Performance Intelligence

There is a phrase elite performers use to keep people at a distance without ever saying so directly: don't look at me, look at my performance. Dr Michael Gervais, the sport psychologist behind some of the NFL's most recognised teams and a trusted voice inside Super Bowl-winning locker rooms, built an entire career on that idea before he noticed what it was costing him somewhere much closer to home. It took one blunt question from someone he trusted to show him the difference between being excellent and being known. What that question was, and what changed once he actually answered it, is the part worth sitting with. You can find Dr Michael at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmichaelgervais/ Listen to the Finding Mastery Podcast: https://findingmastery.com/ High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Much of what leaders put down to stress, or to a lapse in discipline, is chemistry at work. Andrew chose five of these moments, drew a real scenario from our coaching practice for each, and asked an expert to identify the neurotransmitter behind it, without warning. Play along. One scenario is the board presentation that keeps replaying long after midnight. Another is the leader whose drive has quietly gone flat, and it gives even our expert pause. Professor Tom Buckley is a University of Sydney academic and Andrew’s co-author on MatchFit. See if you can name each chemical before he does, then learn the levers that lift it and the ones that bring it back down. 00:00 Five chemicals, five real leadership scenarios 02:04 What the human body is actually made of 04:52 The challenge: name the chemical 07:39 Chemical 1: when you can't get started 13:55 Chemical 2: wired before the board meeting, awake after it 20:34 Three minutes in the car before walking inside 24:00 How to come down after a big day 27:00 How to ramp up: sunlight, cold water and caffeine timing 31:07 Chemical 3: the team that won't say what it thinks 40:46 Chemical 4: snapping at the kids at 9am on Saturday 49:53 Hot milk, cooked tomato and what our grandparents knew 52:12 Chemical 5: when nothing feels fun anymore 55:52 Vitamin FLPJ and the joy diary 1:03:14 Coming down is two jobs 1:04:27 Why leaders can wind up but can't switch off Find Dr Tom Buckley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-buckley-06a76b98?originalSubdomain=au Download the neurotransmitters sheet: https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Chemistry-Table-PQ-White.png - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most leaders have said it. My door’s always open. Far fewer realise their team is watching whether they ever walk through a door themselves. Former NRL player Keegan Hipgrave was the teammate everyone could talk to, the one pushing mates to open up inside a macho dressing room, and later the host of his own mental health podcast. Yet for 8 years, he kept the loss of one of his best mates locked away, while telling everyone else to talk. What finally broke that silence, and what changed once it did, is where the real lesson for leaders sits. This episode discusses suicide. If it raises anything for you, support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14. - You can find Keegan at his Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keeganhipgrave/?hl=en Or at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keegan-hipgrave-9a36b8230/ Follow Keegan's podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keeganandcompanypodcast/?hl=en Listen to Keegan's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/keegan-and-company/id1695873736 High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

If culture’s in HR, it’s in foster care . Karl Treacher has spent 25 years inside boardrooms, including the war room of a big four bank during the Royal Commission, and he has watched leaders hand culture to the one department that was never meant to own it. Engagement scores can look healthy while the culture underneath is quietly turning toxic, and the board is often the last to know. Karl built a culture diagnostic later featured in Harvard Business Review, and he says measuring culture is far easier than most leaders believe. He and Andrew get into what boards consistently misread about the culture they lead, and the afternoon in an aged care day room that set the course of his career. If you sit on a board, run a team or answer to one, this conversation will change how you look at your own organisation. 00:00 Who really owns culture in your company? 01:31 Nursing homes, Olive and the moment Karl saw the system was the problem 07:41 “If culture’s in HR, it’s in foster care” 09:31 Culture vs climate: the confusion boards keep making 11:38 Building the culture diagnostic HBR called the gold standard 14:43 Donuts, beers and gaming the engagement survey 15:41 Inside a big four bank’s war room during the Royal Commission 16:59 Return to office: what the evidence actually says 22:32 Small business: when the founder’s character becomes the culture 24:30 Why most leaders have burnout wrong 28:45 Writing a book on burnout, and burning out 31:37 Why we’re running antique cultures not fit for today Find out more about Karl’s work and the Culture Institute: https://builttoburn.com.au/ Connect with Karl on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/treacher/ Get Karl’s book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Built-Burn-People-Leaders-Cultures/dp/1394456514 - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Lost jobs. Bankruptcy. Marriages that did not survive. Unmanaged ADHD can leave a trail most of us never see, because the risk-taking that looks like drive on the outside is fed by the same low dopamine that quietly pulls a life apart. Lindy Hadges maps the layers sitting beneath the label, and makes the case that you cannot work with ADHD until you understand what is actually holding it in place. View the ADHD Cake model: https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ADHD-Cake-of-Understanding.png Find out more about the ADHD Foundation: https://adhdfoundation.org.au/about-us Connect with Lindy: https://ccaa.net.au/practitioner/200102-14/ High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

You’re exceptional at your job. That isn’t the problem. The skills, the experience, the judgement, you’ve spent years building those and they aren’t going anywhere. The question is whether you’ve still got the capacity to use them. Enough in the tank for the project that matters. Something left for the people at home afterwards. The momentum to get where you told everyone you were going. And the wave is coming either way. A bigger year, a harder quarter, a team asking more of you than it did last time. Capability isn’t what keeps you upright when it lands. Byron Cannon has the capability. He is the CEO of LDK Seniors’ Living, a business about to triple in size, and a year ago he worked out capability wasn’t what he was running out of. Andrew and Byron walk through how they built Byron's leadership capacity to sustain his performance and how this rippled onto his leadership team. Byron didn’t do anything you couldn’t do. He just did it before he had to. 00:00 Why senior leaders really get pushed out 07:12 The hotel room phone call: “I can see burnout on the horizon” 11:02 Inside Byron’s full physical and psychological assessment 13:41 Dr Tom Buckley on what the data showed 20:20 Love, decency and kindness: the mission to change retirement living 26:33 Larry the gnome and how LDK builds its culture 29:46 The mindset shift: treating leadership capacity as strategy 38:47 AI: why depleted leaders outsource their thinking 47:34 How Byron rewrote Andrew’s framework: from survival week to surge week 52:50 “I felt selfish”: the hidden barrier to putting yourself first 56:29 Eight months later: the reassessment results 01:06:45 Unscripted: Byron’s team shares what changed for them Want to learn more about Leadership Capacity? Start here: https://performanceintelligence.com/building-leadership-capacity/ Follow Byron on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byroncannon Learn about LDK: https://ldk.com.au/ - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Ask Lisa Alexander who the best coaches she has known were, and almost none of them were the best players. Alexander spent a decade running the Australian Diamonds netball team to an 81 per cent win rate, one of the most dominant coaching records in Australian sport, and she names the pattern directly: serial winning coaches are rarely elite players themselves. The reason has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with what coaching actually requires. What that is, and who she credits with teaching her the difference, is where this goes. You can find Lisa at the TGI website: https://tgisport.com.au/talent/lisa-alexander/ Or the Celebrity Speakers website: https://www.celebrityspeakers.com.au/speakers/lisa-alexander/ Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-alexander-am-a83bb378/?originalSubdomain=au High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Divorce at the start of the year. A great white shark attack, live on television, in the middle of it. The death of his eldest brother at the end. That was 2015 for professional surfer Mick Fanning. Performance coach Nam Baldwin , who has worked with world champions across multiple sports, was in his corner for all of it. Baldwin says the conventional playbook for elite athletes, push through, stay hard, don’t let it show, would have made things worse. What he coached instead, and why it had to come before any return to competition, is what this one is about. Visit Nam's website: https://www.nambaldwin.com/ Visit Hupo's website: https://hupo.com.au/ High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Olympic gold medallist, Michael Klim , explains why the mentality that won him 17 years of world records nearly destroyed his life after retirement. Michael took the same win-at-all-costs approach into business: redeye flights, fourteen-hour days, no off switch, and it cost him his relationship, his mental health, and eventually his body. You can find Michael at his TGI Sport Profile: https://tgisport.com.au/talent/michael-klim/ At his Website: https://www.michaelklim.com/ Or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelklim1/?hl=en High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Creatine has spent decades filed under gym supplements, something for building muscle and nothing else. Dr Tom Buckley says that filing is out of date. A recent meta-analysis found measurable improvements in memory, attention and processing speed among people taking creatine, distinct from any effect on strength or size. Buckley, who has spent his career researching human performance, is careful about what the research does and does not show. What it does show, for a desk-bound brain rather than a gym-bound body, is the part worth hearing. Find Dr Tom here View the UNSW Study View the Hair Loss Study Read the study on creatine and cognitive function Read the creatine articles from the AFR and The Guardian High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most productivity systems quietly punish you for a bad week. Andrew May's Better Week framework budgets for them. The target is 25 to 30 genuinely good weeks a year, a number most high performers find uncomfortably low, which leaves room for the stretches when everything lands at once. He walks Angela Poon, Performance Intelligence COO, through the maths. What he calls the rest of the year, and what changes when you say it out loud to your team on a Monday. High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. - Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Years of touring teach cricketers to be very comfortable in their own company. Coffee when you want it, lunch when you want it, a day built entirely around you. Former Test wicketkeeper Steve Rixon argues the skill cuts both ways: it protects you on the road, then quietly isolates you once the career ends and the kids leave home. Former Test fast bowler Stuart Clark has already had to work it out for himself. What each of them realised was missing, and why it had nothing to do with cricket. You can find Stuart at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-clark-32019360/ Book Steve to speak at your next event: https://www.celebrityspeakers.com.au/speakers/steve-rixon/ - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most people who benefit from the status quo work hard to keep it. Michael Bungay Stanier, Rhodes Scholar and bestselling author of The Coaching Habit, says it was built for him, and decided to spend some of that advantage. First through curiosity and humour, the quieter tools for shifting who holds power in a room. Then through the harder move: stepping down as CEO of Box of Crayons, the company he founded. What that handover asked of him, and the temptation he had to resist to make it stick. Find Michael at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbungaystanier/ Or Website : https://www.mbs.works/ Buy a copy of Michael's books: https://www.booktopia.com.au/michael-bungay-stanier/author1256.html - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

A professor at Harvard and MIT wrecked his knee and stopped running the 7.5 miles he ran every night of his adult life. 5 months later he could not finish his own work. He was losing the thread in conversations, forgetting things he had never forgotten, and getting angry in a way he did not recognise. He was convinced he had developed adult ADD in middle age. He hadn't. He had just stopped running... The psychiatrist who worked that out went looking for evidence that barely existed at the time. 2 decades later it became Spark , the book that put exercise and the brain in the same sentence for most of us for the first time. You already know you should move more. That is not the problem. The problem is the distance between knowing it and doing it, and what that distance costs you if you are paid to think for a living. Attention? Mood? Whether you can still hold a hard problem in your head at four in the afternoon? Dr John Ratey is now 78 years old. He has been at Harvard since his residency, he has written 12 books, and his own protocol is far simpler than anything you would expect from a Harvard laboratory. He explains what BDNF does to a brain, why he now describes muscle as an endocrine organ rather than scaffolding, what the last 10 years of research has added to the case he made in Spark , and the one thing he could not write at the time because the evidence was not there yet. You can keep treating exercise as the thing you do for your body when there is time left over. Or you can treat it as maintenance for the organ you are actually being paid for. 00:00 The Harvard genius who lost his mind when he stopped running 06:05 The cocktail party patient who started it all 11:01 The 1970s discovery behind the runner's high 14:05 Turn ADHD into a superpower: the Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes 20:06 The real prescription for a distracted mind 24:54 The school that got smarter by moving more 29:08 Meet BDNF: the brain's own Miracle-Gro 32:45 Dr Ratey is 78, and he's nowhere near done 37:11 Inside Spark 2.0: what's changed since the first book 43:26 Why a fit brain matters more in the age of AI 53:16 John's own weekly training plan 1:04:16 The question John didn't expect: why he took up Zumba at 75 Learn more about Dr John Ratey here: https://www.johnratey.com/ - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most nutrition advice focuses on what you eat. Dr Amantha Imber, an organisational psychologist and author of The Health Habit, became more interested in what happens after you eat, and started wearing a continuous glucose monitor on herself to find out. The device tracks blood sugar in real time, and what she discovered about a specific ten-minute habit after meals surprised her enough to build it into how she coaches high performers now. What that habit is, and why flat blood sugar matters more than most people realise, is what this one gets into. You can find Dr Amantha at her Website: https://www.amantha.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amanthai/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber/?originalSubdomain=au Buy The Health Habit: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-health-habit-9781761342363 High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website : https://performanceintelligence.com/ Book Andrew : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/ Follow us: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/performanceintelligencepq/ Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/performanceintelligence-byandrewmay Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/performanceintelligencebyam/ Watch this episode on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

You have rehearsed it in the shower. You have written the message and deleted it. And every time the moment arrives, you find a reason it can wait until next quarter. That conversation is still making decisions for you. It decides who gets the promotion, which project quietly dies, and which good person leaves without ever telling you the real reason. Tim Duggan spent 3 years inside one question: how do you get better at conflict? He built a media company out of a website he started in his twenties, hired hundreds of people, sold it, and was still terrible at the hard conversation. He thought he was good at it. He was not, and it took him years to work that out. So he went to the people who are: Adam Grant. Oxford negotiators. Accredited mediators. An executive producer of The Real Housewives, which turned out to be the most useful conversation of the lot. What he came back with is a map. 4 terrains, and every conflict you are carrying right now sits on one of them. The move that works on one will detonate on another. Andrew puts it under load. The leaders who can run a profit centre and have never been taught to disagree. Performance Intelligence's own work on psychological safety and constructive challenge. And a live test Tim has not seen coming, where he places a conflict still playing out in public onto his own model, no notes, no preparation. Listen to this one before your next difficult conversation, not after it. 00:02 — Why are we so bad at conflict? 03:38 — How our families teach us to avoid difficult conversations 07:02 — The moment Tim realised avoiding conflict was costing him 09:01 — What “swallowed words” do to us — and why silence isn’t really silent 11:32 — The counterintuitive question: what happens if you don’t have the conversation? 18:50 — The four terrains of conflict: summit, arena, minefield and swamp 27:27 — What happens when emotion takes over and the “amygdala hijack” kicks in 34:27 — The RISA test: should you actually have the fight? 37:36 — Why psychological safety doesn’t mean avoiding uncomfortable conversations 44:05 — The hidden conflict behind the return-to-office debate 47:26 — The Conflict Simulator: Tim analyses Justin Langer, The Beatles and Kyle & Jackie O 58:52 — How do you actually end a conflict? Resolve, repeat or release Contact Tim: https://timduggan.com.au/ Order Tim's book: https://timduggan.com.au/book/clear-in-tension/ View the conflict model: https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Model.jpg - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website Book Andrew Follow us on Instagram , Linkedin , Facebook Watch this episode on Youtube If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

A young player once told Gilbert Enoka that his advice was rubbish. On the field, when a referee makes a call he disagrees with, he wants to throw a punch, and no amount of mindset work was going to change that in the moment. Enoka, the All Blacks' mental skills coach for 23 years, did not argue the point. He gave the player a simple physical structure instead, and the player's own frustration rating dropped within seconds of trying it. It is the example Enoka now uses to explain why he believes structure, not mindset, is the most underrated lever in high performance. High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website Book Andrew Follow us on Instagram , Linkedin , Facebook Watch this episode on Youtube If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Elite athletes and Special Forces do not eat like you do....and the reason you fade in the afternoon is usually something you did that morning. Jessica Spendlove will tell you exactly what. She will also tell you what to eat when you have 4 minutes and no time to think, whether the supplements you bought are doing anything at all, and why she rarely recommends that a woman fast. Jessica is a performance dietitian with more than 15 years behind her, a decade of it in elite sport across 7 professional teams, Olympic medallists, world champions and premiership-winning sides, plus 7 years with Special Forces Command. Jessica has heard every version of "I'm already doing everything right" and she has never met anybody whose nutrition she could not improve. And she is happy to be challenged on that! The reason it lands is that she got it wrong herself. Jessica spent years feeding elite athletes while running on adrenaline, cortisol and caffeine, and it took her own data to stop her arguing with herself. If you have been telling yourself you will sort your nutrition out when things calm down, start here. 00:00 The day we took nutrition off the table 03:44 Seven professional teams at once, running on adrenaline, cortisol and caffeine 06:12 The reply-all email that got her roasted at the Christmas party 11:46 The keynote she nearly pulled out of, and the data that made the call 17:19 The three hour morning window where it all comes apart 20:14 The domino habit has to survive your worst day 31:41 You can't ice bath your way out of chronic sleep debt 39:25 Why she almost never recommends fasting for women 55:25 Same meal, different order, different result 01:04:00 Walking into a room of commandos and getting it wrong 01:14:42 How to work with Jessica Spendlove Contact Jessica through her website , Linkedin , or Instagram. Buy Jessica's new book "For The Long Run" here . - High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website Book Andrew Follow us on Instagram , Linkedin , Facebook Watch this episode on Youtube If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

There is a gap between what you are capable of and what you are actually doing. Craig Harper has spent 40 years studying it. His view: the gap is not primarily a talent problem or a knowledge problem. It is a psychological one. Fear, the need to be right, poor self-awareness, and an unwillingness to tolerate discomfort are quietly capping the performance of people who are objectively skilled, experienced, and intelligent. And the higher you rise, the easier it becomes to avoid confronting that. You can find Craig at his website:https://craigharper.net/ Follw him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craiganthonyharper/ Listen to The You Project:https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-you-project/id1342430567 High performance is not about pushing harder. It is about building the capacity to perform when it matters and sustain it over time. Hosted by Andrew May , one of Australia’s leading experts in human performance, leadership and mental skills, the Performance Intelligence Podcast explores how leaders, athletes, coaches and researchers think clearly, manage pressure and consistently perform at their best. Drawing on more than 20 years working with senior executives, elite sporting teams and the Australian Defence Force, Andrew combines candid conversations with evidence-based performance insights and practical strategies you can apply. Episodes span leadership capacity, performance psychology, mental skills, energy management, strategic recovery, productivity and wellbeing. Listen to think more clearly, lead more effectively and perform at your best for longer. Get in touch through: Our website Book Andrew Follow us on Instagram , Linkedin , Facebook Watch this episode on Youtube If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Some people get sharper when the pressure lands. The meeting turns hostile, the plan collapses, the number comes in wrong, and they are still thinking clearly while everyone around them has gone quiet or gone hard. That is Mental Agility. The capacity to move between demands, tasks, roles and relationships while staying grounded and effective when conditions change. It is trainable, and it is the capability every organisation is now asking for without ever having taught it. PQ founder, Andrew May, PQ COO, Angela Poon, and Sports Psychologist, Jacqui Louder, spent 6 months building mental agility into six layers. What your brain does to you under pressure. Why your body sets the ceiling on your thinking. How your identity decides what an event means before conscious thought gets a say. The six seconds that stop you saying the thing you regret. How to actually retain what you learn. The hardiness that has you growing through pressure instead of surviving it. Now, they are walking you through all six layers here, with one strategy from each you can use this week. Andrew brings you into his real life test of mental agility with a gripping story of being upside down, underwater, strapped inside a helicopter fuselage in the dark, with an instructor offering him a way out. But what he does next is where mental agility shows up... 00:00 The word everyone uses and nobody can define 04:12 Your brain under pressure is not a character flaw 07:21 What AI can't give you 11:10 Elite sport, clinical psych, actual clowns 14:24 Why an insurer is training this 17:51 Leaving KPMG for a startup 23:43 The three zones 28:18 The brain runs on the body 35:03 Why the same words land differently on different people 39:14 Hanging up the bad day jacket 46:55 Upside down, underwater, offered a way out 52:25 How to work with us Learn more about a Mental Agility program for your team here or email us at support@performanceintelligence.com Contact Jacqui Louder here