Episode 160 The 3 Brains Advantage Getting Your Head, Heart, Gut to Sign the Same Contract

Welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast. Our theme for 2025 is the future of work. Meaning is the new money. In a world shaped by rapid innovation and constant change, the pursuit of purpose and impact has never been more important. I'm Dr. John D'Antico, your host. bringing over 30 years of experience in leadership, strategic thinking, and purpose-driven innovation. Here, we tackle the pressing challenges of our time, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the growing need for meaning in the workplace. Together, we'll uncover how leaders can ethically integrate AI to enhance decision-making and keep humanity at the heart of their organizations. Remember, amidst all the technological advancements, in the end, it's always about the people. This podcast is your resource for actionable tools, thought-provoking discussions, and inspiring stories. It's time to go beyond leadership development and focus on leadership impact, creating workplaces where people thrive, innovation flourishes, and meaning truly becomes the new currency. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Now let's throttle up and dive into today's episode.

Hello again and welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John D'Antico. With me today is Christoffel Sneijders, the Master Certified Coach, International Professor, and founder of 3 Brains Intelligence. With over 25 years of global experience, Christoffel is helping leaders, coaches, and changemakers align their full biological intelligence to lead, live, and love with purpose. He's taught at places like the IE Business School in Madrid and Georgetown University Qatar, coached clients in 33 countries, and authored books like Relationships: Which Brain Is Talking? and the soon-to-be-released The 3 Brains Leader. What makes his work so powerful is the personal journey behind it. From water polo to burnout recovery to open-heart surgery, Christoffel blends real-life experience with neuroscience to spark transformation that lasts. In this episode, we explore how aligning our 3 brains can prevent burnout, improve decision-making, and foster authentic leadership. Especially in today's hybrid, high-pressure, AI-accelerated world. If you're ready to stop outsourcing your self-worth and start leading from congruence and clarity, this conversation is for you. I am truly pleased and delighted to have Christoffel here with me this morning. Good morning. How are you?

I'm doing great, John. John, it's a beautiful introduction. I almost said like, oh wow, can you say it again, please?

Well, I'll tell you what, I'll send it to you. It's suitable for framing on your refrigerator, as I tell people all the time. I'll send it to you and it's great. So listen, let's begin by, let me ask you this personal question, and that is, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up and what were some of the influences in your early life?

As you can hear my name, I'm born and raised in the Netherlands, the most famous city, Amsterdam. How did it really influence me? I was the sweet boy when I was young. My mom always said to me, you can even not kill a fly. And that's a fly I can, but that means if you then go to high school and other kind of schools, you could become, say, the punchball of the big boys with big shoulders. So that was also my journey partly. And how did that shape me in all the things? Loving parents who always said, you're good however you are. So unconditional love, that's the best gift you can get in this world. That experience that not everybody is sweet or has different kind of ideas shaped me in a way from, I like to understand what, yeah, I almost say what's wrong with them. I would on that moment ask what's wrong with them. Now I say, hey, what did I learn? What kind of pain do they have actually inside them? that they have to start doing this. I'm a smartass, so I went studying engineering, software engineering, and I went into marketing. But everything flows where it wants to go. So I always loved to work with people. So when I was 30, I joined the best leadership and training company in Europe on that moment. Got squeezed and mangled to get my own limiting beliefs sorted out. And you become an extremely good leader. Now, that part is 29 years ago. If I say it quickly, we're not so old, John. From there, I kept on searching, but the most important thing drove me. What is really in charge of us? And we always talk about the subconscious mind, you know, underwater thing. And it always, as I also studied engineering, where is it? Because if you don't know which pipe is leaking, how can you fix it? Nobody could ever give me an answer. And that led me actually in the last, I'd say, 29 years, what now is the 3 Brains Intelligence. Because I really was searching, hey, who's in charge of us? We say, oh, our emotions are in charge. But somebody has to spark these emotions. Hey, our behavior is in charge. Our environment is in charge. But still, inside us, somebody has to make a decision. To start doing something, who or what is that? That whole journey came to there, and what you already said, I train and coach people all around the world because I emigrated to Australia 15 years ago. But say in personal life, say it was in the year and divorce because my beautiful wife in that moment thought a firefighter is more interesting than me. Build up my own hypnotherapy practice, my therapy practice, coaching practice. Five years ago, I moved to an amazing beautiful woman in Spain. So I'm now happily in Madrid, Spain, with the love of my life. So what's wrong? Nothing is wrong besides what you said, burnout and the heart surgery. That's past tense.

Interesting. Oh, life presents challenges. Absolutely. And those challenges are learning experiences if you're open to it. I had a guest, Arias Webster-Berry, who endures very difficult personal tragedies. His mother and father were both in prison at the same time. His mother got out, took 2 jobs, put food on the table, and he was homeless at one point. Now he's a guru in the digital marketing space. He really has his own company. He's doing quite well. And he said something that impressed me, and that was that the difficulties we go through in life creates a broader bandwidth in us to deal with difficult issues. They are tests, but also great acceleration and learning experiences. So we may get back to that in a little bit.

You're so right, John, when you say it, because I did water polo. The only moment you can get better in sports is if you get out of your comfort zone. If you swim a little bit harder, if you train yourself, if you feel the muscle pain the day after. Getting out of a comfort zone. If we talk about leadership and coaching and training, we also talk about getting out of your comfort zone. If you now redefine and reframe, say, all those things that happen to us, the parents that were in prison, a burnout, a heart surgery, being bullied, as, hey, I had to step out of my comfort zone, then actually you reframe it in a learning frame. You can learn from it and your comfort zone becomes bigger and bigger. So I could not agree more with you, John, how beautifully said. For me, I reframe all those things as, hey, it's almost like going to a water polo game and you train with the good guys or the great guys. You have to swim a little bit harder than you normally do.

Yeah, very, very interesting. It's interesting because I had a guest on a little while ago and I remember looking up the term, I'm sure you're familiar with neuroplasticity.

Yeah.

The idea, neuroplasticity, where the brain actually creates and manufactures New pathways based on the challenges that you give it or the new things that you are learning. So if you decide to learn something new, the brain manipulates itself, alters itself to be able to open up an area, if you will, where the brain is now adapting itself to the new things that it's learning and the new challenges you're giving. I'd love to get your reflection on that idea.

It's totally true. Say I'm living in Spain, so I had to learn Spanish. It means I have to create new connections because glasses are gafas, as an example. That's a simple translation, but all those words are new and not already processed. So you have to create new connections, actually brain plasticity. The beauty is, if you think about it, every cell in our body gets replaced. When we're talking up to now, probably 10 million body cells are already died off and being replaced. It's actually the same also in your gut and in your heart, where also brains are located. And they can also be, say, the same brain plasticity and can learn. That's why you could say we can fall in love again. And everybody who once got a broken heart and got over it and fell in love again, it actually means your heart learned again to love somebody else and creates also new connections there.

This is going to be a very interesting conversation. I want to ask you a question. You've worked in over 30 countries and coached countless leaders. Are there any patterns you noticed when one brain tends to dominate over the others? And what's the cost of that imbalance?

It's a beautiful question. And you love IDE and how it's changing the world, I would say developing the world. Most leaders, how they are taught in MBAs, the INSEADs, the Harvards, and the whatevers, learned to be a smartass, excuse me for that word, and use their gut. They have to win because they're filled with more information they can actually process. So they have to choose nice to do, need to do. And social interactions are less required in that part. You're not going to help a teammate if you have to still bring in your own thesis or your own report. And you see it the same in the business world where you can see that in the leaders, the head brain and heart brain are actually most dominant. Hence we get the word toxic leadership. And if you think about every amazing sports coach, Almost always the team people who play in the team love the coach. There's a heart connection. Because if it's only you have to perform, they don't run the extra mile for him or her. So what in sport is totally normal that you engage with people is in the business world less normal. What is the fallout of it? Engagement figures worldwide are not above 35%. Engagement in workplaces in America is not above 35%.

In terms of what?

That people are engaged in their job. Actively disengaged is sometimes 20%, and the rest is somewhere in between. Just imagine if 3 of your teammates in a team of 10 are only really engaged, then you would never win a game. But we find that normal in companies. If you ask me what do I see in all those countries, it's almost always this, especially when you talk about the The quarter results we have to perform. It means I need to go for the short term. I cannot invest for the long term. Short-term investment actually pushes the gut in making action. It is something like I have 10 on the clock. Are we going to dunk the ball or not in basketball? Of course, you're going to dunk. You're not going to think, okay, let's do a strategic session. Let's see who teammates are already. Let's have a chat with each other. You run, dunk. Yeah. You see the same in businesses, and that's a gut-brain response. Great in sports, horrible in business world.

Right. It's interesting you should say that because a great deal of my personal work is about this thing called engagement. How do we raise— I mean, are we going to be perfect? Are we going to get to perfection? I don't think so. But suppose you raise the engagement factor of, let's say, a team of 10— make it simple— by 20 or 25%, that's significant. I would hope you'd get more, but I don't know if you can. And that's why, to me, the single greatest motivation force on the planet is meaning. People are searching for a sense of meaning. They want their work to matter. They want to matter themselves. They want to have impact. They want to be listened to. They want to know, hey, you know what, I, you know, people talk all the time about belonging. I'm sure you've seen that. And people say, I want them to feel as though they belong. And my response is, no, I don't want them to feel like they belong. I want them to know they belong. And the way they know they belong is because they're part of the decision-making processes of the organization. They're actively engaged. And in this world, I'm going to ask you for a reflection on this in a minute.

Yeah.

But certainly in this world now, where each and every one of those team members is what I like to refer to as AI-augmented, right? They're augmented with tremendous assets of knowledge and information. You have this capability at your fingertips If you're just able to create a greater sense of meaning for their play in the dynamic of doing the things that we are trying to do in this organization. I'd love to get your reflection on that.

That's why I want to be in this podcast, John, because we are almost talking about the same things. You cannot be more right. Engagement, belonging, feeling that you're part of the team is actually— now, what I just said is heart-brain. The heart brain, when we are born and our parents don't care about us, we die. Belonging is the biggest need we have as human beings. See, we also neurotransmittically wise through because the heart releases oxytocin. Oxytocin is the love and bonding hormone, if you make it simple. So the heart does it. But if you train all the leaders in head and gut, they never learn, hey, how can actually the heart release oxytocin? We never trained how to do that. When you look at companies' engagement, the best companies according to the Gallup organization have an engagement percentage of 70%. That's double of the average of 35%. And if you look at those companies, what they do is they have trust almost as a core value. That sounds nice as marketing logo, but trust means, hey, John, I really value your opinion. And by the way, Peter, you're maybe here cleaning the floors as the janitor, but I also like your opinion because, you know, we're one big family. And if the family is not agreeing with it, we don't do it. Because people will see you cleaning the building, and if you don't really have your passion engagement in it, it will show actually how the building looks. The best leaders I always saw when I walked with them through their office, they always said hi to everybody. Het was niet van oké, dat is de vice president, dat is de senior vice president. Wie is dat?

Ik weet het niet.

Hij werkt hier, maar ik weet het niet. Nee, het was over. En ze is eigenlijk wat er import, because ze takes care of the coffee. Ze takes care of the restaurant. They know it. And the person there who just VP, senior VP, and she is really important because she takes care of the restaurant. She glows, and it shows everywhere. Sometimes you see, you move it all around. It is so simple. A smile, a praise, how you— a real meant, how are you doing? It's so easy. It does not cost any money. But it is so hard. What do we do?

Yeah.

Every day, it just boggles my mind. Every day you read more and more about toxic cultures. This company, oh, people are just leaving. They can't stand it.

Yeah.

What comes to mind, and whether you like this person or not, is when SpaceX launches the heavy rocket like they did the other day, and the first time they did the gantry catch when the large booster came back, and they show you the picture of all the people who worked on it standing up, cheering, screaming, hollering. Because they all know they're part of that.

Yeah.

And there was this thunderous cheer from everybody the first time and the second time that they brought the heavy rocket booster down. It got caught on the gantry just as it was supposed to. And you sit back and say, you don't have to tell those people they're part of the dynamic. They know it. They know whatever they do, they understand that they are doing something really special, really spectacular. And I think that's That kind of thing that we need to spread throughout organizations, people being so energized by that kind of idea. So along with that, I want to ask you this next question. In the companies that you've consulted with and the people you've coached, how, how important do you think it is for each organization To have a very succinct, specific mission statement. What is your return on that?

2 things. The one, Elon Musk is the best Elon Musk, values every input because he could learn from that. Because he's so smart, he's really smart, but he's aware, I don't know everything. And I'm not pushing that button there, so I'd like to know why is that person pushing that button. He does a great job in that part. And the mission statement is extremely important because people like to know where are we doing it for. If you think about meaning, it's also about purpose, and purpose also, where are we doing it for? And what you see now in a lot of companies is that the mission statement also has a financial component in there. But the financial component is never about the people. The financial component is always about the shareholders. And the shareholders, some are traders, and if they don't like the shares, they just dump it in. It doesn't have anything to do with the heart and soul of the company.

Right.

And the funny part is, I think everybody already knows it somewhere, that the heart of the company is the people, but somewhere we invest easier in a computer than in a person.

Right. I absolutely agree. A lot of times people think of a mission statement, it's all about what we're trying to portray to the outside world. This is who we are. But what they forget many times is, that the mission statement in large part is written for the people inside the organization. I call it the galvanizing spirit. What, you know, what is— why do you want to come here every day and work with us? And what is it that we're going to do that's special? And I see it all the time. You see these 6 or 7 paragraph—

Right.

—mission statements. I'm confused. I suspect your people are confused. There is no guiding principle that says the people really make the difference here. It's just so interesting to me. And I've seen them. I've seen one recently. I call it fluff. It's just clouds of fluff. It doesn't hit hard. I always say, -ing verbs, active verbs help make a mission statement stick and give it a sense of purpose and direction.

The funny part is to add on that, I once had a client and he had also a beautiful mission statement. Marketing thought about it and the leadership team had spent 3 days in a beautiful hotel. They had the whole mission statement, 2 pages. So I walked with the CEO through the company. He said, where are you going with it? I said, I'd just like to test it. So I go say really where the reception is. Hey, could you just read it and think what you think of this? Gary. And he doesn't know it's coming from them, so he thinks it's from Lisa. Oh wow, that's a lot of buzzwords. He said, would you like to work for this company? He says, oh hell no, this is all about plastic and outside. And the CEO's listening there and he says, by the way, we wrote that. Sorry for the feedback. But this is what I thought about it. I come back to him and said, if those guys and those women don't feel it and they're the point of entry, that's a real issue. What should I do with this? I said, probably should refine it to 5 sentences. And then start, why would somebody really like to do this? Why would somebody like to put all their energy, their love, their 40 hours, 60 hours a week in this? And not only for a paycheck.

Well, in the aftermath of COVID as you know, is people are not looking just for a paycheck anymore. Which brings me to my other point that I talk about all the time. People who work for organizations are looking for values alignment. They want to know the company cares about the same thing they care about and that they meet someplace in the middle. My values are expressed by this company, and this company expresses their values in a way that I can connect to. I'd love to get your reflection on that.

Values are extremely important. If you think about a family or a sports team, if they don't have the same values, or a divorce, or if a sports team where actually the coach or a team, most times the coach gets fired. In a company, it's the same. Values are really The heart of a company, and that is not the buzzwords. And values are so easy because a lot of times values are not really understood by people. And values really what is your deepest core why you are on this earth? So what do you really value? If I will say marketing, corporate communications, those kind of stuff are making them, we have an issue. They should come really from okay. And I love it when a leadership team says, okay, we created some values, train us on them. And I'm always thinking, so you created values, they are not yours as management team, but you like to transfer in that. How big is the gap? This gap or is it this gap? Because it means really personal change in you, because your values are formed in your first 7 years of your life. So we have to almost therapy on you to get you there. So are you all willing to do therapy with me? Now, you probably know the answer of the executive board in that moment. And that's what happens so much. Values is what we are now, what we value now. So it should be somewhere in alignment of who we are now as a management board, but also as a company. What are really our values? Our values should be a sum-up of all the people working there, find the common thread in that, because that's the core values that everybody shares. And what is somewhere in the outlines that we can discuss, where would we like to have them? But most people say, okay, we don't do that, we just define them from outer space. It doesn't make sense to me.

Right. No, it doesn't, because if you can't align on core values, chances are that person is not going to be with you very long.

No.

They're going to say, you know what, we just don't fit together. You know, I don't belong here. I need to move on. And let's do this. Let's take that values, let's use it as a springboard now. And I want to talk about your upcoming book, The 3 Brains Leader. Let's use values as a jumping off point in terms of your perspective from The 3 Brains Leader. We may be a little bit redundant here, but that's okay. So just talk about that perspective, if you will.

Values, as we discussed, are the most important thing in our life. When you think about it, when I write about my book, we have beliefs, and beliefs are amazing to support. Say, yes, we can, was a belief, or yes, I'm not good enough, is also a belief. They're not values, they are beliefs. Beliefs are coming into our life based on experiences. I've been bullied, so my belief was for a long time, I cannot trust people. Because they will, if you don't look, they hate you. Values is actually what you learn when you were really young. And values are almost hard brain-based in my case. How do you interact with other people? How do you interact with nature? How do you interact with everything in this world? They're relationship-connected values. And values not become as rich as possible, because that is actually an objective. Values are what you said. I like to belong to a group. Belonging could be a value. Respect, of course, is one of the most famous ones and the most misused. Values are extremely important. And when you talk about values, it's actually coming over, where are my values really formed? Because when you have, say, a dysfunctional family, your values will also be a little bit shaky. What happens then is that a lot of beliefs are being learned. The beauty of values is If you think about us as humans, almost everybody, if you take time with them, have the same values. And the values are always about connecting with people, belonging somewhere, doing something meaningful, getting appreciation, taking care of each other. All about us. It's about actually what we as babies already want. Those are most the values we have. And based on that, we create some other things. I mean, you can come aware, hey, what are my real fears? And actually, then you step to something else, and then you talk about 3 brains. What stops us, most people of us, to really live our values? That is actually the fear of being rejected and the fear of not succeeding. Now, fear of being rejected is what we learn from, hey, hey, by the way, you look strange, you look different. Wat is hij in bullying zo much? En de fear of not succeeding is een ander. We like to live, we like to survive. De God brengt likes to survive. En de hart en de God, they work together, but they also compete together. De God is the most egocentric part of us. You cannot find. They're even worse than the worst CEO in egocentricism because it's all about me, myself, and I. What makes sense? Of course, you like to survive. The immune system is not social. The immune system has only one objective: take care of me. Your heart, on the other hand, is all about bonding. So inside us, we have a challenge. If you listen to your gut feeling, it's about me, myself, and I. If you follow your heart, it's about us. And the values we learn as kids, We create some imbalance. Which one are we going to listen more to? If we listen more to the heart, to get a beautiful world and a beautiful family, if we listen more to our gut, yes, you can be extremely successful and totally empty inside. Now you have the most bling-bling in this world, maybe 5 Maseratis and a beautiful boat of 200 meters, and you feel extremely empty inside because your neighbor has a boat of 300 meters. Now if you follow your heart, Then a boat of 10 meters is actually big enough. I think you should enjoy it because you have to clean less.

And I think there has to be a compromise between those two.

Yeah.

I don't think you can be all heart, and I don't think you can be all gut. You have to find that place where you're comfortable, where it works for you. Having experienced that myself, I can tell you that I was at one point too much heart and not enough gut. But, you know, I've come to recognize that and try to balance that in my own life. I say it a little bit differently, and that is I always say there's 2 attorneys.

Yeah.

They stand on your shoulders. One is, I would say, your head, and the other is your heart. And they're arguing back and forth all the time, you know, and you're in the middle. And, you know, we should do this. Well, that makes sense, but I don't feel connected to this idea. I feel like it's hollow. Finding that connection point or that ease where you can live with both in some level of balance is the work of life. That's the way I put it. It's the work of life. Go ahead.

I would say you have your gut and your heart there, and your head is in the middle. Your head is actually the best consultant. The heart says, how can I connect better with people? Your head gives an answer. Your gut says, how can I be successful? Your head starts working. The gut creates anxiety. This one gave great sadness. If you have too much heart, you have maybe a great team, but you can run to burnout because you take care of everybody else except yourself. If you have too much gut, on the other hand, you have success, but your team feels exhausted and they have probably then burnout. So that balance is essential. That's why I talk about the 3-brains leader. You need all 3 of them aligned. If you have 3 team members, they all should be aligned, have the same mission, have the same passion, have the same engagement, willing to listen to each other, willing to cooperate, and actually accepting the strengths of each team member. The head is all about logic and predicting and strategy. The heart is all about how do I bond. And the gut is all about, okay, make it happen. You need a triangle.

That is the best explanation I've ever heard of how they all work together. The head is sort of the mediator between the gut and the— and I never saw the gut before. The gut was not something that was apparent to me.

No.

But now that makes sense. So the gut and the heart are fighting it out, and the head is trying to be the mediator of it all. I get the 3 brains thing. It's very clear to me. It's the work of life. It happens every day, many times a day, where you have to work through it. And understand it. But I think once you recognize it, as they say, half the cure of a malady is understanding what the malady is.

Absolutely.

Is accepting, oh, this is the malady I'm faced with every day. Let me start to work with that. And now I can see it clearly and I can work through it. It's very interesting to me. And that's why meaning for me is so big. Meaning is really, how does this all work together? And how do you then take it and express it? I find that to be so informative. It's just great.

One thing in biology, the meaning is in your heart. So your heart says, okay, let's do that. But you need energy. Energy is actually coming from cortisol in your adrenal glands on top of your kidneys. Who's in charge of that? Your beautiful gut. So the heart and the gut have to align. The heart says, you go for that. And the gut says, I give you all the energy and power to make it happen. If they work together, it's amazing. Biology-wise, they need to work together.

Right. When I talk about leadership, for example, I'm not talking about the one great person. Here's the leader, bestow upon us your leadership. I look at leadership as something done. I always say leadership is what people do together. I want to create an environment where people come to do their best work every single day. When you give people meaning, when you say, hey, you're important to this, we need your input, we want you to be part of the process, we want you to be part of the outcome, just that ability to bring them in and truly get them involved clears away a lot of this notion of burnout.

Yeah.

In other words, I think for me, burnout is meaningless work. People burn out. I don't know, it just doesn't matter. I just feel like I'm here, I'm just collecting a paycheck every day, but I don't feel like there's anything valuable happening here. I'd love to get your reflection on that.

You could not be more right. The burnout is where the heart likes to be accepted, likes to be part of a team, likes to get appraisal. The gut brain puts all the energy in there because we don't get it from the boss. From the manager. So the heart says, "I don't get it." The gut says, "Okay, then we have to work harder." We work harder. We don't get it. We have to work even more harder, and we burn ourselves totally out because most people have a burnout. Also have extremely low cortisol because it's all squeezed out from the adrenal glands. And the manager says, "Yeah, but we have rather good results." I said, "We or you?" He said, "Because how can you say we have good results if two of your people have burnout?" They have horrible results. He says, still remember, yeah, that can be true, Chris, but we achieved 10% more than actually our objective. We're the best division in the company, figure-wise, finance-wise. He said, okay, so your success is measured in 10% higher while 2 of your team members is actually burned out. Interesting. So you're so right. It's a heartbreaking thing. If that person was a football coach, a soccer coach, a baseball coach, he would be fired. Right. Somewhere in the companies we accept it because it's different.

Right. Yeah, it's great. I really appreciate that. We're getting close to the end here, so I want to ask you the last question and then we'll close it out. This has been a brilliant conversation and I really enjoyed it. You've cleared up a lot of things for me. And shifted my thinking. It's a different way of looking at the problem. Not too much different, but enough that I've thought about for years. What is your hope for the future, Christoffel? What do you see for you and the future of where you think you're going and where life is going? Go ahead.

A dream? And it's almost like what John Lennon said, I just imagine. And my just imagining is that we discussed that toxic leadership doesn't exist anymore. It means if we create a triangle of head, heart, and gut, and they work all together, there is no toxic leadership. Because of course we achieve, of course it makes sense, but we also still think about the people. My big dream is that one day we align it, still have achievements, but we don't burn out the people. We do it with the people. And there's enough on this earth to make everybody happy, healthy, et cetera, et cetera. That's my big dream. For me, my passion is to bring the 3 brains really to this world that becomes something just as normal as emotional intelligence. How's your 3 brains intelligence, John? I know I don't listen too much to my gut. I don't listen to my heart. I'm sure you know what you're missing out. And people start thinking, I'm not always listening to one of my 3 brains. I just follow my heart. Maybe I should start thinking a little bit more. Your 3 brains intelligence is off balance. Now, if that happens, You see, the company world is amazing because everybody can flourish, everybody can survive, everybody can do their own thing. The healthcare system, you'll probably plump 50% of the cost because all those burnout people, sick people, anxious people, and everything will happen because most people get sick from their work and then from their relationship.

Right. I think the healthcare system would benefit dramatically if we could do that. I hadn't thought about that angle before, but I'm really going to Do more on that. Absolutely agree with you. We're really at the place where it doesn't take that much. It takes people to reorient themselves in terms of the leaders I'm talking about now.

Yeah.

And so what they really want to do and what leadership really— and yeah, sure, there's going to be managers and there's going to be leaders, but it's a dance. You have to dance back and forth between the two. I look at them as processes. They're two different processes. Leadership is transforming change. Management's incremental change. You need both of them. They help each other if you know how to balance it out. And those are the lessons we really have to embark on in the future.

And it can happen because if you think about nature, there's always a leader in a group. Elephant, male or female, who leads the whole tribe. In wolves, there's the old wolf who leaves the tribe, but they all work together. They all take care of each other. But yes, there's a hierarchy. Everybody accepts the hierarchy because it makes sense. You cannot have 1,000 people in a company and there's no leader or manager.

Right.

But at least how do you lead and how do you manage? Do we do it, say, what you say, or in the wrong way? Or do we do it as the wolves, as the elephants, as all the examples we see outside every day? If you look at animal world.

One of the things I'm working on is this notion of the scalability of leadership. And what I mean by that is authenticity, empathy. We always talk about the leader's empathy and the leader's authenticity. But here's the thought, and this is the road I'm going down. Suppose you take empathy, you take authenticity, and 3 brains. And instead of it being captured by the leader, it actually becomes part of the system that everybody operates. So that if the leader leaves, the system continues. New leader comes in, and the leader has to buy into this system because these people operate very authentically.

Mm-hmm.

They operate with empathy towards one another, using the 3 brains mindset to understand What it is their heart is telling them and what their gut is telling them. And I just can't come in and change everything because everything will go right into the toilet, so to speak. I think that that's where we have to get leadership that's scalable, but scalable within the system. I'll give you the final word on that, Guy.

John, I agree 100%, 200%, 300%. Because when you spoke about values, about mission, if everybody lives it, It doesn't matter who leaves because it is the system. If the values and a mission are the system, it doesn't matter if somebody leaves. If the empathy is the system and one person goes out of it, the system still stays alive. So it could not be more wrong. It's not something that goes down. You are your values. I cannot impose values on you, John. If one of the 40,000 Johns leaves, It doesn't matter because the other 39,999 Johns have the same values. So it's a living entity. And that's what you see with extremely good organizations. And you gave the example of Elon Musk, but you also see actually in Formula 1 where it doesn't matter if you change the tire or you're racing the car, they have one big value system. And if one leaves, the system stays.

Right. Interesting. What a great example, Formula 1. Listen, this has been an inspiring and absolutely brilliant conversation. I can't thank you enough, Christoffel, for your time today. It's been absolutely wonderful. You've really made me go back to the drawing board and do some thinking, and I appreciate that.

Sorry to make you think, John.

I tell people all the time, I've learned more from my guests than most of the listeners. I appreciate that very much. I wish you all the great success. Have an absolutely incredible day in Madrid and look forward to talking to you in the future.

Thank you, Joe.