The CEO of Hintsa Performance argues that wellbeing is the foundation of sustainable high performance—not a reward for it.

Here is a brief excerpt from one of the interviews within McKinsey & Company’s Leadership Matters series. In this instance, Fleur Tonies and Jan Ascher, interview Annastiina Hintsa. To read the complete interview, check out others resources, learn more about the firm, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

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It was a hard stop—I literally fell down the stairs and hit my head. My first reaction was to search for my laptop, which is kind of embarrassing now. But that moment, when I was at the bottom of a staircase searching for my laptop, worrying about my work and not worrying about myself—that was a turning point for me. After that, I had the realization that I can’t keep on going this way. If I want to do this job and perform well, I need to change something.

Many people think that was the point when I joined Hintsa and gave up everything and moved away from the corporate career and joined a life of wellbeing and balance and happiness. No. I stayed with McKinsey for years, and I loved it. I thrived.

The Quarterly: Why do people think that?

Annastiina Hintsa: I think it’s a misconception we have—that wellbeing and high performance are somehow mutually exclusive, that these two things can’t coexist. One of the biggest revelations for me was realizing that being well, looking after myself—it’s not something that I earn the right to only after working really hard for a long time. It’s completely the other way around. It’s a prerequisite to be able to perform.

The Quarterly: How do you describe your company and what it does?

Annastiina Hintsa: Hintsa’s mission is to help people live a better life, and consequently, perform better. The company was founded by my father, Dr. Aki Hintsa, about 20 years ago. I got involved in 2016. We’re not a “traditional” wellbeing company. We focus on human high performance with wellbeing as the foundation. Our roots run to sports, and we’ve worked closely with Formula 1 for decades, although most of our work today is with businesspeople, teams, and companies.

Everything starts with the core—a person’s inner motivation to change—and from there we focus on the science and the links between the different elements of wellbeing: physical activity, nutrition, sleep and recovery, biomechanics, mental energy, and general health.

The Quarterly: Say more about those interactions. Can you share an example?

Annastiina Hintsa: Sure. Let’s look at sleep. We had a CEO, just to give you one anecdote, who was sleeping six hours a night. He thought this was enough. He was performing quite well, leading a large organization, and he thought everything was quote, unquote “fine.” My father challenged him to try and sleep for eight hours a night to see the impact.

The executive was shocked. His comment after two weeks was, “Oh my God, I’m seeing colors. For the first time I am actually seeing colors.” By changing that one little thing he realized significant benefits. He was more aware of everything going around him, more in tune with his own emotions, more able to recognize emotions in others. Sleep deprivation affects everything: our emotional intelligence, our creativity, our ability to solve complex problems. And the challenge with sleep deprivation is that we get used to it. That’s what happened to this CEO. He had gotten used to performing suboptimally. The key for him was to have the realization, “Wait, maybe there’s more.”

We’re starting to be able to quantify the impact of things like sleep deprivation, physical exercise, and nutrition on cognitive performance. Not just on our physical performance and health, but on our ability to think on our feet, to be creative, to collaborate—and to collaborate online, which is actually harder than collaborating in person.

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Here is a direct link to the complete interview.