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A childhood near-death experience taught Australian author Reem Borrows that leadership begins with the mind, and not the title. Those moments of survival, struggle and transformation shaped the lessons behind Unfollow the Leader, which readers have propelled to multi-category Amazon bestseller status in Australia and the US.

The book reached bestseller rankings across three categories on Amazon Australia before climbing to #1 in Organisational Learning, #1 in Organisational Change, and #3 in Business Motivation & Self-Improvement on Amazon US.

"Traditional organisational mantras tell people to separate the personal from the professional, or to simply hold onto resilience during difficult periods. But that's not the reality when we talk about shock, recovery and mindset," Borrows said.

"Forget what you know about mindset and leadership. Unfollow the Leader explores the powerful connection between the mind and the heart, challenging traditional leadership thinking by bringing the conversation back to what makes us human. It's about removing the limitations that hold people back and empowering them to step into authentic leadership."

The book's rise reflects growing demand for leadership perspectives that move beyond traditional management theories to address mindset, adaptability, and the human side of performance.

Rather than promoting conventional leadership formulas, Unfollow the Leader challenges readers to rethink how leadership is developed, arguing that lasting organisational change begins with personal awareness rather than external authority.

For more information, visit www.reemborrows.com.

Released on 15 April 2026, Unfollow the Leader by Australian author Reem Borrows has emerged as a breakthrough title in the business and leadership categories, achieving Amazon Best Seller status across multiple categories.

The book reached #1 in Organisational Learning and #1 in Organisational Change, while also securing the #3 position in Business Motivation and Self-Improvement.

This achievement marks Borrows' growing influence, whose work challenges conventional leadership thinking and explores an integrated approach to mindset, leadership, and adaptability.

The book's recognition arrives during a deeply personal period for Borrows following the passing of her father. Borrows describes the achievement as especially meaningful during a time of personal loss.

"Having my work recognised has motivated me, particularly at a time where grief strikes at every thought," she said. "Traditional organisational mantras tell people to separate the personal from the professional, or to hold onto resilience during difficult periods, sometimes in a stoic way. But that's not the reality when we talk about shock, recovery and mindset."

"Leadership isn't a separate human experience, it's deeply connected to it. And this is the mindset I'm trying to shift. It's a movement."

Industry observers and readers alike note that the book's strong appeal across several categories reflects a growing market appetite for self-help and leadership titles focused on cultivating perspective, mindset, human performance, and transformational thinking.

In Unfollow the Leader, Borrows challenges conventional leadership models and rigid organisational architecture, arguing that leaders don't fail externally, they break down internally.

Copies of the book are available for media representatives upon request. To connect with Reem Borrows and learn more, visit https://www.reemborrows.com/

As burnout and disengagement continue to reshape modern workplaces in a post-COVID world, Australian executive coach Reem Borrows argues in Unfollow the Leader that leadership does not fail under pressure but breaks down internally, and when strategy, behaviour, and culture fall out of alignment.

Released on 15 April 2026, the book has already achieved Amazon Best Seller status across three categories, with copies circulating across global professional, organisational, and media networks. Borrows pushes the idea that leaders don't fail externally, they break down internally.

The book moves beyond the dominance of mind-based frameworks and the over-reliance on any single dimension of leadership, instead advancing an integrated model that restores balance across Health, Head, and Heart.

While grounded in leadership and organisational performance, the book also broadens its appeal to the public seeking to understand and shift the internal patterns that influence how they think, respond, and lead under pressure.

Borrows describes this as "an internal system built from a threat-based foundation, where survival once mattered more than trust," and notes that without awareness, these patterns can feel like an internal prison that shapes behaviour even when people know what they would rather do.

Borrows emphasises the Health, Head and Heart framework, focusing on the alignment of energy and capacity, clarity and decision making, and connection and trust. When these elements are aligned, strategy is more likely to translate into consistent behaviour and sustainable performance.

She continues, "When the heart becomes the master, the intellect naturally takes its place as an intelligent servant," noting that emotional intelligence plays a key role in maintaining clarity and helping ensure thinking is not overtaken by reactivity, ego, or perceived threat, particularly when pressure at work or at home is high.

Unfollow the Leader is designed to be practical and applicable, supporting readers to translate insight into consistent action across leadership, work, and personal contexts.

Borrows is available for commentary and expert insights on self-development, leadership and change, performance management, and human-centred leadership, as well as the themes explored in the book.

Copies of the book are available for media representatives upon request. To connect with Reem Borrows and learn more, visit https://www.reemborrows.com/

Reem Borrows, executive coach, human capital specialist, and author of Unfollow the Leader, offers a new lens on a problem many executives and aspiring leaders are dealing with: why strong strategy often fails at execution, despite increased investment.

More than 70% of companies grapple with transformation and struggle to translate strategy into performance. This reflects a persistent gap between what leaders know and what they can consistently do.

Unfollow the Leader is designed to help align strategy, behaviour, and culture so organisations unlock performance and potential. It examines when leadership stifles, particularly under pressure, competing priorities, and real-world behavioural dynamics shaped by more context than intent.

When strategy, behaviour, and culture are aligned, Borrows argues that leadership becomes resilient. She explains, "What gets called a strategy failure is often something else entirely." She continues, "It's a perception failure. Leaders are making quick, meaning-based decisions before they even realise they've moved away from the reality of the situation."

"Most leaders already know what good leadership looks like," Borrows says. "The challenge is holding that standard when pressure rises. This is where behaviour shifts, culture is shaped, and performance is either strengthened or lost."

Borrows also introduces frameworks to test assumptions and interrogate the limits of perception that can constrain potential and reinforce unhelpful learned behaviours, helping to "declutter" the outdated mental data we often draw on when making decisions.

The "ladder of perception" sits within the Insights Discovery Framework, as well as a suite of tools designed to prompt leaders to pause, even for a nanosecond, before they respond or decide, creating space to reflect rather than react automatically.

Borrows emphasises that the book is designed to be used in real time, both in the workplace and in personal contexts where leadership is required. She says, "The book is designed to be used, not just read. It includes practical tools that can be applied immediately across teams and organisations, supporting leaders to move from insight to consistent action."

Unfollow the Leader is also supported by three downloadable resources: a communication toolkit, a strategy document, and a Coaching for Transformation framework. These extend the work beyond the book and provide a clear structure for applying the concepts in real settings.

Reem Borrows is available to share expert insights on leadership, perception, organisational culture, and behaviour under pressure, with a focus on human-centred leadership across both corporate and personal contexts.

Visit: https://www.reemborrows.com/ and https://www.dreem.com.au

Unfollow the Leader makes the case that the performance-at-all-costs model of leadership is burning people out. What did you most want readers to "unlearn" about leadership?

I think one of the biggest things I wanted people to unlearn is the idea that leadership is primarily about image, status, certainty, control, or constant performance.

So often, we are conditioned to believe leadership means pushing harder, sacrificing ourselves, always appearing strong, always knowing the answers, and tying our worth to outcomes and achievement. For a while, that behaviour is often rewarded. Until eventually the cracks begin to show in our health, our relationships, our nervous system, and our sense of self.

A lot of this happens at a subconscious level. Intellectually, most people already understand that balance matters, that relationships matter, that health matters, that presence matters. But understanding something consciously and embodying it behaviourally are two very different things. Many of these patterns are built deeply into the psyche over decades through family systems, workplaces, society, fear, survival, conditioning, and identity.

People often do not realise how much of their leadership is being driven by unconscious fear. Fear of failure. Fear of not being enough. Fear of losing control. Fear of being judged. Fear of slowing down.

Somewhere along the way, people disconnect from themselves while trying to become who they think they need to be. They become productive, but not present. Accomplished, but exhausted. Surrounded by people, but emotionally disconnected.

I wanted readers to question the idea that success at any cost is actually success. For me, leadership is not about becoming somebody important. It is about becoming more conscious, more honest, more grounded, and more responsible for the impact we have on other human beings.

I also wanted people to unlearn the belief that humanity weakens leadership. Some of the strongest leaders I have ever met are deeply self-aware people who can regulate themselves under pressure, hold difficult conversations with care, stay open to feedback, admit mistakes, and create environments where people feel psychologically safe enough to think, contribute, and grow. That takes far more strength than simply dominating a room.

Health, Head, and Heart is a deceptively simple structure. What took you the longest to understand, and what do most leaders get wrong about the order?

What took me the longest to understand is that they are not separate parts of leadership. They constantly affect each other whether we acknowledge it or not.

You cannot think clearly when your body is exhausted. You cannot lead people well when your nervous system is constantly operating in stress or survival mode. You cannot consistently make values-based decisions when your identity is tied entirely to achievement, approval, or external validation.

For years, leadership development focused heavily on the "Head." Strategy, intellect, execution, KPIs, performance. Those things matter. Of course they do. But without Health and Heart, eventually the entire system becomes unstable.

What many of us get wrong is the order. We sacrifice Health first while chasing success, disconnect from Heart while trying to maintain performance, and eventually even the Head begins to suffer. Decision-making becomes reactive. Relationships deteriorate. Clarity disappears. We begin operating from pressure rather than presence.

Health is not just fitness or diet. It is energy, emotional regulation, capacity, sleep, wellbeing, and the overall state of your nervous system. Heart is not weakness or sentimentality. It is values, courage, emotional intelligence, humility, empathy, connection, and the ability to remain human under pressure. And the Head functions best when supported by both.

That understanding did not come from theory for me. It came from life. From burnout. From grief. From leadership. From watching incredibly intelligent and capable people slowly disconnect from themselves while trying to hold everything together.

The framework became less about perfect balance and more about awareness. Learning to recognise the subconscious patterns driving our behaviour before the consequences become impossible to ignore.

The S.T.O.P. tool is one of the book's practical anchors. How did you arrive at it, and what does it do that other pause-and-reflect tools don't?

The S.T.O.P. framework came from years of coaching leaders, teams, and individuals who intellectually knew what to do, but struggled to access that wisdom in real moments of pressure. That gap fascinated me for years.

I realised most people do not fail because they lack information. The struggle is often that subconscious emotional patterns and conditioned responses take over before conscious awareness has a chance to enter the room.

Intellectually, we often know how we want to behave. We know we should listen more, react less, communicate better, stay calm, lead with empathy, or have more patience. But in moments of stress, fear, exhaustion, ego, or threat, human beings tend to default to deeply wired survival patterns that exist beneath conscious thought.

S.T.O.P. was designed to interrupt that automatic cycle. It was designed to be simple because in moments of pressure, people rarely access complicated frameworks effectively. There is an art to taking complexity, overwhelm, and moving parts, and turning them into practical simplicity that people can actually execute consistently in real life.

What makes it different is that it is not just a mindset tool or a reflective exercise. It is a practical blueprint that helps bring strategy, behaviour, culture, communication, accountability, and execution together in a way that people can actually operationalise day to day.

The framework brings together Health, Head, and Heart through the right operating rhythm, practical templates, behaviours, meeting structures, communication rhythms, accountability processes, and ways of working from beginning to end. It starts with purpose, goals, values, and culture. It moves into flow, emotional regulation, engagement, clarity, accountability, and execution.

Whether it is a one-person business, a family, a small team, or a large global matrix organisation, the human dynamics underneath remain remarkably similar. People still need clarity, trust, emotional awareness, consistency, communication, ownership, and alignment.

It helps create enough space between stimulus and response for a conscious choice to emerge instead of an automatic reaction. Sometimes that pause lasts five seconds. Sometimes it lasts longer. But within that space, people often reconnect to their values, their intentions, and the version of themselves they actually want to lead from.

Most damage in leadership does not happen because people are intentionally harmful. It happens because under pressure, awareness narrows and old protective patterns take over before we even realise it.

The reflective prompts invite pause and self-examination. What do you hope happens between the reading and the answering?

For me, the space between the reading and the answering is probably where the real work begins. It is easy to consume ideas intellectually. It is much harder to sit honestly with ourselves.

The prompts were never designed as homework. They were designed as interruptions. Small invitations to slow down long enough to notice patterns, beliefs, fears, behaviours, contradictions, and the ways people may have drifted away from themselves without even realising it.

We can intellectually understand ourselves far more than we emotionally, behaviourally, or subconsciously embody that understanding. Someone can explain emotional intelligence beautifully while still reacting defensively in relationships or leadership. A person can deeply value presence while living in a constant state of internal urgency.

Awareness changes things, and because there is no limit to awareness, it does not happen instantly or perfectly. But once something is seen clearly, it becomes very difficult to completely unsee it.

I hope readers become curious rather than judgmental of themselves. So many people are carrying pressure, grief, burnout, fear, responsibility, and expectations they have never fully stopped to examine. Sometimes, even one honest question can begin bringing hidden patterns into awareness.

And if someone skips the prompts, that is okay too. Not everybody is ready to pause immediately. Sometimes people read a book intellectually first and only later realise certain parts stayed with them long after they finished reading.

The book is not really meant to be consumed as information alone. It is meant to be experienced, and the value is not in agreeing with the ideas. It is in noticing where those ideas meet your actual life.