When the Brain Switches to Emergency Power

Why leaders need to understand the brain’s hidden energy system

Last month I was talking with Clancy, a friend who lives in Nashville. They had just been hit with one of those storms that makes the news cycle for a few days. Snow, wind, power lines down, the whole thing.

He told me something interesting.

“The best investment I made last year,” he said, “was a backup generator.”

When the storm knocked out power across the neighborhood, his house stayed lit. Heat stayed on. Internet still worked. Pretty soon neighbors started wandering over. Phones needed charging. Someone needed Wi-Fi for work. Kids needed a place to warm up.

For a couple of days his house turned into the neighborhood hub.

Coffee brewing. Phones lined up along the counter like they were waiting for medical treatment. People sitting around the kitchen table checking the weather and sharing stories about fallen branches.

All because of a generator sitting in his garage.

The funny thing is that this conversation started for a completely different reason.

He and I had been catching up about some of the neuroscience work I’ve been exploring lately. When I first started talking about predictive processing a while back he jumped right in. That idea made sense to him pretty quickly. The brain constantly forecasting what might happen next. He liked that.

The brain energy theory was newer territory for him.

He had questions about it. Especially about why I keep talking about expanding the trauma informed lens to include this brain energy perspective.

His storm story ended up becoming the perfect backdrop for the conversation.

Because the brain, it turns out, runs on something that looks an awful lot like a generator system.

Scientists have been studying this for a long time. A new paper from neuroscientist Sadaf Singh and colleagues caught my attention recently. They looked at how neurons adapt when their usual energy pathways get disrupted. I will attach the article for those who are interested.

The short version reads like something you would expect from a good engineering team.

The brain keeps a backup generator.

Inside neurons there are small stores of glycogen. Think of glycogen as a kind of emergency fuel reserve. When the normal energy system struggles, neurons can switch over and start burning this stored supply to keep communication moving.

Synapses keep firing. Signals keep moving. The system stays online.

I am not making this up. Singh and her colleagues showed that neurons can rely on this stored fuel to support their activity during stressful metabolic conditions.

I think that is so cool. The brain prepares for storms!

That idea lands a little differently when you work with people.

Consider a moment many leaders recognize. A staff meeting that starts well enough. Halfway through the conversation someone reacts sharply to a comment. Another person shuts down. A third person who is usually thoughtful suddenly offers a suggestion that makes very little sense.

Leadership training often frames moments like this around attitude or professionalism. The neuroscience lens adds another layer to the story.

Energy!

Human service work asks the brain to process intense emotional information hour after hour. Trauma stories. Family crises. Systems that move slowly. Competing priorities. Every one of those experiences places metabolic demand on the brain.

When the system starts to strain, the brain begins shifting how it uses fuel.

Attention narrows. Flexibility drops. Social signals get interpreted through a tighter lens. The brain is protecting its remaining resources so the system stays viable.

The generator kicked on.

And just like the one in Clancy’s garage, it does not power everything. When a home switches to generator power, people start making choices. Lights stay on in the kitchen. The refrigerator keeps running. Phones get charged. The essential stuff keeps working. The dryer, not so much.

The brain does something similar when energy gets tight. Core systems stay active. Communication between neurons keeps going. Survival functions stay online. But the higher cost functions start to thin out.

You can see this once you start looking for it.

A teacher at the end of a long day who suddenly becomes less patient with a student question.

A supervisor who normally navigates conflict well but snaps during the fourth difficult conversation of the afternoon.

A caseworker who struggles to make a decision after spending the morning managing a crisis.

Their brains are still working. Communication between neurons continues. The lights stay on.

The system simply moved onto its backup generator.

Energy regulation sits quietly underneath many leadership challenges.

When leaders start noticing this, something interesting happens. Conversations about performance begin to shift. Curiosity replaces some of the judgment.

Questions change.

What has this person been carrying today?

How many storms has their nervous system already worked through before they walked into this meeting?

Where are the generators in this organization?

Organizations that support sustained performance look a lot like Clancy’s house during that storm. They create conditions where the lights can stay on when pressure hits.

Recovery time shows up in the schedule.

Cognitive load gets shared across the team.

Leaders understand that sustained thinking requires fuel.

None of this removes accountability. Work still needs to get done. Standards are still important. The brain still expects direction and structure.

Energy just becomes part of the conversation.

That idea sits right at the center of the second Neuro Informed principle, Regulate.

The Predict Principle helps us understand how the brain anticipates the world. The Regulate Principle invites us to look at something just as important. The brain is constantly managing energy so those predictions can keep running.

That question opens an entirely new way of looking at behavior, leadership, and resilience.

I explore that idea much more deeply in my newest book, The Regulate Principle, where the whole focus is learning to recognize when the brain is conserving energy, when it is spending it, and how leaders can help people keep enough fuel in the system to keep showing up well.

I’m curious what you notice when you start looking at work this way.

Where do you see the generators in your organization? And when do you hear them kick on?