What Most Leaders Miss Before Performance Slips with Malcolm Youngren

Most companies don't collapse overnight. They may drift. The clarity might go down. Conversations might get quieter. Decisions might take longer. Maybe the standards like slowly get lower. From the outside, everything looks like it's working. But underneath, something is really off. And by the time most leaders notice it, performance has already Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge. I'm Claire Hayek, NeuroLeadership expert, TEDx speaker, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. For more than 20 years, I worked in engineering and high-stakes environments managing multimillion-dollar projects. Teams under pressure, restructurings, M&As, the good, the bad, and the ugly, let's say. What I learned in those years is that pressure doesn't just test leadership. Pressure exposes the, literally, the operating system behind leadership. So, when pressure gets high, some leaders stay clear, decisive, and grounded. But others become reactive. They lose perspective and unintentionally, Lower the standard of the entire system around them. Now, the difference is whether a leader has built the mental operating system required to lead under pressure. That system is what I call pressure-proof leadership. And that's exactly what this show is about. Each week, we explore the real moments that shaped leaders, the pressure, the decisions, the turning points, and what was actually happening inside the brain when those moments occurred. Because leadership today isn't about working harder. We all know that. It's about installing that internal systems that allow you to stay sharp, steady, and effective when the stakes are high. In this episode, we explore a perspective most leaders overlook. You'll learn how imbalance quietly shows up inside organizations long before leaders recognize it. We're also going to learn why pressure can make teams look functional while performance is already slipping and what leaders can do to restore clarity, alignment, and resilience before that system literally breaks. My guest today is Malcolm Younggren. Malcolm is the President and CEO of Pacific College of Health and Science, an institution that is focused on integrative health acupuncture, and holistic medical education with campuses in New York, Chicago, and San Diego. He has spent more than 30 years in higher education, launched multiple edtech companies, and worked at the intersection of education, technology, and healthcare transformation. But what makes Malcolm's leadership perspective unique is something deeply personal. Watching his father's final years and experiencing firsthand how the healthcare system struggles to support the natural end of life profoundly reshaped how he thinks about health, balance, and leadership. And today he's bringing that philosophy into both healthcare education and organizational leadership. Malcolm, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here, and thank you for having me, and I look forward to the conversation.

I am very excited for you to be here, and I appreciate you taking the time. I know you have high expertise in what we're talking about, and this is what was really important for me to bring that, you know, your insight and expertise into the show and see how it may help listeners watching this episode that are interested in going, what are you talking about? Tell me more, right? So let's start with what you're going through right now. So higher education is going through massive change. And from from what you told me, Pacific College itself is currently going through a major transformation. You're divesting 2 campuses and refocusing the organization. So what does leadership look like when you're making decisions that are strategically clear but emotionally very difficult?

Well, for me right now, what we are doing is we're divesting 2 of the campuses, one campus in San Diego and one campus in Chicago. I've been with the organization for nearly 15 years. The previous president was actually the founder of it. So right now what we're trying to do is refocus the organization, specifically the New York campus, on nursing and bringing in an integrative method and approach to healthcare. But getting rid of 2 campuses, in some ways it's kind of like getting rid of 2 of your children, and there's a huge emotional component to it. This is something that Jack Miller was a mentor, is a friend. He started this 40 years ago, and now we're trying to separate these. So I know I wake up in panic sometimes that I'm destroying something that he built so much, so many years, but I know intellectually it's the right thing to do. United States— in the United States right now, higher education and healthcare are moving in very rapid changing environments. They have to be incredibly focused. The value proposition needs to be incredibly focused, and the business model needs to be resilient. What we're doing at Pacific is we're refocusing the school around integrative medicine. We're moving just away from Chinese medicine, integrative medicine. We're bringing in Western medicine.

You said something that many leaders experience, but Maybe, you know, we don't say it out loud. You said intellectually, right, the decision makes perfect sense. You know what you need to do. But emotionally, it's incredibly hard. So, why is that such a real tension for leaders? Because let's make it clear. Most of the decisions strategically make sense. Some maybe are easier emotionally. But I find most of them are hard, especially when they're Huge, huge transformations. What's your take on that?

My take on it is I think it is difficult to separate the emotions from the intellectual aspect and that the emotions will often cloud the intellectual aspect so that you don't want to give up these 2 campuses because they mean so much to me. I know the leaders, I know the students, I know the faculty, I know the environment, I know the city. I love them all. And so emotionally, it's very hard to do it. And it often clouds where you need to go. And that's tough.

And this is perfect. I mean, what you just said is just perfect. When you look at it from a neuroscience perspective, you said it in different words, but you're saying exactly what neuroscience says. The thinking brain processes the strategy, right? The structure, the strategy. The emotional brain is processing meaning, identity, attachment, right? So, when leaders make structural decisions, reorganizations, divestments, layoffs, etc., they're not just managing a strategy. We're not only in the thinking brain. We're navigating human relationships and what you just said, right? Legacy, emotional investment. And those 2 systems in the brain move at very different speeds, which is why leadership decisions that are intellectually obvious can still feel incredibly heavy because the brain is not moving at the same pace, which is totally normal. But it's often underestimated. And we expect leaders just to move at the same speed. Yet it's not that obvious. But your institution teaches acupuncture and Chinese medicine, which operates from a completely different philosophy than traditional Western healthcare.

Right.

So we got listeners who may not know. Can you explain the core difference between the 2 philosophies? Yes.

So Chinese medicine is a complete medical system, just like Western medicine, but it comes from a different philosophy about what is health. In the Chinese medicine system, you're looking at maintenance and you're looking at wellbeing. and staying in well-being. And well-being is really defined as the balance of the mind, the body, and the spirit. It is a daily activity to keep in that balance and is the daily activity to keep balanced. The Western model of healthcare is an infectious model disease— infectious model, which is find the problem, fix it.

Right.

And it's mostly with surface problems. So take this pill, get something done. It is not the root problem. In Chinese medicine, you really try to find what is the root problem that is causing the disturbance, is causing the chi not to flow, the energy not to flow in the body. And whatever that root cause is, you need to find it. You can't do just the surface activities, which is really the infectious model disease that's happening in the United States right now.

Yeah, and I'd love to make a parallel into organizations. is that most companies and organizations operate, in my opinion, most, okay, let's not generalize. They operate exactly like Western medicine. They react after something breaks, after burnout, after performance drops, after culture basically deteriorates, or when people leave, or after people leave. But few actually ask the more important question, how do we keep the organization healthy in the first place. So, I'm gonna let that sit for now and move on to a really interesting— another interesting parallel that you made. You said that just like a person needs balance between mind, body, and spirit, the same principle applies to organizations. So, tell us a bit more about this.

The way I think about it is, as a human being, you're looking for that balance. You're looking for the balance of the mind, the body, and spirit. And when you are in balance, the chi flows, the energy of the body flows. You are in a natural state of homeostasis and flow, very similar to a business.

Mm-hmm.

The analogy would be that the strategy is the mind, that the organization is the body, and that the mission is really the spirit. And those 3 things have to all be working and have to all be functioning, and that there cannot be any, any stasis in the energy. If things get blocked in the strategy, if things get blocked in the organization, if things get blocked in the mission, then it doesn't flow. And when it doesn't flow, that's when it starts having problems. And those problems may be deep-seated and may take a long time to emerge.

Mm-hmm.

Just like a human being in the body. You're going to have energy that doesn't flow in certain parts of your body in Chinese medicine. And what that does is it causes stagnation in the liver or the heart or the lungs. And over time that comes out in different ways. It could be a dermatological problem. It could be a behavioral problem. You got to get down to the root cause of why it isn't flowing or what's happening. And those things are very analogous.

And I love that. I love that. You know, it might not be exactly what you said, but I think, and correct me if I'm wrong. So mine, Mind is like the strategy and the thinking, right? In an organization, the body, the operations, I'm assuming the execution. And the spirit is, if I can call it, the purpose or the culture. And I love that because this is where I see the connection with leadership and neuroscience. When organizations fall out of alignment between purpose, strategy, and execution, if we look at about mind, body, and spirit, the system begins to fall apart. People are still working. The meetings still happen. Projects are still moving forward. But something feels different. Something feels heavier. And you get maybe certain signs just like a body would react, right?

Yeah.

You start seeing things like maybe slower decisions, lower accountability, some people leaving, and etc. Maybe more tension in conversations. And you might just ignore those. But eventually, the system you'll realize that the system— something's wrong. I gotta get— I gotta fix it. You know, system itself is literally out of balance. And unfortunately, most leaders don't recognize it until the cost becomes visible. Now, you shared something very personal that shaped how you think about health. Your father passed away at 98 years old, and watching his final years changed your view of the healthcare system. Can you tell us about that experience?

Yeah, it was my dad. My father passed away about 2 years ago, and for the 2 years prior to that, I lived about an hour and a half or 2 hours from him. I would go once a month and spend the weekend with him, and over that time, I saw the different parts of his body, the mind, spirit decay. And it's incredibly difficult to watch, you know, someone Go through this. It's incredibly— he was an incredibly dignified man. He was an architect and loved the environment and everything around him. And slowly his ability to process a lot of that went away. And what was happening with the Western medicine was that they were really trying to find surface activities to help him. He was going to die.

Mm-hmm.

We needed him to go through that process in the natural way. that would embrace his mind, his body, and his spirit and do it in a way that was dignified and do it in a way that really brought all those 3 things together. So it was very difficult. But, you know, when you see him trying to do— I remember he was trying to do the math and he didn't understand why he wasn't 99 because he was born in December and he couldn't— and he kept doing it over and over. And it was— his mind was going at that point. And it's incredibly difficult to see, but you need to take into account not just what's happening cognitively with him, but also how that's impacting him emotionally.

Mm-hmm.

And how that impact emotionally is impacting the family and how it is impacting also his physical around him because of all the, what's happening with his body in the hospice and everything else. So, It really brought into really sharp point to me that this mind, body, spirit kind of component, and that they all need to be in harmony, even if you're dying. Yeah. It needs to be in harmony so that your body and the organization can do what it needs to do. And that if you're trying to stop it in any way, you're bringing about something really is, is gonna be more difficult in the long run.

Yeah. And, and one thing you said really stayed with me, Malcolm, you said that health is not simply the absence of disease. Health is balance. And that applies just as much to leadership when you think about it, because a leader can look successful externally while on the inside operating completely out of balance. I think there's a lot of work to be done. And I think the first step is awareness, just, you know, to kind of the prevention, the health, focusing on the health as opposed to disease after the fact. Now you're leading nowadays through a major, again, major transition at Pacific College. That's a lot of responsibility and pressure as we already discussed. And what helps you personally maintain balance as a leader in the middle of this whole thing?

Well, what really helps me is a lot of the principles of Chinese medicine. And really at the core of that for me is a meditation practice.

Mm-hmm.

And meditation, if you try to sit quietly and just let your mind be and let things come to your mind and flow away from your mind over time, if you develop that practice, what it really does is there's a brief minute between reacting and responding. You can react to something, which is the gut emotional quick response.

Mm-hmm.

That's the reaction. But a response takes a minute, a fraction of a second before you can think about things and respond. If you're meditating, what happens is you understand so much more about your body. You can understand, you can feel when the tension is there. You can feel when your muscles are happening. You get into that. And so that when someone asks you a question, And you're in that moment of the decision, you're not reacting, you're responding. You're taking the pause, just a second pause before that reaction, and you're giving a response.

Yeah.

I mean, meditation is so important to me, and meditation and meditative practices is really key to that.

This is so important because that's why maintaining balance as a leader isn't a luxury anymore. It's a responsibility. I mean, a lot is going on nowadays. And the thing is, your nervous system sets the tone for the entire system around you. So, if you're not regulating your nervous system, however way you do it, and I love the fact that you brought up meditation, it's a practice of mental fitness basically because you're really training your awareness and your presence, that calm authority. And it's no longer something that we can ignore. It's time for the rapid fire. The time flew by. That's crazy. You ready?

I'm ready.

Okay. So I got about, I think I have 4 questions for you, but anyway, we'll play it by ear. So let's go. One word that defines great leadership today.

I think great leadership is compassion right now. There's so much happening in the world. There's so much happening that is influencing people when they come to work that you've got to have compassion. You got to understand the whole person. You gotta understand what they're bringing. And until you do that, you know, it's gonna be difficult. So I would say compassion is the number one thing that I'm experiencing right now in the world that is very difficult.

Oh, we, we, we can't have enough of that. I absolutely love that answer. One habit that helps you stay balanced under pressure?

I think it is meditation, exercise, meditation, exercise, and what you eat.

Right.

What you eat. Is happy, you're doing yourself 3 times a day. What is going in? Sugar, is it going in? What is going in that's healthy and positive? If you're taking things into your body that are healthy and positive, if you're moving, getting all the endorphins and dopamine and all that kind of stuff moving through your body, your muscles naturally do, that's going to be great. And then your mind, you got to work on your mind too and have some meditation and think about it.

Great. So one misconception about health or wellness You wish people understood?

That health and wellness is the accumulation of small things over time. It is the small— it is stress. 80% of the disease in the body comes from stress, which is your mind. So what are the daily activities that build up over time that help you? And health and wellness is not something that happens overnight. It's not a pill, it's not anything, but it's accumulation of small activities day after day, week after week, year after year.

And one leadership lesson you wish more executives and leaders practiced consistently?

I would say behavioral interviewing. I think that has really changed the game for me in terms of trying to bring— we're constantly— there are about 600 people report to me in the organization. So trying to import and get everybody to do some behavioral activities. Scenarios, give people scenarios, have them talk through what did they do. Because again, the way they react and the way they are on the job with their activities is really a transformational activity.

Great insights. Thank you so much, Malcolm. So here's the question I'd like you— I'd like to leave you with after this whole conversation to all our listeners here and people that are watching us on video. Where might your team already be out of balance? And what might it quietly be costing you? Because most organizations don't lose performance overnight. Like I said, they lose it slowly. And by the time leaders notice it, the cost is already real. So, this is exactly why I'm doing this show. This is exactly as well why I built Pressure Proof Leadership. If you're an individual leader and you want to strengthen your own decision-making, your own clarity, emotional regulation, and calm authority under pressure, you see a QR code here. Please scan it. And if you're not watching on video, you're listening to this, look for the description to the Linktree link. And you can look at my masterclass, Play at the Level You Were Built For. It's basically designed to help leaders understand how their brain operates under pressure and how to build that mental fitness required to lead at a completely higher level. And if you're leading a team or an executive group and you can already feel pressure quietly creeping in, connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the work I do. I work with leadership teams to build that resilience, that clarity before the cost of literally imbalance becomes too high. And of course, as always, if you found this episode useful, helpful, follow, Share, subscribe, act. And share it with anybody that, you know, you think, yeah, you know, my buddy so-so or my colleague could really use this episode. This was very insightful. And as always, lead boldly, stay human. And remember, the strongest leaders don't just fix problems. They build systems that stay healthy Under pressure. Malcolm, any last words before we wrap up here?

No, it's been great. It's been a great session with you, and it's been great thinking about it. And I think if this— the last thing for people to think about is balance, the mind, the body, and the spirit, and that, you know, that balance brings harmony, and the harmony allows you to perform at a different level.

Thank you so much, Malcolm. Very wise, insightful words. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us. And we'll see you all next week. Bye for now.