The inaugural Leaders Circle Live brought together founders and CEOs for an honest conversation about achieving exceptional results without burning out. Here’s what happened when business leaders got real about performance.
The Work.Life community reached a new milestone with our first Leaders Circle Live event – an evolution of our quarterly gathering of founders, CEOs, and business leaders into something more immediate and actionable.
Leading the session was Bianca Errigo, founder of HumanOS, who shared her expertise on Sustainable High Performance – the art of achieving consistently exceptional results without sacrificing wellbeing, burning out, or compromising long-term success.
The room was filled with leaders from diverse industries, all grappling with the same fundamental question: How do we perform at our best while staying human?
Rather than theoretical frameworks, what emerged were raw, honest reflections from leaders willing to examine their own patterns. Here’s what they shared:
“My biggest takeaway was I need to dedicate focused time to the two, three most productive hours of my day.”
This leader identified something most executives struggle to admit: we know when we’re at our cognitive best, yet we rarely protect those hours. Instead, we allow meetings, emails, and “urgent” requests to colonise our peak performance windows, then wonder why important work feels harder than it should.
“I’m just trying to do too much at any one time. As a business leader, you try and take on more and more, and you think you’re being more productive. But if anything, it’s actually slowing me down.”
Here’s a leader confronting the dangerous equation many executives live by: more tasks = more productivity. The reality they discovered? Cognitive overload doesn’t multiply results – it fragments them. The session introduced the concept of “popcorn brain” – that scattered mental state created by constant notifications from Teams, emails, WhatsApp, and endless distractions.
“I love the term popcorn brain… it’s probably just trying to quieten the noise, get into that flow state.”
“I took away the importance of mono-tasking, something that’s quite difficult to do in the way we live today. That’s something I wanna make sure I’m really intentional about going forward.”
In a culture that celebrates multitasking, this leader recognised that true performance comes from deliberate, focused attention. Mono-tasking isn’t just about productivity – it’s about quality of thought and decision-making.
“Having the time to think about business and how far you’ve come and what you’re doing well, what you need to do better, what’s next – but also giving yourself a bit of a break. Running a business is tough, people put a lot of pressure on themselves.”
Perhaps the most poignant insight came from recognising that leaders rarely create space for strategic reflection. We’re so busy executing that we forget to evaluate, appreciate progress, or give ourselves permission to acknowledge the difficulty of leadership itself.
“The biggest takeaway for me was protecting your peak. So, protecting the time in the day that you’re the most productive. For me, that’s probably 9:00 until 11:00 AM, and I often spread my meetings throughout the whole day. So I’m really gonna try and protect that time.”
Emma identified their optimal performance window (9-11 AM) but admitted to the common trap of allowing meetings to fragment the entire day. The commitment to protect those two hours represents a fundamental shift from reactive to strategic time management.
These aren’t theoretical concepts – they’re practical realisations from leaders running real businesses with real pressures. What makes them powerful is their honesty about current struggles and specific commitments to change.
The common threads are telling:
Here’s what Bianca had to say: “The most powerful moment in the Leaders Circle Live session wasn’t a strategy or a framework, it was when everyone in the room allowed themselves to be real, to be open and to connect. Too often, as leaders, we fall into the constant pursuit of more: more tools, more tasks, more complexity. But sustainable high performance isn’t about more. It’s about stripping back the noise, stepping away from the busyness, protecting the hours when you’re at your best, and giving yourself permission to recover, knowing that recovery isn’t slowing down, in fact the opposite.
When leaders sit together and admit things like, ‘I’m not protecting my best hours for what matters most,’ or ‘I’ve confused busyness with progress,’ or even ‘I’ve tied my self-worth to how much I achieve,’ they allow space for clarity and connection. They realise they’re not the only ones navigating these challenges, and that support already exists in the room. That shift doesn’t just change how they work: it changes how they lead, and how they show up in every part of their lives. And that’s where real, lasting transformation begins.”
What sets Leaders Circle apart isn’t just the expertise of speakers like Bianca Errigo – it’s the willingness of participants to be vulnerable about their challenges and specific about their commitments. This isn’t networking; it’s transformation through honest dialogue.
These gatherings create space for the conversations that don’t happen in board meetings or industry conferences. They address the human reality of leadership: the pressure, the isolation, the constant juggling act between performance and wellbeing.
The success of this inaugural Leaders Circle Live reinforces what we’ve always believed at Work.Life: the best professional development happens in community, through honest conversation, and with practical application.
These leaders didn’t just gain insights – they gained permission to work differently, to prioritise their peak hours, to say no to the productivity theatre that exhausts without advancing. Most importantly, they discovered they’re not alone in these challenges.
The leaders who attended left with specific commitments:
But perhaps more valuable than any individual takeaway was the collective realisation that sustainable high performance isn’t about doing more—it’s about being more intentional with what we choose to do.
As we continue to grow this community, we’re committed to creating spaces where founders and business leaders can explore not just what works, but what works sustainably. The conversations that emerged from this first live session will shape future gatherings, ensuring we continue addressing the real challenges leaders face.
Leaders Circle brings together founders, CEOs, and business leaders who believe in achieving excellence without sacrificing humanity. If you’re leading a business and looking for community that prioritises honest dialogue over surface networking, register to join our quarterly gatherings and live sessions here.
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