The Executive Condition: Biological Foundations of Sustainable Leadership with Dr. Denis Cronson

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at www.resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and welcome to my new guest who's going to be talking to us all about leadership and biology and all sorts of interesting things today. Hopefully a new perspective on leadership. Wouldn't that be great everyone? Can't wait. So first of all, sitting in front of me, Dr. Dennis Cronson And first of all, hi, Denis. How are you? Russell, hi. Thank you. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks. And wonderful to be on your show and sharing some time with you.

[00:01:01] That's a lovely accent you've got there. Do I detect something from the bottom end of Africa, perhaps? You most certainly do. I'm very proud to have origins in South Africa. Spent a lot of time there. Studied there, worked there. I'm actually currently based in Switzerland. I've been here for quite a while and enjoying the European experience for the best part of maybe five or six years. How would you see the European experience being different to the South African experience? I mean, is there one?

[00:01:27] I know there certainly is near lifestyle differences. There's obviously geographic, huge geographic variations, an outlook on success and outlook on what constitutes effort and intensity. There's variations in sense of humor and what priorities are in life. So quite a different experience, I must say. Refreshing, respectful, been amazing to experience that.

[00:01:54] That cultural indicator of humor is quite fascinating, isn't it? You see the effects right across the world. And of course, Dutch South African people are famously matter of fact and tell it as it is. And I think sometimes that's quite interesting for other parts of the European cultural humor base. It's quite fascinating.

[00:02:13] Yeah. There's a beautiful humanity about the African and South African experience. There really is a deep humanity. When people engage, when people interact with each other, it's incredible. South Africa is often seen as a very friendly, very embodied country. People feel very ad hung, very warm, and their experience is quite deep. It happens quite quickly. They're taken up by that. And contrived experience. It's a very real, but very human experience and very deep and meaningful.

[00:02:42] People experience that. European experience is different. It's very cultural. It's also very deep and experienced, but it's a different experience to the people.

[00:02:51] And arguably you've had, there are other countries that would lay claim to this, but culturally you had some of the most seismic changes over the last 50 years as well, haven't you? And that must build a certain spirit of, if it works, truth reconciliation and all the changes that your culture's had, that must build a certain type of culture and environment.

[00:03:12] Yeah. Yeah. I think South Africa's come to the precipice on many occasions. I wouldn't say it's been written off, but it certainly has been in a vulnerable state. And the things that have come to its defense have been the resilience and the humanity of the people themselves, power of societal mechanisms and non-governmental organizations.

[00:03:35] One of which we point to the deep identity, the deep cultural alignment that there's a bigger picture at play. And while there's a respect for the political environment, there really is greater good. And those have prevailed time and time again. And I think it has been a very powerful force, which has maintained the momentum and the forward progress of South Africa, not without its fits and starts, but nonetheless has maintained its support.

[00:04:00] Yeah. And obviously you've talked quite a lot about who you are, but tell us a little bit about what it is that you do and your background and what you're all about in terms of your profession. Thank you. I have a medical qualification. I'm a medical doctor. I spent quite a long time in the surgical field, with all due trauma surgery in the South African environment. So really a great passion of mine.

[00:04:22] But I'm a great start of clinical medicine into the world of organizational health, where I've been in position for the last probably 20 years. And in that space, I've had the real privilege of working with executive populations and organizations and being involved in their commitment, their orientation towards work.

[00:04:49] And they're interesting enough, their failure patterns, how overextension and over commitment and the success, but sacrifice culture has impacted on their trajectory of health and longevity.

[00:05:02] And so in that role as a doctor, but also as an executive strategy consultant, I've been able to really get a first-hand view of the failure patterns of high-performing leaders and the turnaround strategies, which they've been able to adopt to remediate some of the dysfunction creeps into their lives.

[00:05:23] And I've been able to identify the kind of biological foundations of leadership, as it were, the real driving forces behind leadership expression in that process. So it's been a great journey, both the inspiring experiences of seeing commitment and dedication turning into success, but also the experience of seeing success turn into person completion and that be propagated into organization culture as almost a mechanism.

[00:05:51] So that's really been my life over the last period of time. And I've really tried to articulate that in a recent book, which I wrote and I'm happy to publish it at the moment. Very good. And it's interesting, isn't it? The way culture swings. And I work with a lot of male leaders, obviously lots of female leaders as well, and every shade in between. But what's interesting about males often is they're very interested in health. They're interested in biology. They're interested in physiology because it links often to sports.

[00:06:16] And there's that crossover between, and I remember years ago doing work with football organizations and actually the management leadership of football organizations where they do think about biology and physiology. And actually going into non-sports organizations where people weren't, but they were talking about stress and the heart attacks. And they were talking about this, that, and the other, and pressure and such like, and not understanding that the machine that we have or we call our bodies has to be fed and maintained. And actually that's part of feeding and maintaining your brain.

[00:06:45] And I think that's become more commonplace these days. And I think it is interesting to see the sort of Venn diagram between cognition and physiology that's being more accepted these days. I suppose you're in that field as well. Exactly. Exactly. It's a really interesting observation you make. And I'm just attracting to myself when I hear you say that.

[00:07:07] I'm not stereotyping the male leader, but there's a temptation of the leadership individual to be very action oriented, to want to develop a wellness program as the next project.

[00:07:23] And so whenever they experience some kind of slowdown, start to sense and hearing in their life, which is becoming vulnerable or depleted, their first instinct is to double down on the, on the heck on the physiological solution. And to say, it's going to be supplements for a new sleep, sleep, sleep program. Exactly. I'm going to use a new supplement. I'm going to start looking after my weight. I'm going to be working out more.

[00:07:50] And it's interesting because that works. But what they're doing in that process of doubling down on the physiological emphasis is actually fortifying themselves without looking at the system, which is driving the decline, which is driving that depletion. So they're not changing the load that they're exposed to, but they're improving their capacity to bear that load.

[00:08:14] And there eventually becomes a tipping point where notwithstanding their focus and attention on the physiological connection, as you rightly described, between performance and biology, notwithstanding that, they haven't changed the system. No. They've just become better physiologically, better prepared to carry that load, which ultimately is a vulnerability. Yeah. It's that classic thing. I'm having a wound and just putting more and more sticking plaster over it, isn't it? The wounds, the thing that causes the wound is still there, but you don't really solve it. And it's interesting.

[00:08:42] It's a sort of cognitive deficiency of really standing back and thinking. Actually, we used to say, step back and step up. And that's one of the things about leadership is that idea of taking a more holistic view about getting out of the trenches and seeing what the root cause of the problem might be. And it is interesting in leadership that we flip flop. And sometimes we think about process and there's a big move around process. Now, the thing about teams, they're all obsessed by teams. Forget teams. Now let's talk about individual.

[00:09:11] Now we're thinking about feelings. Now let's forget feelings now. And it's almost like, it's almost like watching seven year old children play football. I mean, there's a ball, which is an issue and all the children are chasing the ball. And it is hard to see that person that stands back and does the synthesis, the work that says actually there's things to be taken from all of these different approaches. And actually how do you bring them up to bed? And I think that is a bit of a challenge and I'm hoping you're going to say that's part of your approach. It is.

[00:09:37] And you make such a good point because whilst a lot of leadership is performative, if you step back and look at leadership, all of those leadership attributes, things like judgment, empathy, the ability to see kind of the full chest, to have this adaptability and this strategic flexibility. Those aren't just things that you do. They're not just behaviors.

[00:10:05] They're actually things which are produced by the very biological and psychological systems that you refer to. And those biological and psychological systems need a healthy brain, body and nervous system to produce it. And so when we start to observe the system in that fashion, we can really connect the dots and leadership becomes more coherent. And it's not just a formative behavioral act.

[00:10:31] It's really a leadership expression founded on strong foundational principles, foundational structures. And it's interesting as well, because of course, what we've got interested in was neuroscience and everyone talks about dopamine and cortisol and such. And there's a huge amount of misinformation propagated by often consultants who are saying, this is all about dopamine chasing without really understanding what dopamine is and how it works. Because the sort of, the red and AI description of the thing, this is what it's all about.

[00:11:01] And I think sometimes that returning to the source material and saying, actually, let's have a look at some, all this, some expertise. We can sit down and unpack this for you. It's quite interesting, isn't it? And I know we've moved away from experts and got into just hacks, which is, I love your phrase there. And it has been, we have come to this sort of busyness mentality of saying, just give me the easiest answer, not the answer that really and truly works.

[00:11:25] And it's what, what's going on with our brains where we're wiring ourselves to have such short attention indices. Is that something that you were talking about when you were talking about the sacrifice culture? Or is it just a term I heard you say earlier? Absolutely. The, as I say, the usual assumption is that leadership is something, leadership forms something that can be trained. We can teach emotional intelligence. We can teach strategy.

[00:11:54] We can teach communication skills. But ultimately it is driven by a neurobiological, neurochemical system. And it's easy to connect the dots. I don't think we're disputing that sleep directly affects neurochemistry. That nutrition has got a direct impact on the balance of neurochemicals.

[00:12:16] That chronic stress and the elevation of the stress, stress hormones have a direct impact on brain networks, on the inhibitory and even the functional capacity of the prefrontal cortex. And of important brain structures. And so there's a huge difference between the brain that is generative.

[00:12:41] And adapt and able to explore deep assumptions and hold working memory in place. There's a big difference between that brain and the one that is depleting, that is craving efficiency, that is using habits and pattern recognition to drive decisions. Yeah. That is in threat mode. That survival mode brain is a very different animal.

[00:13:07] And so it very much is, as you've inferred, Russell, it really is a neurochemical neurobiological consideration. And again, it really shines a very bright light on the importance of maintaining and optimizing that biological state and that psychological state to generate optimum outcomes. You said something really that sparked something in my head there, which was, you've mentioned working memory. And I think this is something we've forgotten about.

[00:13:37] People don't talk about working memory enough. Any of it's so inherently proved, provable, developmentally robust. Like there is a massive provenance. And we seem to have lost the idea of working memory. I wonder what's happened to it. Where someone's stolen it? Or have we just moved on to something that's more fashionable? There were books written about working memory and it all seems to have gone. And I think this is really interesting, isn't it? Because the point you're making is working memory often comes from good physiology.

[00:14:06] Working memory is the ability to hold things in the forefront of your mind that allows you to make that judgment, show that empathy, create the conditions where you can stand back and assess what's going on with the world and read people and do what needs to be done. And we don't think, I just wonder whether we think enough about working memory. It's true. It's really convenient. I've forgotten. It's remarkable.

[00:14:26] I was having a discussion literally this past weekend with an executive who was telling me that he sits in meetings and he literally can't focus on the conversation for more than two or three minutes. Yeah. And gets distracted. He literally gets bored and distracted. And he silently admitted to me, quietly admittedly, that he takes out his phone and scrolls. Yeah. And he has normalized that behavior. And he says he thinks because of social media, he thinks because of the doom scrolling mentality.

[00:14:56] But I think there's a deeper reason behind it. When it comes to working memory, that the fatigue brain, the threat sensitive brain, the stress hormone compromised brain really doesn't have competent functional working memory capacity. It's so concentrated on being in survival mode. So concentrated in dampening down the threat that it literally doesn't have the bandwidth to maintain a number of ideas at the same time and heal them realistically. And so it then reverts to what is more comfortable and more familiar.

[00:15:26] And that's doom scrolling on the phone. He used the same example. And so, yes, working memory is one of those, one of those patterns. Which I often miss in the noise of looking for the next hack and looking for the power of a supplement and looking for nootropics, but ignoring the fact that working memories are direct reflection of the state of health state of the depletion of the individual themselves.

[00:15:51] And I also wonder whether we have become victims of some sort of, and I don't want to get on the wrong side of people here, but almost a fashionable obsession with ADHD where it's almost, but I say trendy to have ADHD. And I don't mean it that way, but I think what we do is we focus on ADHD and we forget about working memory. Now they are what one affects the other, but one is the solution to the other. And what is the cause of the lack of the other.

[00:16:17] But I wonder whether sometimes focusing on the ADHD hacks again, because they're real hacks actually massively negatively affect the working memory stuff. Because actually that is about deep concentration. That is about hyper focus. That is about having rest and recuperation and relaxation often, which people say, I've got ADHD. I can't do that. I'm too busy running around. Just wonder whether these things are become so mixed up that both have lost their meaning to a certain. Yeah.

[00:16:45] And it's not to diminish the reality and the real issue of attention depths. It's the fact that we've normalized the lack of attention, the lack of concentration, the lack of working memory capacity so much. Yeah. And we can sometimes conveniently call it ADHD without really appreciating that it's representative of a deficiency.

[00:17:13] So again, not derogating from the reality and prevalence of ADHD, but that becomes the, maybe the distorted executive version, which becomes normalized and therefore be is worn as almost like a badge of honor. Rather than being empathetically appreciated for what it really is, a depleted, dread sensitive, compromised, central nervousness. I like the way you've expressed it rather than by somewhat inelegant and imprecise description there.

[00:17:42] You mentioned on your site, the idea of leadership 3.0. There are many leadership 3.0s. And what's your thought behind your leadership 3.0? What would you say? Thank you for bringing it up. Yeah. I think leadership 3.0 almost shines a light on the structure of leadership. There's a hierarchy in leadership. I guess I like to look at it as leadership 1.0 would be, what is your capacity to lead?

[00:18:09] Can you do the things which leaders need to do to make an organization operate effectively, be competitive, run as a coherent system? Can you lead as a competence? You have that capacity to. And as leadership evolved, we've come to appreciate that leadership also needs a communication, an empathy, a human connection. So the second part of leadership, the leadership 2.0 is connection.

[00:18:37] And it's about developing the ability to inspire people, to have shared vision, to engage empathetically, but forcefully with individuals and groups. And so it takes the raw capacity to lead into something which is now more of a human connection. But beneath that, I've positioned leadership 3.0, which is really the condition of the individual doing the leading.

[00:19:05] The biological, the psychological, the emotional and relational capacity to do that leading. And it's there where our position, biological leadership is a real concept. And also there's a real blind spot. Because before you can be empathetic, you have to have a healthy central nervous system, a well-functioning brain, a body which is not going through the rollercoaster ride of glucose instability. You have to be well-recovered.

[00:19:34] You have to have sleep in line. One has to be tuned into the autonomic nervous system. And so leadership 3.0 really is about the condition required to lead, to enable one to connect with people and then to fortify and strengthen the capacity to lead. And hopefully that kind of leadership stack does resonate and does make sense when you look at it in a whole.

[00:19:56] So it doesn't replace the other faculties of leadership, but it certainly becomes a foundational part, the whole leadership structure. Yes. So you've written this book called The Executive Condition, which is the hidden health crisis of high-performing leaders. Who did you write this book for? Having worked with leaders for so long, I really came to appreciate that they weren't necessarily victims of a toxic system.

[00:20:24] They were also participants in that toxic system. And so if we look at the executive life as part of a broader system, then the role players in that system were quite easy to understand. It is not just the leaders themselves and the book is not just written for leaders, although that would probably be a primary audience. But it's also for the boards who direct those organizations, the shareholders who expect returns from those organizations.

[00:20:50] It's about the role players and the second contributors to leadership, like human resource practitioners, like executive coaches, who should be looking properly at leadership through the biological lens as much as the behavioral and psychological lens itself. Yeah.

[00:21:10] And so that cohort of the leader and the participants aligned leadership is really who the book was written for and hopefully assists them not only in looking at leadership differently, but seeing the at means of leadership decline as a mirror that they can recognize in themselves and in the people that they charged with, with both optimizing and holding accountable for the performance of the organization. Okay.

[00:21:37] So a lot of people write these books because they're highly theoretical and very academically sound and such. Like some people write workbooks, some people write how to guides. That's an overly simplistic way of looking at the entire book market, isn't it? So do forgive me, but where would you put your book? Is it meant to be a useful practical guide or is it meant to be a thought piece? Where are you sitting on sort of continuum?

[00:21:57] I think that it is a very practical thesis on leadership performance to understand the driving forces that got us here, the historical and cultural influences that got us to where we are.

[00:22:18] The things which are keeping us here, things like sacrifices, identity, things like cognitive bias, things like the over-commitment, over-performance culture that keep us here. And then the impact that it's having on the sensitive biological and psychological systems that need to perform while we are.

[00:22:43] So I hope it really shines a bright light on the trajectory that leaders have in their leadership journey over time. And then shows them that if they recognize the patterns of decline and depletion in their own performance, that there is a way out. Yeah.

[00:23:03] That is a very rational, applicable and action-orientated opportunity for them to identify and redesign the systems which are creating unsustainable load. And compromising the very biology which they require to lead sustain. It's interesting the way you've framed this in this sort of corporate setting, which is quite interesting because what you're really talking about here, I don't use the word hacks, I shan't, but you're talking about life strategies, aren't you?

[00:23:33] You're talking about health and wellbeing strategies. I don't want to over-trivialize it. And I see this having a wider application than just leadership, because actually leadership is just about, can be just, can be entire lines, can't it? It can be family, it can be school, it can be parenting, it could be everything. Was there a sort of a conscious decision in writing it for a business audience or do you mean it to be seen as a more holistic view as well?

[00:23:56] I really tried to not write a wellness book, to not write a lifestyle improvement book. Yeah. Because... There's plenty of them. We should have, yeah, there were so many exposés and attempts to guide people's lifestyle and behaviour. What I wanted to do was to help leaders identify the patterns and the signs and symptoms of leadership decline.

[00:24:25] To identify the driving forces behind them. Yeah. And the patterns of behaviour that trip leaders into a system which progressively depletes them and reduces their ability to have long, meaningful, legacy-generating careers. Yeah. So it's not a wellness book, it's a book on leadership, but biology is the mechanism. Yeah. And optimising biology, therefore, optimises leadership.

[00:24:53] So it's about really exposing the foundational requirements for sustainable leadership, or leadership performance, for optimising the expression of a high-performing executive. And then developing the tactics, the lifestyle approaches, but also the redesign of the organisational system to assist them to make their leadership more powerful, more sustainable, more meaningful in their, open, their long-term sustainability.

[00:25:24] Yes, it is interesting, isn't it? And I like what you, how you differentiate that. That makes a lot of sense. And I think leaders sometimes think health and wellbeing programmes at work are somehow trivial. I was talking to someone quite recently who was telling me the most important thing in their team is people's wellbeing. And it was the team members who thought that. The leaders didn't think that. They thought the most important thing was performance. And I was saying, isn't it possible that both things can be true? One, one that had much have an effect on the other. But I think it's the way that wellbeing programmes have somewhat have been trivialised.

[00:25:53] And I always say things like engagement, evaluation, DEI programmes have always, wellness and things have always been trivialised by a failure to evaluate these things properly and show the ROI that comes from these sorts of programmes. Because actually we end up doing wellness as a form of have a bed night, sleep or eat an apple at work or have a walk between teams, we think. And they're just not the answer, are they?

[00:26:15] You're talking about sort of fundamental process redesign to put well, health and biology at the heart of the organisation as much as cognition and feelings. And that's what I couldn't agree more with that. Organisational wellbeing programmes and specifically executive health programmes really look to optimise the individual. As we said a little bit earlier, to optimise the individual to carry what effectively is an unsustainable load.

[00:26:43] So we focus on sleep. We focus on strength training and on better nutrition. Ultimately that misses the point completely. The reason we got to a state which is compromised, depleted or vulnerable. It's not because we didn't sleep. It's because the system that we were working, the expectations of sacrifice, the reward, the incentives to self-sacrifice in the organisation system.

[00:27:13] Have driven a mindset where the leader becomes literally fused with the output that they're expected to produce. So my identity is one of being the invulnerable, invincible leader. I need to lead by example. I can't show weakness. I need to lead like a military expedition. And it becomes the culture of the organisation, a reinforcing part of the organisation. And to put a bandaid over it and say we can fix this with wellness programme completely misses the point.

[00:27:43] It is structural as a start. And then the leader who works in that system becomes themselves an amplifier of the culture itself. Yeah. Their over-commitment becomes the expectation of their team. Yeah. Their sacrifice at health becomes the organisation's reward mechanism.

[00:28:03] Their depletion becomes the tone of meetings and it really sets the scene for a feed-forward mechanism which entrenches that type of culture. So this is not about the fact that executives need to eat less, exercise more.

[00:28:21] It's really about understanding that the biological foundations of leadership performance need to be carefully examined, measured and then redesigned to ensure that the leadership career, the leadership trajectory is optimised. Which would benefit to the organisation. Massive ROI. And that's fascinating for me because often organisations call me up and say, hey, could you help us improve our organisation resilience? And I'll say, sure. Tell me why, because we've got stress, burnout, this, that and the other.

[00:28:50] And I'll say, so what you want is a sticking plastic because you don't want anyone to change. You just want your, you just want Heanish leadership crimes to continue, but you want your people not to fall under the sort of the, into the meat grinder. And effectively what people say is yes. Yes.

[00:29:07] That's, that's what it comes down to because it's easy to fix the 150 people who are stuppering at the hands of a poor leader than it is to fix that one or two leaders who are the centre of the sort of leadership crimes that which have been enacted on organisations. And it is fascinating, isn't it? And you're right because of course those people are caught up in the culture, they're caught up in the systems and the processes. And of course have a vested interest in maintaining them as well. And that's the bit that we forget because if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for you.

[00:29:36] And now we're back at leadership culture and now we're back at John O'Day. Goodness me. How do we get back there? Look, you've written this book. Tell us what it's called and how we can get our sticky paws on it. Thank you, Russell. Thank you, Russell. The book's called The Executive Condition. And the subtitle is The Hidden Health Crisis of Hyperpolling Leaves. It's available where the books are sold. It is released internationally on the 1st of September, 2026. The third book's, if you look out for it, you'd be able to find it.

[00:30:06] I hope it really does provide a deeper insight into what constitutes sustainable leadership foundations. It really does create the appreciation that health is not just a self-health initiative. It's more accurately defined as the architecture of leadership. Healthy foundations drive a leadership career which is not only sustainable, but more impactful,

[00:30:35] more cohesive, more legacy created. Now, for those who are interested, it still needs a tiny bit more temptation. If you go onto a website, which is denniscronson.com, you can get a taster of the first couple of chapters downloaded for the extreme price of your email address, which I'm sure we all know what that's going to be useful. And just for people to bear in mind that Dennis is spelled D-E-N-I-S.

[00:31:02] And for those of you who are familiar with Dennis the Menace, who has two Ns and two Ss. So there you go. So Dennis, it's been a real joy to talk to you today. I do think you are actually talking about something that is slightly different and so credit to you. And it's a joy to talk to someone who has such a brilliant way of being able to harness such complicated ideas. And I guess you're a tribute to someone with good working memory. Thank you for that. Don't you really count here. Thank you for spending time with us today.

[00:31:31] I really do appreciate it. Thank you to the next time. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceandravel.com. And you can become a member there as well. You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice,

[00:31:58] as well as getting a hold of some useful resources about resilience and a whole lot more. Join us next time on the next edition of Resilience Unravelled.