Rewire, Refire, Renew: The HEART of Leadership

– From Setbacks to Sustainability Through Inner Mastery

LEARNING FROM SUFFERING

Leaders need to drive results, but how do they sustain? Without renewal, even the most talented leaders run out of clarity, resilience and purpose.

I experienced this truth first-hand through my (urgh…, major!) bypass surgery earlier this year. What seemed like a setback became a framework for rethinking leadership. Out of that personal journey, I shaped the HEART Framework, a way to build resilience, patience and clarity through inner mastery, which I offer as also applicable in the organisational setting.

KEEP ON REWIRING

“Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your busyness, and your life before your death.” — Hadith

The Prophet ﷺ reminds us that life is fragile, time is limited, and renewal is essential. Such poetry! I also see it is a strategic call to action. The Prophet ﷺ outlines five critical domains of life where heedlessness or ghaflah can lead to regret, and where foresight can lead to barakah (divine blessing). I see these five as foundational in leadership.

When health was taken away from me, even temporarily, I realized how much I had taken it for granted. That realization forced a rewiring of how I view time, impact, ambition and self-worth. I didn’t want to return to the same operating system of leadership that prioritizes output more than wellbeing, speed more than wisdom, or busyness more than purpose.

I have been rewiring since 2015, so I guess I am re-rewiring? Really, rewiring is really a continuous process: spiritual, emotional, and mental. As leaders, we must regularly upgrade our inner software to stay aligned with our purpose and anchored in values.

That means integrating self-care as stewardship. I don’t want to be indulgent, or worse, narcissistic.

Beyond performance, it means seeing health as trust (amanah), time as sacred and leadership as responsibility.

The HEART Framework emerged not only as a recovery roadmap but as a leadership philosophy. And the “rewire” mindset is its pulse: to refuse to settle, to stay intentional and to lead in ways that are sustainable and spiritually aligned.

Because leadership without rewiring is just repeating, repeating and repeating, or even wallowing in the rut. Leadership with rewiring becomes renewal.

THE HEART FRAMEWORK

The HEART Framework is an organizational and leadership development model, to strategically boost business and leadership. It is drawn from my own rising, strengthening and contemplating as I rewired from the operating table to my new normal (or for now my latest normal 🙂).

H – Health Audit

• Just as I went through screenings and tests, leaders must pause to reassess.
• What’s working, what’s not? Where are silent risks building in your team or business?

E – Emotional Readiness

• After surgery, I resolved not to retire, but to rewire and refire with more impactful purpose.
• Leaders must show up with intention, not out of routine, but with readiness to give their best.

A – Anchor in Meaning

• I wanted to return to the work I am called to do.
• Leaders need to ensure their goals are aligned with deeper meaning, not just busyness or vanity metrics.

R – Rhythm of Development

• My recovery was excruciatingly slow, but steady. Real growth takes time.
• Respect the pace of progress in people and organizations. Renewal requires patience. The “long game” is true.

T – Time Gracefully Used

• My four-month medical break was not lost time; it was gestation.
• Leaders must frame pauses, e.g. sabbaticals, setbacks, even delays not as disruptions, but as regeneration.

My recovery journey, oops, let’s strike that out – my reclamation journey was that of resilience, balanced with renewal. The other balancing act has been between purpose and performance.

These HEART principles offer a way to pause, reassess and realign, both personally and strategically. Instead of seeing it as struggling through pain and difficulty, or retreating from overwhelm, leaders can rewire with intention and re-engage with clarity.

The HEART framework can contribute to sustainability in leadership. It reminds us that health, emotional readiness, meaning, rhythm and time are the core factors for lasting impact, especially for leaders who wish to serve with excellence (ihsan) and remain anchored in higher intentions (niyyah).

Here’s a tabular version:

RENEW FROM INSIDE OUT

In the below video excerpt from my sharing session my surgery, I talk about how after I realised my deeper purpose and then created intention of bigger impact. It illustrates my “E – Emotional Readiness” and “A – Anchor in Meaning.”

RISE FROM CHALLENGES

What struck me after my surgery was that “slowing down” isn’t bad after all. Use it for renewal and make the renewal part of leadership. The HEART Framework gives language to this truth.

I have seen leaders burn out because they didn’t do enough “health” audits (physical body or organizational), didn’t know how to pause to ask if they were emotionally ready, drift (Malays call it hanyut) along not anchoring their goals in meaning, rush and don’t respect rhythms of growth and can’t understand that time can be used gracefully.

But when leaders embody HEART, they model a more sustainable way of leading. Teams learn to breathe. Organizations learn to grow without grinding people down. Renewal becomes not a luxury, but a leadership practice. Insha Allah.