I was delighted to be a guest on the Beyond Potential podcast, hosted by Tom Emery, CEO and Founder of Hex Development, and Tom Mason, Founder and CEO of Potentia Leadership. Known as “the Toms,” they facilitate an entertaining, informative, and immersive podcast designed for leaders, HR professionals, and anyone aspiring to maximise their performance and wellbeing in the workplace.
In this episode, we dig deep into one of my key topics: personal sustainability—what that means for individuals and businesses that want to create high-performance cultures led by wellbeing.
Stress Resilience and Personal Sustainability
One of the primary reasons organisations bring me in is to help with stress resilience—a huge challenge for many companies today. In the podcast, we explore how to boost the stress resilience of teams and the importance of building personal sustainability.
Personal sustainability is an idea I’m particularly passionate about. It’s not just about the big sustainability goals we hear about in ESG, but the sustainability of individuals—how we keep ourselves well, resilient, and ready to tackle the meaningful challenges we face in life and business. As I explain on the podcast, “We won’t be able to solve the world’s problems unless we have strong values, integrity, and personal resources that keep us well.”
Learning from Athletes: The Business Athlete Mindset
We also explore the concept of the business athlete. Just like elite athletes, who carefully manage their energy and recovery to peak at key events, businesses should help their teams manage energy to prepare for demanding periods.
I encourage leaders to think of their team members as business athletes—people who can’t perform at peak levels 24/7 but can manage their energy effectively to shine when it counts. Whether it’s Black Friday for retail businesses or quarterly sales results, knowing when crunch periods will come allows business to support their teams to predict, prepare, and perform, just like athletes preparing for competition.
The Importance of Recovery
One of the standout moments in the podcast was when we talked about recovery, which is often overlooked in high-performance cultures. In business, as in sports, recovery is critical to preventing burnout. It doesn’t have to be big breaks—it can be what I call “slivers of recovery.” These are small moments to rest and recharge, like daydreaming out the window between Zoom calls, or taking a brief moment to pet your dog.
The key is understanding that backing off beats burnout. By integrating small recovery moments into the workday, we can maintain resilience and perform at a high level when needed.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
If you’re a CEO, HR leader, or someone who wants to enhance performance while prioritising wellbeing, this episode offers insights on:
- Stress resilience: How to manage and boost your team’s ability to handle pressure.
- Personal sustainability: What it means for individuals and businesses in today’s fast-paced world.
- The business athlete mindset: How to prepare your team for crunch periods by managing energy and recovery.
- Cadence: My four-step framework—Predict, Prepare, Perform, and Recover—that helps individuals and teams thrive.
It was a fantastic conversation filled with practical advice and a lot of laughs. You can listen to the full episode here and catch up on the other fantastic guests ‘the Toms’ have been in conversation with so far in the series.
