Biohacking to Be a Better Leader
Strengthen-TheLEADERSHIP™ by bio-HACKINGLEADERShip
What is biohacking?
Biohacking is a term used to describe the act of changing our internal and external environments to gain full control over our biology.
It’s about optimizing our mind-body-environment connection.
It’s about elevating our health and mental well-being.
It’s about (as Dave Asprey puts it) becoming superhuman.
But it’s REALLY all about accessing our full potential.
In practical terms, it‘s when we use data about our bodies, mind, and environment to perfect our eating, sleeping, working, and exercising routines.
This personalized approach to optimizing our health enables us to truly understand what works best for us as individuals and work within those parameters to achieve our goals.
Biohacking can help you become a better leader
Dave Asprey is widely accepted as the chief expert on biohacking, and he has a lot say on the subject.
“When you are in control of your biology, you’re in control of your mind, and you can make better decisions,” he says. “You are actually a better person.”
And I’m convinced he’s right.
Only when we are in control of ourselves - and I mean our WHOLE selves- can we be truly effective leaders.
We can’t be phoning it in and expect to see the results we want. If we want to live our best lives, we must take a holistic approach to how we conduct ourselves and our business.
That means looking at everything - from the inside out.
As complex, multifaceted organisms, it simply does not make sense to address our health and performance without considering the whole picture.
That’s why I teach my clients how to work with their biology, physical, mental and spiritual self, their well-being, talents, and self-leadership to improve their performance, relationships, and wealth.
My Strengthen TheTEAM and Strengthen TheLEADERSHIP programs are focused on helping my clients improve their team synergies and leadership skills.
Using a combination of biohacking techniques and innovative training modules, I help employees uncover their best talents, and organizations uncover their best assets.
It is the only surefire way I know of to improve our performance, relationships, health, wealth and well-being.
Elevate Your Leadership Skills with These 3 Mind-Body Hacks
These biology hacks will help you elevate your effectiveness as a leader - and help you improve your own self-leadership skills. Consider them foundational to leading others.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
If you just flinched at the idea of “fasting,” I completely understand. You probably envisioned the discomfort of prolonged hunger – not eating for 48 to 72 hours – watching dinner pass you by while you stare at an empty plate. Not fun. Also, not practical. But, intermittent fasting offers a happy in-between.
Why Intermittent Fasting
We get amazing benefits like these for very little sacrifice:
Improved Cognitive Function
Decreased Inflammation
Reduced Risk of Cancer
Cellular Autophagy (an essential cellular function that can be switched on to promote mind and body benefits)
Increased energy
How to Get Started
The 16/8 intermittent fasting method is worth trying. It gradually eases you into the experience over a 3-week period.
Week one: restrict your eating to between the hours of 10am - 8pm (fast for the remaining 14 hours)
Week two: adjust your eating hours to between 11am - 8pm (fast for the remaining 15 hours)
Week three: adjust your eating hours to between 12am - 8pm (fast for the remaining 16 hours)
MINDFULNESS FOR EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Would you believe the U.S. Department of Health attributes 70 percent of work-related physical and mental complaints to stress? And health insurance claims related to stress are estimated to cost organizations more than $300 billion yearly. This, my friends, is not OK. Never mind the all-important bottom line for a moment - stress kills. It’s no joke, and we can do better than these dismal statistics.
Adding a mindfulness practice to your schedule, just 15-30 minutes a day will not only improve the quality of your life - but may extend it as well. And adding a mindfulness training series to your organization will optimize the health, performance, and morale of your staff - which will pay dividends for years to come.
I teach my clients about mindfulness as well as mBraining. Lesser known, but equally important, mBraining is a way to access the wisdom if your three brains (yes, we actually have three!) head, heart, and gut.
Google, Aetna, General Mills, and other well-known corporations have been implementing large-scale mindfulness programs over the past few years and tracking their impact.
The data are now in. There can be no denying the positive effect it’s had on improving leadership skills and strengthening organizational performance and leadership capacity.
Noted benefits of practicing mindfulness techniques include:
Improved mental focus and reduced mind wandering
Longer attention span
Reduced “black-and-white” thinking (more creative thinking)
Improved organization, time management, and priority setting
Reduced instances of low-level panic and guilt
Reduced wear and tear on our bodies
Strengthened immune system
Improved mood and emotional stability
Increased ability to self-monitor
Neuroprotective effects and reduced cognitive decline associated with aging
Increased productivity
Improved decision making
Improved ability to be fully present and listen
Reduced stress levels
These benefits make us not only better leaders, but better people. It’s clear that mindfulness is a mind-body hack that elevates leadership effectiveness and has a direct impact on overall health and well-being.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of mindfulness for leaders is its direct impact on the development of emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman, a leading expert on emotional intelligence, recently made a direct connection between mindfulness and emotional intelligence. It has long-been the position of Dr. Goleman that having high emotional intelligence is a hallmark of effective leaders.
GROW TALENTS INTO STRENGTHS
When educational psychologist Donald O. Clifton first designed the interviews that subsequently became the basis for StrengthsFinders 2.0 (CSF), he began by asking, “What would happen if we studied what is RIGHT with people?”
His strengths philosophy asserts that as individuals we can gain far more when we expend our effort building on our greatest talents rather than exerting a comparable amount of effort to remediate our weaknesses (Clifton & Harter, 2003).
This does not mean we shouldn’t manage our “weaknesses.” On the contrary, self-regulating our talents and areas of non-strengths is part of the processes.
By celebrating and utilizing individual talents, companies can cultivate effortless synergies that elevate their whole organization.
In short, strengths-based coaching is a practical tool that can help us reach a deeper level of emotional- and self- awareness. And that’s the kind of insight that drives better decision making, builds winning teams, and shapes stronger leaders.
It’s truly all about howyou are “showing up in the world” as a “human being” and how that ultimately impacts you, and those who you are leading.
Want to know how biohacking can make you a better leader?
I teach leaders how to reset their work and life engagement and refuel their energy reserves to lead more effectively.
It’s about changing and working with our biology, and thereby positively impacting our mental and physical performance.
My training combines mindfulness techniques and mind-body enhancing biohacks, such as intermittent fasting. I provide leaders with a roadmap to optimize every area of their lives for greater performance.
And no matter how successful of a leader you already are, there’s always new, beneficial insights to be had from these experiences.
We specialize in helping teams and organizations understand and implement practices that cultivate the power of interdependence.
The Wellsiliency™ Institute has developed a series of interdependent courses to comprehensively address the knowledge and skills leaders and teams need to build strengths-based values-driven performance cultures where all experience belonging.
Is cultivating a deliberate culture that leaves a lasting legacy of positive impact in the lives of others important to your organization?
Our institute has designed five program pillars to help leaders be well and lead well through a skill progression from Whole-self Intelligence™ integration to boost resilience and confidence, strengths-based wellbeing, strengths-based team building, strengths-based leadership, and psychological safety to unleash collaboration.
We don't believe in providing superficial programs; instead, we strive to become your collaborative partner by equipping your leaders with the skills they need to create meaningful, enduring outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to help you build a legacy of leadership excellence that will make a real difference in your organization's success.
Contact us to request our 4 page FACT SHEET to learn how our comprehensive 5 PILLAR PROGRAM helps leaders create interdependent teams and organizations.
Let’s partner to create a more harmonious and sustainable future, where cooperation and mutual support lead to thriving.