The Biology Behind Effective Leadership with Martin Redigolo and Jan-Philipp Martini

[MUSIC] Powerful insights often occur when you least expect them. On transformative leadership conversations, they're at the heart of every episode. Hi, I'm your host, Winnie De Silva, and together we're exploring a spectrum of leadership themes through the compelling stories and insights of season leaders and prominent experts. In each episode, you'll walk away with inspiration, strategies, and tools to enhance your leadership, build effective teams, and lead writing organizations. [MUSIC] So this month, we've been exploring the relationship between stress and leadership. Not just the kind that keeps us up at night, but the kind that drives us, shapes us, and if left unchecked, can take a real toll on our work, our relationships, and of course on our health. So as leaders were ambitious, we want to make an impact, we want to grow, we want to achieve, but that same drive that fuels us can also drain us. It can even cause lasting harm if we don't learn how to work with stress rather than against it. That tension is at the heart of this leadership series, excellence without exhaustion. So we began with Martin Rigidulio, who shared his personal relationship with stress and how it's evolved throughout his leadership career. Then we heard from Jan Philip Martini, the founder and CEO of Sapiens, who talked about his own journey from thriving in a high performance consulting career to facing a health crisis that reshaped how he defined success and inspired him to start Sapiens. And now in this episode, we're bringing the two of them together to connect these stories. So in this episode, I'm joined by both Martin and Jan Philip to take this conversation, of course, one step further. We're going to talk about what happened when Martin went through the Sapiens stress and resilience diagnostic himself, what the data revealed, how it compared to what he thought he knew about his stress, and how those insights are changing the way he leads. During this conversation, you'll hear us refer to a few pages directly from Sapiens example report. The same kind of report that Martin received when he went through the diagnostic. And for those of you who are listening on YouTube, you can actually see some of those pages as well. Together, we'll explore what it looks like when science meets self-awareness and how understanding our biology can deepen rather than limit our capacity to lead really well. And since today's conversation is all about Martin's experience going through the Sapiens diagnostic and what he discovered, it's the perfect time to share how you can experience all of this for yourself. So if you've been listening to this entire series and wondering what your own data might reveal about how stress shows up for you, this is your chance to find out. So for listeners of transformative leadership conversations, Sapiens is offering 20% off their stress and resilience diagnostic and habit change program. Just use the podcast code TLC when you sign up. The offer is valid through the end of 2025. So the way that it works, it's a four-month journey that begins with an at-home diagnostic, including stress hormones, cortisol analysis, ECG monitoring, and recovery analytics, followed by three months of expert guided habit coaching and monthly progress tracking. So if you're curious or just kind of on the fence is whether or not this is the right opportunity for you, you can book a free 15-minute consultation with someone from the Sapiens team. They'll walk you through what to expect and to help you figure out if it's the right thing for you. There's a direct link in the show notes and more information about Sapiens, which can make scheduling quick and easy, or you can visit www.b-sapiens.com for all the details. And you'll hear much more about Sapiens, how it started, how it works, and what leaders are learning from it in this next episode. By the way, Excellence Without Exhaustion is also the tagline of Sapiens, which I thought perfectly captures what this month's leadership series is all about. Okay, so let's get in my conversation with Martin and Jan Phillips. So Martin and Jan Phillips, welcome back, the fourth episode of this series. This is really special because I've talked to each of you individually. Now we're kind of all talking together because it's going to bring everything that we talked about separately, kind of full circle. Right? So Martin, you were able to share some of your story and your journey as an executive and your experiences around stress. Jan Phillips, we talked about your personal story and also Sapiens and so much really great information and data and just really understanding how our body works in response to stress and what we can be looking for. And so in this last episode, we're really going to get into kind of the so what and what's next. But through the story and through kind of the eyes of you, Martin, because you know, you kind of told the story both prior to you knowing Jan Phillips and now having joined Sapiens. So this is really full circle. So maybe we can start with kind of how you guys met. I know you briefly talked about this in our episode, Martin, but maybe you can talk just a little bit about how you met, how you connected and honestly, how you became, you know, you're now working with with Jan Phillips. So maybe you can talk, we'll start there. Yeah. So I mean, I would say it's internet randomness, well planned by the universe, because it just came at a moment where I had left BCG as we were discussing before and also as Jan Phillips was sharing on the other episode. It's it's in a high high stress high performance high velocity environments. And it's it'd say a video from one of his workshops popped up on my LinkedIn feed. So I keep capturing my my my attention. I was like, what's this because I don't can't remember what kind of words were around the video, but there was obviously some kind of intro that he had written and a common contact, which is an MDP from from BCG I'd liked it and that's why it popped up on my feed. I checked out the video because I found the the initial impact of the idea combining coaching, leadership coaching with data and biometrics, just a super new concept. And I felt like that's something new and I think there must be something good behind, you know, because I would say everybody who's in a more senior role and has gone through a couple of internal learnings and trainings and maybe they had even had the chance to get a individual coach over time. That's all fine. They have value, but that seemed to be like a totally different new perspective and could open, you know, one's own mind and understanding way more. Another level, right? A lot of more depth. Yeah, so I watched the video. Super interesting. I can just recommend it to anybody because it describes really well what Beyond Philip has been doing in the past and how it came up. We'll add the video to the show notes so people can find it. Yep. And I felt like this impulse of let's just reach out to him because I mean we didn't know each other but felt like this is this, you know, saying hi, I like your content, you know, kind of giving feedback also over digital channels to unknown people. And that's how somehow we connected because I felt like, hey, you know, if this should happen anytime soon in around Madrid or in Spain, let me know. Maybe, you know, we can, I don't know, do something together. And then, you know, it came to a first call. We said hi and personal digitally, but you know, at least in person. And yeah, and then it kind of kept on going because I was also in a moment where I was not saying no to any other opportunities work wise. Let's say I was open, you know, maybe after my previous experience that I've described on the first episode, it's like, you know, maybe I would go rather, you know, back again into a really more consulting role. It was a team leadership, people role that I had, uh, lastly. So I was considering different options, just like, you know, what, what could happen. And I felt like, you know, this is a meaningful, idea and solution that resonates with me also with the values that I've mentioned in the previous episode. Um, so I, let's say I felt like there was a connect, but it needed to be explored somehow, right? Because I mean, it's, uh, and Martin, what's your, what's your role with Sapiens now? Yeah. So over over the conversations, um, actually, I appreciate the trust also that the unfilial head in myself because it, he was the first one opening, hey, why don't you join our partners? What's up group? He was like, okay, what's that? Uh, and, um, so I joined, I was in the group, and I was on a, on a call, a weekly partner call. But we didn't, hadn't yet signed anything. It was just pure interest in, let's say, from my side, passion without knowing in, in a topic that resonated, you know, with my own experience, but also what I feel like is very important and could be adding a lot of value to many more people. And then kind of it ended up obviously discussing hey, is that something that you would be more and more interested in maybe in our supporting from local perspective as I'm here in Spain and it's a geography and market that has not been explored yet. So I can just sort of support and bring all the content and context and the context that I have from from my side. Yeah, to basically I mean bring this solution to more and more companies who have you know high performing leadership teams and and people even if it's on a one-on-one level that for sure will benefit from from Jan Phillips idea and in the solution that the team has built. And that's how we basically signed an agreement to collaborate and now I'm partner in in his team. That's great. Jan Phillips, you want to add to any of that? No, I felt Martin is living his own story very authentically and that's a big part next to the medical and neuroscience expertise that we have on the team that we bring together. Essentially sapiens is about for everybody who hasn't listened to the previous conversation is about stress diagnostics company and human performance support. We are a team of medical doctors, neuroscientists, experts in the field of stress and resilience that we basically use body data in order to help you refine your daily routines. And the we have kind of our teams consisting of three types of people. The first one is the scientists and researchers. These are two professor scientific advisors and neuroscientist biotech colleague. And then we have the experts who are doing one-on-one support and the debriefs of our diagnostics, which are medical doctors and nutritionists to sleep scientists, fitness expert on exercise expert, etc. And then we have what we call partners. These are people that understand the intensity of the roles of people that we work with in depth because they have been in their shoes. And we like to, for example, combine the former McKinsey consultants together with a medical doctor and then create a team of supporting and individual. From somebody really understands the pressure and the intensity of their job so that they make recommendations which are really tactical and suitable for physical and others. And at the same time, we are an expert driven business, meaning we're bringing in medical doctors, sleep scientists to go really, really deep into the topic and can adjust the advisors that we give to people's reality and make them really medically sound. That's awesome. Yeah, because you really are offering this holistic body data and solutions and a diagnostic debrief and then solutions, right, to understand and really customize to the person. And like we talked about in the other episode, what I love about the team that you're describing that you have on sapiens is that depending on kind of what you're most challenged with or where your stress shows up the most or where you have the most problems, you can be, you would be assigned to someone in that area of expertise to help you think about through your data and think through what your solutions and daily habits, how they how they should change. Is that I get that right? Okay, good, good. So in this episode, what we're going to do is we're going to kind of unpack Martin, you know, your, what you learned when you went through it yourself, right, just as you've described, that's what the partners are therefore, right, is to under is to kind of be representative of understanding how your other clients and high stress, high performing organizations, what they have done and lived through. So Martin, what so you met, you met Jan Philip and then you ended up actually taking the diagnostic. Can you, cause so let's take this into three different buckets. So one is what was it like to do the diagnostic, right? Two, what, what kind of diagnostic or kind of debrief did you get, right? So after you did the diagnostic, who did you talk to? What did you learn? Again, keeping at high level and then third, you know, what kind of next steps did you take? By the way, so did did, did Jan Philip do the diet, do the debrief with you or did you do it with somebody else? I was happy to talk to the CEO coach, Jan Philip. Okay, cool, okay, good. Awesome. Okay, so, okay, so let's start with the diagnostic. So again, we have to keep at high level. You got this kit that, I mean, Jan Philip, I know you showed it in your episode. Can you show it again? It's really like this nice black box with three different compartments. One, two, three. And so you get that at home. So briefly, as briefly as you can describe what you did and how that worked and was it comfortable, was it easy? Was it disruptive? Yeah. Actually, yeah, I received it. I mean, Jan Philip was also generous to sort of give me the option to test it as I was onboarding, as a partner in the company. So I think it's important to understand the product and the service really well. I took it and on a high level, I was lucky, but also let's say my role of a designer analyzing the really amazing experience that had already been designed. As he was mentioning on the previous episode to take away all of this noise of when you get something and you don't, you know, understand you have to walk through it. It's like really well guided to make it as simple as possible so that you can really execute it in a working week when you're busy and maybe you know the kids and everything. With ease. I mean, Martin, I'm so glad you said this because of course, I didn't even, you know, you're the designer, you're like into, you know, user experience. That's the first thing you mentioned. And I didn't even think about that, but that's really important. I mean, it's important, I think to everybody because, you know, we all want it to be something that feels like it's easy and it's not disruptive and it's probably nice to look at anyway. So that, thank you for mentioning that. That's really important. Yeah, so I got it and I obviously it was slightly pre-informed, but still I wasn't a shoe of a user. So I did that. And over the week, obviously, I had to, you know, wear the diagnostic, the ECG monitor, which is the number two on screen here. And for those of you who are on YouTube, we're looking at kind of the diagnostic breakdown. So in the box with the three smaller boxes in the kit, let's say, you will find all of this. And it's really well designed and guided through, you know, instruction cards and numbers and and you always have also like a WhatsApp channel, you can reach out to a support person. So you definitely feel not lost. And while it's easy, it gives you the confidence, you will do it right. You don't miss anything. It is a weekly planner, you know, so it's complex in itself, but made easy for the one who has to has to do it on their own because you have to take this alive in the morning, you know, you wake up. You should not forget it because otherwise, obviously, it might affect the precision of the results. So I took that and that was already a really, really nice experience. And then obviously, I mean, you send the individual, and you know, a probes back so that it can be analyzed in the lab. And yeah, as Jan Philip mentioned, like two weeks after you get the report, so you can have a look at the report yourself. But then I was lucky enough to have that one on one coaching with Jan Philip. So, okay, so you did the diagnostic. I love this picture that we're seeing right now because you've got like box one is got like some of the tubes that you need to use box two. Well, actually, Jan Philip, why don't you explain it? Can you kind of describe how you would describe what's on the screen? The four basic tasks that everybody gets is number one, saliva cortisol profile. We measure two to three days. And that essentially tells you how well you operate your energy in the morning, and how well you don't regulate your energy after work. And then secondly, you wear an ECG monitor for five days. An ECG monitor measures the electrical signal of your heart. It's like a really accurate wearability device. And that gives you an insight about when during the day are you stressed versus when are you able to recover. And that also gives you a in-depth recovery sleep analysis. And then the third thing you get is a little hair sample. And you just provide two strands of hair and that gives you a three months history book of the major stress hormone and resilience factors. And then the fourth thing is you are doing a self-assessment and that gives us all the health symptoms immune system, gut health symptoms, mental health symptoms, as well as a really accurate view of your habits. What are you eating in the morning at lunch at dinner? What are your thought patterns? What are potentially stress-emplifying or stress-de-emplifying thought patterns? And then if that's not enough for you and you really want to go into details in one of the body systems, you can do a blood test, a microbiome test, a glucose monitor, or measure your blood pressure continuously. Wait, so those are all options. Those other follow-up pieces? Exactly. Either you do them straight away if you have an hypothesis that that might be a topic of interest. If you, for example, have lots of sugar cravings, it might be interesting to look into measuring glucose for two weeks. But that can also be a follow-up in case we have an hypothesis based on the first four tests that you did and you want to confirm or disconfirm that hypothesis. Got it. Okay. Got it. Okay. That's super helpful. Okay. So, Martin, you went through all of this and then you got the results sent to you and you had a chance to look at them yourself before you met with Jan Philip. Is that right? Yeah. So obviously it's very eye-opening to, you know, some data points you might recognize from other analytics that you have been doing in your past with some other doctors or in different moments of your life. So, you might recognize some things. I felt very eye-opening the idea of with the ECG monitor that you were 24 hours a day through the full working week. You can match your hard rate against basically your work week calendar. By the way, I'm just going to say that for those of you who are on YouTube, you can actually see what Martin is describing, that report and how it, yeah, so go ahead. Yeah, imagine like obviously you're the hard monitor shows, whereas your heartbeat going up and down and where you're resting periods and where you're maybe, you know, this stressful moments of your day. But I would say what caught my attention when I first saw that video on LinkedIn from from Sapiens was the link between how do you, how does your body, maybe that nervous system that Jan Philip described before, react invisibly and sometimes you without knowing but you feeling but you never would cross it visually against what the hell happened in that very moment when I was in the office. And maybe then you realize, oh, that was actually when I had this difficult meeting or, you know, conversation or why was I so nervous when I actually was having my lunch break or, you know, it's all of these kind of overlaps that suddenly can happen. And I jump in here for a second because I think what you're saying, which is so powerful about this diagnostic and the report reporting afterwards is that like what you describe, it's like things happen and they're invisible, right? But actually this makes it visible what's actually happening to your body in the middle of oh yeah, I look back. Oh yeah, remember, I did actually have that difficult conversation. That's what's happening right there on Monday. Monday morning, that's where that red spike came in, right? Yeah, but that was that that was actually yeah, there was also very eye opening and the unfilipointed method because we looked at my cortisol profile in the morning and also like why was my stress level usually Monday, no, no, no, usually Monday, no, every morning quite high, quite red, what what people were seeing on YouTube, like why, why am I the first hour of the day, rather in a stress situation based on the heart rate data. And then he pointed me to look first, it's good that your cortisol was up because you get going, that was he describing, right? It pushes you, it gives you energy and activates your your body and system. In my case, it overlaps with weighing the kids up, getting ready for school. So it's a stressful situation, I guess, so many parents. And then obviously along the day, it went further down. And again, I would say a totally different perspective on crossing this this information. In my case was understanding and I never understood why, but most people most I assume can relate. Sometimes you sleep long, but you wake up tired and you don't you don't know why. And and I realized through the through the data that I obtained that basically if your hard rate, the hard rate of variability that is being measured isn't it was in a specific range that basically shows that you are stressed, you might be sleeping, but your body is not relaxed. So you can sleep and it just happened like a couple of weeks back. I slept like 10 hours, 12 hours, almost through, but I woke up and I was tired. And I know now that it's because I can relate my current situation or maybe a moment at work or you know, things that happen around me with that. And now I can, I mean, we will deep dive later a bit more, but into the tactics that I can apply in order to, as Jan Friedrich was also describing, you detect the signals and you know, now what to do. But this this report and these kind of ideas that data can show you with a with an eye of an expert and the knowledge of an expert basically give you the the meaning to to what you're going through. So for those of you on YouTube, you can actually see this part of the report that talks about nervous system and sleep. And just so you know, for those of you who are who are looking at this report, it's not Martin's report because we didn't want to share Martin's report the details, but it does show a sample report and it's and it's so interesting to again, look at the data, look at how it falls into all these different categories. So it breaks it down into other pieces. You know, night recovery, sleep quality, time, sleep time, regularity. I just think your comments about, you know, sleeping versus being relaxed. I mean, it's like you kind of assume that if you're asleep, you're relaxed and and and it sounds like that's not true. Which I think maybe we all instinctively know that it isn't, which is incredible. So Martin, this was great. I mean, Jan, Jan, Philip, maybe we can get your voice in here for a minute. And we'd love to hear you talk about you know, what how you walked how you typically with Martin or otherwise walk through a report with somebody. Yeah, the the report is really answering three questions. The first one is what's the state of my body considering the amount of chronic stress I had in my life? We call that the body reserve. And it's based on 30 years of academic work and a few hundred publications around the topic of academic, sorry, academic, alostatic load. And we essentially took the models that are out there in the literature called alostatic load index and translated them into the body reserve score that you're getting. And essentially a hundred out of a hundred means you are very resilient. You're incredibly well adapting to stress and the zero out of hundred means you're poorly adapting or most of your body systems are depleted. So step one is kind of what's the state of my body? Step two is what's protecting my body and what's driving stress. And then step three is what's maxed. What are the most likely interventions based on your neurobiological profile of stress that are driving the biggest impact for reducing stress? So right there in the report you are already based on the data making some recommendations on what that person could do differently. At least on a high level. And this is the executive summary that people see on YouTube. And we can go deeply into the data of each of the body systems. So in the example of a client that we have here he is in between a yellow or orange state. So there's it's not optimal. His body is clearly coping with his stress. And the hormonal system is already showing some signs of dysregulation. Basically what we see here is a lowered overall cortisol level. That's early signs of fatigue. Together with suboptimal sleep quality. So somebody here doesn't shut off fully at night. And oftentimes that's a signal that's coming that the immune system is active at night. Inflammation is going on. And that inflammation we then also measured in a blood test that we had for this example where the value which is called HCAP, it's a systemic inflammation marker was activated while joint pain was also there which is oftentimes a sign of a thrice or inflammation. And all of these data together then informed that okay there's a depleted cortisol level. Cortisol usually suppresses inflammation. That was no longer possible here. That's a reason why you get sick when you just start your holiday after intense work weeks. It's because cortisol is no longer there to suppress inflammation and suddenly all of it comes out. And that's exactly happened here for this person just over months and years. And then the interventions are essentially based on these data, your current habits which we can talk about later. Okay got it. Okay very good. So you got this report something similar for you Martin. And you kind of you know talked a little bit about some of the insights that you had. Can you can you describe like maybe one particular sort of just from the data itself one one particular thing that stood out that you're like that you didn't know or that really was eye opening for you. Was there one thing that stood out? I mean one thing that that you unfilled have described when we were having this conversation and I think it's something that is being looked for for or anybody who's doing some kind of, do you have a superpower, maybe that you're not aware of how you can handle specific situations in stressful, right? In my case, it came out through the heart rate crossed again by my daily activity that actually high load of focused work was not showing up as stress, but rather a pivot where my body slowed down and recovered. Right? So that's something that is like, okay, I mean, how would any other person in the world be able to show you something like this or bring it to surface so that you can perceive it and actually learn something that you know, you would never be aware of yourself. So that was one thing. - It's almost like it sounds like it's the flow state that you're in, right? That, right? And you're enjoying your work, you're doing it, you're really like into it and your body and your mind and your brain are all sort of like insane. - So I felt that was really something that keeps me thinking like, okay, if I'm doing work now, for example, do I perceive myself really relaxed? Obviously, it can be intense, but an intensity is different to your, maybe it's an intensity more on a mental level, but again, the rest of your body knows that there's no danger, there's no risk, we can be, stay calm, nothing, from the nervous system needs to be pushed into your body to run away or fight. There's no boss, you're ever coming into the room. But yeah, that was really good. And I think if I go a little bit outside Sapiens for a second, and it was before I got to know Jan Phillips, I was, and that was actually the story I shared with him when we got to know each other. I was training for my first half marathon. And that was a time when I was going through, let's say a difficult situation for myself at work. And I had, if anybody's doing training, or routine training and doing series and stuff, and yeah, it's like, I mean, it's constant training and you're working maybe with hard-rate zones to achieve a specific improvement in your performance. So as you're training in a specific hard-rate zone, I realized that when thought crossed my mind, even though I was running at the same speed, hard-rate went up. And but I was understanding it, I was, yeah, reading it as, okay. I noticed it on my watch, but okay, it's not the most precise device maybe, but enough to give me an idea. Then as I did the diagnostics myself, which is way more precise, and then we crossed it with the data throughout the week, we discussed it, and it's actually what happens in a working environment as well. Suddenly you have the stored, suddenly you have the situation popping up, and your body goes up and down, and maybe it's in the past, as I was describing in my first episode, maybe in the past it was more like, I just had a bad moment. Now I realize and I can relate. And I interpret myself knowing that there's data behind and signs that can describe exactly what is happening. And this allows me obviously now to totally address situations differently and maybe work my own way out of them with that new knowledge that I obtained. - Yeah, so let's get into that. So, Jan Philip, you met with Martin and kind of walk through this data. How did that go? Maybe you can, well, you walked through the data, but then there was kind of the next steps, like the so-what, what do we do now? So what was that so-what, what do you do now? Well, we're the highlights there. I mean, Martin, maybe you can describe it, and then Jan Philip, you can talk a little bit more about that. And again, for those of you on YouTube, we're gonna get to see a little bit of that part of it, that part of the report. So Martin, what did you, what was the, what was recommended to you? - The good thing, I would say, is that there were a series of recommendations, slash tactics, slash new habits that I could work on. Some of them were known to me, but the report, and let's say the conversation made it clearer why and how should I apply some of them in my day, right? - Yeah, the how and the why, right? So what's an example? They give us an example. - For example, I did in the past some kind of evening, let's say yoga stretching, and I realized, hey, it's actually not too bad. I felt some kind of improvement, but it was disconnected from that data layer that gives you way more understanding of why is this good or the science behind, right? Or everything that is related to the morning, I heard in other, let's say trainings and cold chains, maybe you know, drink a cup of water, or glass of water right in the morning, but knowing what's behind of drinking water, and there was a knife, there was a nice metaphor to the unfilled product, which was, your brain sits in a dark chamber every day, every time, every moment, your brain has never seen daylight, but your body need to give, or your body and your brain need to be connected to understand, is it now night and I have to sleep, so I have to regulate myself into sleep mode, or am I waking up and I have to get going, right? So there are tactics in young Philip Khan can add more details now that were kind of known, but it was like, yeah, but why and what's the story behind all of this? Why should I do it? Because some ideas are being shared, but you're like, yeah, okay, it's just drinking a glass of water. (laughing) - Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Yeah, because there's lots of things that we know we should do or people recommend, but like, what's the why behind that, right? So, young Philip, do you wanna maybe talk a little bit about, you know, some of those key recommendations that can come up for people? - Yeah, let's make an example. This is not exactly Martin, but this person, as I said, had struggles to fully downregulate at night. We had the hypothesis, oh, some information going on, as I mentioned, we also confirmed that was a blood test. We also noticed cortisol levels in here, meaning the last three months of cortisol was down, and then also all the resilience markers, like all the hormones that indicate resilience, what that are correlated with resilience were also suppressed. And then lastly, the morning cortisol was blunted, meaning usually cortisol spikes in the 30 minutes after waking, but for this example client was actually going down. So overall, we had a situation of some level of fatigue was also confirmed by a validated fatigue questionnaire that we asked the person. So this is kind of the feeling that many listeners can probably relate to, which is not really fully getting out of bed in the morning. There's aches and pakes and a little bit of joint pain everywhere. And I'm actually sleeping enough, but still I'm fatigue waking up. So in this example, given the set of data points we have here, the next plan usually has three steps. The first step was we want to realign your circadian rhythm. How do we do that? Martin mentioned that. - And that was for this particular person, right? This is these are exact, yeah. So for somebody usually who has a blunted cortisol awakening response or feels like they're not really fully getting out of bed in the morning, the first thing we do is realigning the circadian cortisol rhythm. And that works in particular by getting bright light straight after waking. 10 minutes of outdoor light, 10 minutes after waking is setting the circadian clock in the right order because it trains where it spikes your cortisol in the morning. That's a really good thing. It then helps to set your circadian clock and get other hormones which are inducing sleep later in the day cortisol down, melatonin up, for example. That together with a stable bedtime is usually the most important first step to re-stabilize that circadian clock. - And I assume you have to kind of go to bed at the same time every night too, like that's part of that too. - Yeah, so if you just do two things, it's basically a 10 minute morning sunlight or there's daylight lamps in case you were in a place where it's dark. Going to the same to bed at the same time that can be painful socially, but sometimes in order to get through that period of fatigue or reset it, that might be the poison to be taken. So that's kind of step one. We work a lot on circadian rhythm in order to reset that circadian clock. The second step then for this particular example, that might not be the case for everybody, of course, but given that there was increased inflammation in the body, we then took out the inflammatory potential of the food. So essentially we recommended a diet high in what's called morning on satirated and omega 3 fatty acids. That means in this case, for example, the person supplemented omega 3. three fish oil, two grams per day, or algae oil for that cycle, so works. Increase the amount of mono-unsaturated fat. That's basically the fats that the cells need in order to have proper cell walls. And because energy is being produced inside of the cells and something that's called mitochondria, it's really useful to have cell walls which are fluid enough to get all the stuff inside of the cell that the mitochondria need. That's why we basically focus on proper fats in the diet. We also recommend to have lots of colorful vegetables and fruits, ideally a large variety of them throughout the week that usually helps with reducing something that's called oxidative stress in the cells. And then we also recommend to reduce the sugar intake and carbohydrate intake and correlate it with movements. So the more you move, the more carbohydrate you eat, the less you move, the more sedentary you are, the less carbohydrate you eat. In some cases that of course depends on the particular profile, but in a man for example, who generally eats a lot of croissants, pastries for breakfast and then sits all day, we would recommend to start with a protein-based breakfast for this example. So this specific example basically starts with aligning circadian rhythm, then goes into nutrition and asserts, tap here is for that person was strength straining of what's called the posterior chain, but that was very specific. Given that the person had lots of issues with a lower back and hip, the traditional, and which is then driving stress essentially, it's a way of expressing tension. Another traditional example is to start with little microrecovery techniques, like inducing a little bit of more recovery throughout the day, interrupting these periods of high activation, and that can be by the practice that's called forate breathing, where you inhale for four exhale for eight, because whenever your exhales are longer than you inhales, that deactivates the nervous system and we do that after every meeting for one minute. So these are just some examples of traditional practices to reverse this subtle fatigue. This is not clinical fatigue, but rather subtle signs of fatigue. And so all these examples that you're all these recommendations that you just provided is obviously very much customized to that person's profile and that person's data. So as you said, this isn't something that would be recommended for everybody, but what you're showing on the screen right now too is that those are the detailed recommendations behind each of those three, right? And all the things that you could possibly do to counteract the things that your body is struggling with or your body needs. Spot on. We believe in highly customized interventions. The question is coffee good or not good is not a question that we answer, but we answer the question based on your profile. If you happen to have high blood pressure, if you happen to have high cortisol levels and an over activated nervous system, then coffee is probably not a very good idea versus a bowl of these three are not the case and coffee might be a healthy option, right? So essentially we are answering it depends a lot, but we make a very specific for individual people, but for the listener who's listening to this and wondering what can I do with this? I think some of the important messages here are really when there's some level of fatigue or restlessness starting with your circadian rhythm is usually the first step. Get into a stable rhythm, right? Morning sunlight, evening dimmed light, and some level of evening down regulation don't go too bad with your screen, but rather have this like 30 minute period where you dim the light in the house, where you shut off the device, and where you get your body into the posture that you haven't been in all day, like hanging on a bar somewhere to release body tension. Right? Going into a yoga post, it's called downward dog. So basically you want to get your body into a shape where you haven't been in all day so that it has the option to release somebody tension. Maybe you want to have a warm shower or bath, which also releases tension. Right? And then having a stable bedtime period of like eight hours recovery window, that's kind of always step one to stabilize and reduce restlessness or fatigue. And then step two is depending on your individual situation, if you have a challenge with gut health, the way that the stress, stress is shown through diarrhea or constipation or gut health issues, and it's most likely and lets it's a clinical gut health issue, the most likely useful to increase the amount of fiber and fermented foods, right? The yogurt and the blood variety vegetables. If your system is rather having musculoskeletal issues, meaning lower back pain and neck issues, well, then we go through building stability and flexibility in those areas at the same time. Mornings, you do a little strengthening exercise, evening, you do a little stretching exercise for that area. So really then the step two depends on which organ system is expressing stress most, and that organ system we give a little extra support. And then the third area is once you are now out of the acute issues of what was driving restlessness and fatigue, which can also be mental topics of horse or working on sought patterns and belief systems. But then we basically go into supporting was building small subtle healthy habits around exercise around the way you process certain thoughts, the way you belief systems are structured, etc. But we believe these bigger changes only work once your body is in a neurobiological state that is not restlessness or fatigue, but it's rather than the healthy metal. And only then we work on coaching interventions. Interesting. So you really do take care of the body pieces first and then do some of the coaching, especially once they're able to change some of these physical habits or physical ways in which they're dealing with stress. Then they move into some of the more coaching the way you think about things, how you're perceiving things, how you're reframing situations, that kind of thing. Yeah, which many many people might argue that might be the root cause, right? The worry and the perfectionism might be the root cause of my stress. Yet there's what I call a neurobiological paradox on, which is the more your body is in that restlessness mode, the more worry and perfectionism shows up, and now I'm in that paradox on. And because when I'm in a period of that restlessness and I'm hyperactive, having a hyperactive period, then usually we first want to address it neurobiologically, because sometimes it's too complex in those situations to work on the belief systems. There's no space for it at the moment. And a neurobiological intervention would for restlessness would be first the circadian rhythm exercise that I just mentioned. And secondly, in some situations that is however personal, it might also be helpful to take plant compounds which are reducing restlessness, rodeola, rizio, aswaganda, very well studied. You should talk to your doctor if you just do it blindly. But these are compounds that might temporarily help to take the restlessness out of the system, and which then opens a window of change of plasticity that we can work in on the belief systems or the maybe nutritional issues that have led to the stress that we see in the person's body. Yeah, very powerful. Yeah, that's amazing. Martin, what else can you add to the person who's listening right now, who is sort of the typical executive, the typical leader, who is maybe realizing, you know what, this would be something for me to, it would be helpful for me to be paying attention to this, because there's some things going on in my life that I need to fix or things that are going on that are not working, or I've gotten a diagnosis or whatever. Yeah, from kind of a leadership perspective, what would you, yeah, what would you say? I mean, I was, I mean, you never stop learning. Other things and about yourself, as I mentioned, I think on the, on the first episode, and I feel like if you can get more information and more insight on what drives you, right, and we have described also before stress is not good or bad, it feels like, okay, there's energy and sometimes the energy is pushing you forward. Sometimes you feel like it's maybe pushing you more back or holding you back. I think the more you can go beyond what is like maybe surface knowledge about, ah, you can know this is the situation, this is that, and I can use this tool to fix that situation and the other, it's very much important to understand actually how you work on yourself. Let's say how you, how you are working, because somehow it's the body in the mind and the different systems coming together, but I feel like sometimes you suppress this idea just by saying, ah, you know, this is just a conversation or this is just a moment where something doesn't seem to flow. And I feel like especially as a leader and if you have lots of responsibility either on full business units, on bigger teams or even on smaller teams. But suddenly these, let's call them against stressors positive or negative, they just come up and suddenly you have to handle them. Suddenly you have to work on them. Sometimes you have support, sometimes you don't have support, but they affect you and you take them home and in the morning you wake up with them and I think with you know with an additional level of understanding and someone helping you through this, a tactic like you know this morning routine or the evening routine will help you a lot to sort of handle yourself better. Confirm yourself again better maybe with the situation if it's not resolved and be able to become more resilient to you know because these things will not stop at work. Yeah that's not going to go away. One situation resolved the next the next one is in line you know. Yeah, our lives are not going to get less stressful. And actually these are things that also work outside work because again your unit, one human being and you're fully connected and it can be you know even that situation at home you know with your partner your kids again these are all also affecting you and I think getting a more holistic understanding of yourself as a leader specifically is super helpful. Yeah we're really you know we're we're you know this is a podcast about leadership but you know it really is about the whole person and really becoming you know and again I just go back to that tagline excellence without exhaustion right we want to be excellent in our jobs but we also want to be great people showing up for our families and for our friends and for our communities and you know I think what we're talking about here allows us to be that person to be able to do those things in a way that you know I think the way the pace and the stress and everything that's going on in the world right now is really pulls us away from that you know it really is you know this is it's not though those things are going to change and yet we have to deal with them so how can we deal with it in a way that you know it makes our life sustainable and makes it full of joy and again still makes us feel like we're able to accomplish and do great work I mean we want we want it all and it sounds like you know this is really this is I think that what you guys have described and what you're experiencing and the experience that you're bringing to people who are listening right now there's just a lot of hope and there's a lot of potential for us to understand our bodies and our brains and how we work better so that we can just be better people yeah and I would maybe say from my experience in learning now I mean work with your body right your body is able to perform but sometimes we suppress maybe the possibilities just by thinking oh now I feel sick take the meds and oh I feel good again so I continue you know full speed so read the signals work with the signals and then you can have a sustained performance that you enjoy and obviously that the joy returns at the end at work you know the good performance maybe you know the people around you perceive you differently as a leader I mean a stressed leader how nice is that you know that's right so Jan Philip can you send us out as we wrap up this episode what would you like to add yeah maybe to make the case for why do we speak about God else when we when we actually speak about leadership right our business case of supporting people in intense jobs was reducing chronic stress goes through productivity so we calculate very clearly it measure before and what we didn't speak about of course to the follow measurement after you did your habits and then after six months we see change and the business case we calculated very simply which is for every 10% of stress reduction we see an x production x increase in productivity and how is that where does that come from right the first step is chronic stress is anti correlated with all the things you want to have as a leader it's anti correlated with empathy it's anti correlated with creativity and it's anti correlated with complex decision making it's not anti correlated with speed of thinking or attention but these things usually you need when you're a little bit more junior so once you become a leader you want to actually operate with a much more down regulated nervous system in order to increase empathy decision making and creativity the very reasons why you and your job that is so powerful yeah I mean like when you become a senior leader those are the three things that you need to do and you may not be doing those things because of the stress that you're not dealing with right right I had one I had one executive client leading around 5,000 people in a big European organization say when my chronic stress is reduced 80% of my leadership challenges are soft so that's really how we look at it we don't really we basically trust that our clients already have every skill that they need in order to perform at their job yet chronic stress gets in the way and interestingly there's this great study is for example correlating the specific things we talked about like the diversity of your gut microbes correlated with the ability to take complex decisions or the amount of infot systemic information that is in my immune system is correlated with the level of empathy I can show towards my colleagues so there's a direct link between the body system that we spoke about today and the impact you have as a leader and that's why we find the body shouldn't be deflated in the work context and do you and is that and some of that can we find some of that on the sapiens website we have written about a few things and not all of what I had just mentioned is oftentimes content of the of the workshops that we do in a very experiential way okay got it good so powerful I know we have to wrap up but there's just a lot of gold here that I think everyone who's listening right now could really benefit from and in fact we're gonna have an offering to work with sapiens which I'll describe in a little bit but thank you so much you guys for being on the show I'm so excited that you were here and to just bring some really enlightenment to kind of what's happening in our lives and really hope for what we can do about it so thank you so much thanks Wendy for having us thank you Vinnie so it wasn't that a great conversation what I loved about this conversation with Martin and Jan Philip is how it brought the science and the story together Martin's openness about his experience paired with Jan Phillips insights showed how powerful it can be when leaders start paying attention not just to what they do but to how their bodies and minds are responding along the way this whole series excellence without exhaustion has been about rethinking what sustainable leadership really looks like learning that resilience isn't built by pushing harder but by understanding ourselves better because when we learn to manage stress we don't just protect our health we expand our capacity to lead with clarity energy and empathy and don't forget as a listener of transformative leadership conversations you can receive 20% off the sapiens stress and resilience diagnostic and habit change program plus a free 15-minute consultation to learn more just use the code TLC or visit www.b-sapiens.com for details you can also find more details on sapiens and this offer in the show notes there's just one more episode in this series and you'll be hearing from me and my own perspective on stress and resiliency if you're ready to take your leadership to the next level or empower your teams for success I'm here to help reach out to me directly at [email protected] or check out my website at www.winniedisilva.com to learn more about my work in coaching executives developing critical leadership skills and working with clients to build effective teams you can also find me on substack linkedin and youtube I'd love to hear your reflections or suggestions for future topics because you are always welcome to take a seat at the table where every conversation has the potential for transformative change