What 400+ CEO Interviews Reveal About Sustainable High Performance with Ehsan Etezad

Michael interviews Ehsan Ehtesad, organizational psychologist and co-founder/CEO of Mia Science, about building healthy, high-performance teams by focusing on recharging rather than constant intensity. Drawing on nearly 400 interviews with CEOs, surgeons, and champions, Ehsan contrasts time management with energy management and argues that effective recovery comes from doing the opposite of what drains you at work. They discuss sustaining excellence as a marathon, resting along the way, using rhythms of focus and recovery, and leaders’ responsibility to create supportive cultures where people can communicate low energy without judgment. Ehsan shares metaphors about charging batteries and leaders as thermostats, and recommends writing a personal recharging plan on good days for use on bad days.

Timestamps:

00:24  Welcome
01:12  Meet Ehsan Ehtesad
02:18  Why Workplaces Matter
04:01  400 Interviews Insights
05:34  Energy Over Time
06:46  Opposite Recharge Rule
08:57  Redefining Productivity
09:50  Marathon Pace and Cycles
12:30  Rest on the Way
14:16  Team Energy Language
17:53  Support Not Judgment
23:51  Rituals and Thermostat
28:53  Intentional Culture Systems
30:22  Personal Recharge Plan
32:13  Funeral Message Question
34:11  Where to Follow Ehsan
35:07  Closing

Connect with Ehsan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehsanetezad/
https://ehsanetezad.com
https://www.youtube.com/@EhsanEtezad
https://www.instagram.com/ehsanetezad/
https://x.com/EhsanEtezad


Michael's National Workforce Study on Change Management:
https://www.michaeljlopez.coach/research

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Top Voice Podcast, where each week I sit down with leading voices in business leadership and transformation to unpack the issues that matter most. Together, we explore fresh insights, bold ideas, and real-world stories from people shaping how we think about change, culture, and what's possible. Hello and welcome to the Top Voice podcast. It is July 14th, and I'm excited to have Isan Etizad on with me to talk about great teams. And we've been on a little bit of a run talking about teams. And so your angle, I think a lot of people are excited about because it's about how to recharge, not just putting your foot on the pedal all the time. So before we jump into that, Isan, and I give you a chance to talk about your work in more depth. For those of you on the live stream, please do leave a comment or a question. We love to take those. It makes the conversation really interesting. And be sure to subscribe on whatever podcast platform you like to listen to. It's the best way to support the show. Asan, thanks again for coming on. Before we jump in, tell us who you are, tell us what you do and how you got into the world of coaching and leading great teams.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Absolutely. Thank you, Michael, and thank you for having me. I'm saying hi to all the folks who are listening in to this episode. So my name is Asan. I'm an organizational psychologist. I'm also the co-founder and CEO of a company called Mia Science, which is a company focused on healthy high performance teams, really helping associations, regulators, different companies on how they can sort of have high expectations, but also provide high support to their teams to enable them to be productive, to be happy about their job. We spend a lot of our time in your work, and the goal is to be happy, to be productive, and to sort of do great things.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

We've all been a part of great teams, we've all been a part of terrible teams. How did you get into the space of focusing here exclusively and with your background in organizational psychology? You could have picked a number of angles. How did you land on focusing on teams?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, you know, it has an interesting story in a sense, because I started my undergrad in clinical psychology as anyone who would enter the field of psychology. I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. And then soon I realized as I had more experience and interactions with uh sort of the real world of clinical psychology, I realized that people do not choose their family. The family determines a lot of the mental health outcomes. And then someone comes in and it's in the dysfunctional family, it's very difficult to help them. And those folks who are in disadvantaged family usually gain their confidence in the workplace and find the workplace to be the sanctuary place that heal them, improve them, and get them, set up them for a better life. And I was like, this is amazing. So we cannot change the families, but we can change the workplaces. And if we have good workplaces, we can heal people. So I think for me, when I look at the workplaces, we can when I look at the team culture, it's really a place that if someone was maybe not super lucky with the parents that they were sort of born into their family, but they can come to the workplace and have good managers, good leaders that install that confidence in them and they can become a better citizen, they can become a better member of the community. And I'm really fascinated with that aspect and that how impactful and helpful organizations can be in improving the society as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, that's interesting. I I love that because we're all, as I mentioned, a part of multiple teams, but those teams extend beyond work into our family life. And maybe we'll we'll dig into that because you mentioned if you're lucky enough to come from a good family team, then life is a little bit easier than maybe if you're not. So let's talk about great teams because this episode is titled What 270 plus CE interviews told you. But before that, it are actually you've said now you're probably closer to 400 interviews of CEOs, surgeons, NBA champions, all for this purpose of how do you recharge. So what's what's maybe the let's just start with the biggest pattern that you see on leaders and teams that sustain excellence over the long term?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah, it's a very good question. You know, uh maybe one thing I preface with is that I started these interviews because I was like, I know all the science about the like maybe a stress management on the neuroscience of it, what is the stress, how we can cope with it. But a lot of times when you speak, people say, for let's say you talk with a young athlete or you talk with a young executive, they say, but you don't understand my world, right? They say, like, you know the stress, but you don't know what it means to be an executive, how stressful it is to be a CEO. And what I found interesting, and I started this interview series, is that I have the science, but I want to build a library of lived experiences of people who've been there, done that, and connect these two to say this is the science, this is the narrative of the people who have done. And when we put them together, there is a value. And it's been extremely valuable showing the pattern that you notice. Because if you do four interviews, you're like, okay, I have a few data points, but when you do 400, you have a whole map of what it takes to really recharge and be effective. And I think one of the things, points to mention to answer your question, maybe I highlight two points, is a lot of people early on in their career, they look at productivity and performance as a matter of time management. They say, I have to get better at managing my time. But people who've been there done that, they look at it as a matter of energy management. So they don't look at it as a time. They said, okay, this is a time that is energy sucking. I put it at the beginning of the day. This is a task that gives me energy, so I'm gonna put it after lunch. Like they look at it how it gives them energy or gets energy out of them, and they manage their day that way. Because it's not that it's only 20 minutes to do or 30 minutes to do. We all had times that we sit behind a computer and we are really doing nothing, right? Where we're just staring at it, and even if we try to write something, we have to delete something, right? It's just it's not working, and that's because the energy that we have is not on the right, sort of uh paralleled enough to be to create that productivity and flow inside us. So I think looking at energy, managing our energy rather than managing our time is the first stairway that I would recommend people to look at it. And I think the second one is this is the secret. You know, I talked with like 400 executives leaders, I asked them how do you recharge, and I heard answers from somebody says I want to sit in the quiet, and like somebody says I want to go for a run. And I was like, why this pattern is so different of someone saying I just want to run, somebody says I just want to sit. But then after having more conversation with them, I realized what is the secret. So the secret to recharge is that they look at whatever you can look at whatever drains your energy and just do the opposite. If your work is talking to people 24-7, you want to go home and you want to stay quiet. If your job is staying quiet all day, you want to go home and you want to talk, right? If your job is running around all day, you want to go home and you wanna sit. If your job is sitting all day, you want to go home and you wanna go for a run. So that's totally the way that you can balance yourself and that's the optimum recharge. So you don't want to have a job that is sitting all day and go home and sitting all day. That's not gonna fix your problem. So just look at what exhausts you, what drains your energy, what your job looks like, and do the opposite. And then you probably want to step closer to be happier with the way you feel energy during the day.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I I love that. It's such a practical and a little bit of a obvious answer that maybe we don't think about because we're so busy being productive. And you you you you said a lot there about productivity that I also want to get into. But maybe to hit another point first, you and I share a very similar outlook on the relationship between what I'd call uh theory and and and practice, which is the science. Uh, I wrote a book about change. It's it's all about the science of what happens to us at the microscopic level when we try to do anything differently. But but that only takes us so far into our lived experience to be able to understand how do I actually work with that. And so I I think it's important. I I really respect your your practitioner lens that you're bringing to this to be able to get into people's and teams' lives. So I just I just want to call that out. Let's talk about the productivity lens because I I know I suffer from this. I I will I will say this out loud. We have equated productivity with volume, and we have uh associated volume with with value in terms of more is always better. And when it comes to teams, particularly at work, the idea is if you're not productive, you're not doing anything of value, layer on AI to that, and we've got this whole dysfunction happening. How do you help teams redefine productivity and value? Because to me, that seems like the first big step to allow me to even rest in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, that's that's a great question. That's a great question. And I would tell you maybe I would answer it in three parts, right? Three points I think to highlight here. First, I think everyone would go to any executives and we tell them this success of this company, every CEO says it's a marathon, not a sprint, right? Everyone says right, right? It's a marathon. And then the next sentence we have to say is that okay, so you cannot win a marathon at a sprint pace. It's just impossible. If someone right now comes to us and says, you know, I signed up for this 10k marathon, 50k marathon, and I want to run the whole time. We're like, are you dumb? Like it's just not gonna work. You have to slow down, you have to keep moving, but you're it's just like after one kilometer, you're gonna pass out. Like it's just not gonna work. So it's very obvious when we are talking about that as a running exercise, but then we look at our life, we sign up for building a business, is it like a seven, 10-year journey, right? Nobody can get their business to anywhere as stable that they can detach themselves from it in two years. It's just like a hallucination if you're thinking like that. So the just the understanding that you can't win a marathon, marathon at this print pace, you have to be but if you want to be faster than other marathon runners, you just have to become more efficient at recharging yourself. One of the things I've seen with people to even they clock in 12 hours, 14 hours, maybe for a longer chapter, they really figured out what recharges them. So one of the CEOs I was talking to, he said, you know, I really realized that sitting and watching a Netflix for two hours is not gonna help me. But going to the water, going to the nature, going for a two-hour hike, that helps me feel a lot better about myself and about not feel guilty about working too hard or anything because I'm doing kayaking, I'm doing paddleboarding, or I'm seeing my friends. So I think just looking at what we are doing with that recharge time is important if you want to like balance it. And also understanding that life happens in cycles and chapters, right? Like sometimes I think people sit and they look at other people's life and they said, Oh, this person is always on vacation. Why am I not on vacation? Well, we are in different life chapters, maybe, right? If, for example, at the time that I was uh sort of studying in graduate school, heavy course loads, that was a different life chapter as when you're trying to, in the first few years of building your business, that's a different life chapter, that's a different cycle. And cycles come with high pressure, low pressure, right? This is the cycle of rest, this is the cycle of pressure. So acknowledging that there are different cycles that come to us, and sometimes we have to be more all in, sometimes we have to relax, and also acknowledging that those rests come. You cannot just be all in all the time, right? That's I think another step. But the third point I want to highlight there that I think it's important is try to rest on the way, not at the end. Because a lot of people, when they come to okay, like we will go, I'm gonna do, for example, let's do a high class with it. They said, let me finish this project. The deadline is end of August, and after that, the weekend after, I'm gonna do this. But guess what? There's always another thing, right? There is never a good time for that. So just giving yourself permission to rest on the way, I think it's so critical. And reminding yourself that you just have to figure it out as it comes and just live one day at a time and don't try to sort of overwhelm yourself.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, yeah. One of the things I learned in the research for my book, uh, and you you you I'm sure you know this, but it's these things called ultradian rhythms, which are our 90-minute learning cycles that the brain has a pattern of 90 minutes of available focus that is the ideal time frame for learning. And then that should be followed by 20 minutes or so of an of an inactive phase. That could be taking a walk, it could be laying down, it could be meditating, it could be doing whatever. And that part of the big brain experience is actually when when information moves from the the sort of the front of your brain into storage. And I it's so interesting because it seems obvious to people, and it's that old phrase of the best ideas we have come in the shower. It's it's because you step away from the information. And and I have found I've gotten better, I'm not always good at it, but I've gotten better at appreciating the fact that when I'm not intensely focusing on something, my brain is still working and I'm giving it space to be able to do that. Now, here's the here's the trick. And I'd love so in a team though, it's more than just me. Yeah, it's it's all of us together. How how do we balance the multitude of experiences where maybe everyone on that team is at a different phase of either their learning, their productivity, their rest cycle. How do we do that?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, I think there is an element of when you see the teams that are exhausted, it's usually because they're focusing on the wrong things. And I'll expand on that. A lot of the teams that are, because you know, we are living in a very uncertain world, right? And the uncertainty that we experience can really overwhelm us, can really make us feel anxious, can really make the work feel meaningless, right? Right now we have people who do their job and they're like, well, maybe I'm gonna get replaced by AI anyway. What's the point of learning this skill anyway? You know, like a lot of you hear you hear a lot of anyway, anyway, anyway. That technically what it means is that I'm very cynical about what I'm doing and the point of this whole company as a whole, right? Like that cynicism that people that comes out of that uncertainty and that demotive that's very demotivating, right? No one wants to wake up and work on something that they think it's useless. So I think a lot of that goes back to focusing on things that are within your zone of control, right? Today, based on these reality that we have, what is this one thing you can do that's gonna move the needle in a positive direction that you're hoping for? And I think that's sort of the level that sometimes in a team, as a leader, you have to be that role model and set that example of says, Hey, we don't want to focus on the things that are outside our control. These are five things, these are three priorities that we can do something about it. So let's just focus on that. And also as a leader, role modeling that sort of trusting the process, putting in the effort, but also disconnect it, right? Says, okay, it's 6 p.m., 7 p.m., whatever your work hours is like we've done what we could have done. Now it's the time to go charge the battery and come back again. You know, it's so easy for us when we look at it to say, if I have a phone, I don't expect my phone to work 24-7, right? At night, I'm plugging it in, and then in the morning I'm using it again. But when it comes to ourselves, we're like, keep using it, keep using it, keep it. Well, it's gonna die. Like it's not gonna work, right? You have to charge it. So for ourselves, it's important to say, okay, and also for the phone, some mornings, some days, you have 50% battery, sometimes you have 70%, sometimes you have 100%, right? Sometimes you need that recharge and that plugged in sooner or later. And just looking at the brain with the same lens and maybe have that common language that go to your boss and says, you know, I'm feeling low on battery, maybe I'm 20% today, you know, and maybe I need to like take it easy and do tasks that don't take a lot of CPU, you know, because I need to sort of, I'm only 20%. And then go to your boss and says, I'm 80% free, right? Sort of having that common language in teams, I think it really helps with that communication, but also that role modeling of saying the boss comes in and says, Oh, I'm 10%, it's time to go home, you know, like giving that permission that it's we we are gonna have different levels of energy at the day and communicating it with others, it would be very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

That's one of the best analogies I've ever heard, and I'm gonna I'm gonna use that. And as you said it, I immediately thought of my my 18-year-old son who's like, well, I'll just charge it while I'm using it. That that and of course, you know, that that comes with its own challenge. The the the example you just gave, though, I want to maybe challenge something or talk about two points that I think are really important because I I think everything that you just said sounds great, which is go to your boss, go to your team lead, whoever it may be, and say, hey, I'm at 20% today. That requires two things. One, it requires that I have enough sort of interoception to be able to say I'm at 20% and know that. And it requires the the leader, the team leader, the other person, to not judge you for being not at 80%. Well, everybody else here is at 80%. Why aren't you better? And I I I my own experience suggests that that gap or those abilities are part of what caused teams a lot of stress. Because, you know, maybe eight out of the 10 people in that team are are pretty high energy today, and they look at the other two people and go, why aren't you pulling your weight? How do we just talk to us about that reality? Because I think that goes beyond the science into the reality of day-to-day life.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yes. You know, one of the and that that's a very good point because it goes back to the maturity you experience at your workplace. But I'll tell you something. Uh some of the conversations I have is with healthcare, right? And that those are the patient's life is on the way on the line, and they sort of the decisions, some of them can cause patient harm and it's very risky. And one of the cultures they have there is that if you are not feeling at your best, we want to know because otherwise you're gonna make a mistake that's gonna cause all of us trouble. So if it's an accounting firm and if someone comes in at 20%, if you have that level of maturity, and as a leader, you really get that perspective that forcing a 20% charged person to do an 80% required task means they're gonna mess up something. Yeah sooner or later, not that day, but tomorrow. You know, one day they're gonna make an error that's gonna cause more cost to the organization and to everyone. So the question is if we are expecting everyone to be 80%, what is the support system that we have in place to supercharge everyone and get them to that 80%, right? And maybe the level of support and help people need are different. But really, expecting people to come in, you know, that's just like an assumption that is never true. Expecting people to come in clear mind, full of energy, no depression, no anxiety, no nothing to think about, and they're completely obsessed, dedicated, you know, full-on dedication for the organization and obsession with the value, like that just doesn't exist, right? People come at different levels. And I think as an organization, when you look at it, the job is we expect high outcome, we expect high performance here. What are what are things within our control to deliver high support and get people to supercharge them so that we can get that high expectation, we can have that high expectation culture. But I think that goes back to really leaders acknowledging that that's their job to create an environment that people can come in at 20% and maybe they go at the end of the day, they may be at 60%, right? You don't know if there sometimes people come to work and they said, you know, I so let's say in the morning you start your work, your manager comes in and says, you know, you do you've done a presentation yesterday, it was fantastic. You the way you answered the question, the way you said you get a very good compliment and recognition at the morning, and you're like, Whoa, I'm I'm so like people like me here, right? You go to your colleagues, they said, Oh, how was the weekend? Oh, and they're genuinely interested, and they try to say, Oh, that's fascinating. You have a good 10-minute conversation, and you're like, Oh, I have my friends here, and then you go, like, you know. So if you have those positive experiences, that sets you up to also be more charged and happier and be more productive. But imagine you go to the work, your manager says, Oh, you always make mistakes. Your friends, there's so much politics in the workplace, there's so much toxicity. Then by the time you at the 5 p.m., you're completely done, right? You're completely depleted and really prone to making a lot of mistakes and being exhausted about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah. I that that story reminds me of a good friend of mine, former client, good friend who's a pilot. And that industry, as you would have expected, very safety focused, and they will they have what they call the F-word. And it's it's fatigue, which is if if they call you in to do a flight, all you have to say is, I have fatigue, and they by law have to say you're not flying today. And again, that's it's a it's it's baked into the the world of that uh industry because of the importance of safety. There are other industries like that, but I think it's hard to adopt that maybe in a more white-collar space. I could see it in a manufacturing setting. I do a lot of work in the in the energy space where people have to be focused on safety. And I I it's just a good reminder to set some kind of a baseline. And I think the other thing you just said, which is really important, is it's on the leader to build the environment. And I and I want to talk about that because one of the things you focus on, I I do as well, is is the system of your team. And and I say this, I I I've coached football for years, I played football for a long time. And success is incredibly boring. If you do it right, it's incredibly repetitive, it's monotonous, it is, it follows a routine and a schedule where rest is baked in and all of that. And it's hard, I think, for people to sometimes sustain that because they want the feeling of high dopamine. You know, you only play a game once a week in the football world, so you can't you know you can't do it every day. How do we think about in today's world the the systems for high performing teams that I