed to be rigidly linear in an increasingly non-linear world.
It’s not easy constantly silencing that inner voice telling you there’s no sense in the madness. That there’s something more important than what we’re doing right now. The price? These catalysts either resign outright or engage in “quiet resignation” staying physically while checking out energetically.
According to research on organizational trends, employees now quit when they’re not seen, heard, met, and understood. They quit when management fails to create trust and respect. They quit when there’s no flexibility or self-management. And critically, they quit when the company’s purpose doesn’t align with their personal life purpose.
Traditional retention tactics, an extra vacation day, and a new canteen scheme don’t work because they address symptoms, not the root cause: a pronounced decoupling of commercial sense from human energetic sense.
Your energetic catalysts can sense this disconnect viscerally. They’re biological transmitter masts, constantly receiving signals about organizational health, cultural authenticity, and misaligned purpose. When leadership operates from ego, bonus structures, and prestige rather than authentic purpose, these employees feel it immediately and they leave to find organizations where their frequency matches.
The data confirms this crisis extends beyond individual companies. Fifty-eight percent of employees surveyed in one Harvard Business Review study reported trusting a stranger more than their own manager. That’s not a management problem. That’s an energetic disconnection.
What Leaders Can Do
Human Action: Practice authentic listening to your inner voice before making decisions. Before critical meetings or strategic choices, take five minutes for silent listening. Ask yourself: What is my body telling me? What signals am I receiving beyond the data? Where is my ego driving this decision versus my purpose? This isn’t meditation for relaxation; it’s developing the energetic decision-making capacity your catalysts already possess and desperately need you to validate.
Business Action: Publicly acknowledge when intuition guided a successful decision. In your next leadership meeting, share a specific example where you sensed something before the metrics proved it. Model that intuitive knowledge is valued alongside rational analysis. Track and reward employees who use energetic awareness in customer interactions and problem-solving.
What Companies Can Do
Human Action: Create psychological safety for energetic conversations. Establish “energy audits” alongside performance reviews. Ask employees: Where does work energize you? What doesn’t make sense that we’re tolerating? Don’t just collect this data, act on it. Your catalysts will test whether you’re genuinely listening or performing wellness theater.
Business Action: Restructure toward self-led teams with purpose alignment. Companies successfully retaining catalysts have moved to flatter structures with 30-hour work weeks, where employees lead from within, soul-connected, with clear frameworks but maximum autonomy.
These aren’t soft interventions. They’re competitive necessities. The most important competitive parameter of the future is the ability to create coherence between employees’ personal life purposes and organizational purposes.
The Stakes
When energetic catalysts leave, they take more than talent. They take your organization’s connection to its energetic future, the ability to sense trends before competitors, innovate from intuition, and execute with both efficiency and joy.
The choice is binary: Develop energetic leadership capacity now, or continue losing the exact employees who could navigate you through the non-linear, incomprehensible BANI world we’re living in.
Gitte Madelaire is an intuitive and visionary pioneer in leadership development. People, customers, business development, and futurism have always interested and motivated her. With a background in corporate business at companies such as Fona/HMW, Codan Insurance, Volvo Trucks and Ensure, she now inspires to new leadership through her book,” Energetic Leadership”, keynotes, facilitation and mentoring for leaders in her company Bronte ApS. Gitte holds a BSc in Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School and an MBA semester from the University of Victoria. She also has traditional leadership courses and certifications in intuitive and feminine future leadership, inner sustainability, and energy-based leadership. Gitte has lived in London, Sydney, and Kuala Lumpur and currently resides in Denmark.
Learn more at www.energeticleadership.eu.
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