When the mind and body of a business move together, worry fades and real performance begins.
Sometimes I worry. Lately, I’ve been worrying a lot – the kind that keeps looping in the back of your mind even when you’re supposed to be relaxing. On a long drive recently, I decided to do something about it. I queued up an old favorite, Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and then an episode of the Glue Guys podcast with Duke legend Shane Battier (and yes, if there’s a Duke guy involved, it’s automatically worth a listen). His guest was Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors. Odd pairing maybe, but both the book and the conversation came back to the same idea: the connection between the mind and the body.
Every leader eventually learns that a company isn’t a machine – it’s a living organism. Strategy lives in the “mind,” execution in the “body.” Between them runs a nervous system of feedback, trust, and awareness. When that connection is healthy, work feels like flow. When it frays, worry, fatigue, and noise creep in. Two unlikely teachers – Carnegie and Timothy Gallwey – offer a way to see that connection more clearly.
1. Worry and the corporate mind. Carnegie wrote in a time when anxiety was called “nerves.” His cure was disarmingly simple: live in day-tight compartments; act on what you can control; accept the worst, then improve upon it.
Organizations behave the same way anxious people do. We replay last quarter’s misses, project disaster onto the next one, and lose the ability to act cleanly in the present. Endless reports and “what-if” modeling become corporate worry loops – motion without progress. They create the illusion of control while draining real momentum.
Carnegie’s message – stop replaying and start deciding – is the mental half of the mind-body connection. The health of a company’s “mind” depends on focus and presence. A calm mind sets the conditions for confident motion.
2. The body at work. Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis – which Steve Kerr rereads every year – describes two selves:
- Self 1, the conscious controller that overthinks and criticizes.
- Self 2, the deeper, instinctive self that actually performs.
When Self 1 tries to micromanage Self 2 (“keep your wrist firm, don’t miss!”), tension builds and performance collapses. The fix, Gallwey says, is to trust Self 2: see clearly, quiet the commentary, and let the body play.
Companies do the same thing. When leadership can’t stop managing every motion – every deliverable, every email – the corporate “body” tightens up. People stop improvising. Middle managers play not to lose. Innovation becomes risk management disguised as process.
Gallwey’s remedy is attention without judgment: see what’s happening, adjust, and trust the system you’ve trained. For leaders, that means creating the conditions for flow – clear goals, minimal interference, fast feedback.
3. The nerve pathways of a company. A healthy mind-body link depends on good feedback loops. In humans, the nervous system instantly reports what’s working and what’s not. In business, those nerves are:
- Conversations. The emotional synapses between people.
- Metrics. The sensory data that tell the truth about performance.
- Culture. The reflexive behaviors that appear under pressure.
When those pathways get blocked – by fear, politics, or overload – the company loses proprioception. It can’t feel where it stands. Worry fills the gap.
Carnegie’s advice to face facts “promptly and courageously” and Gallwey’s call to observe without judgment both help restore those nerves. Truth, observed calmly, is feedback. Feedback enables motion.
4. From worry to flow. Both authors are pointing to the same transformation: from tension to flow.
- Carnegie’s path: turn vague worry into specific action.
- Gallwey’s path: turn self-conscious effort into awareness and trust.
Translated to business: replace anxious management with adaptive leadership – leaders who sense reality, make small corrections, and stay composed in motion.
When the corporate mind is calm and the corporate body trusted, decision-making speeds up, creativity returns, and execution feels natural. The organization starts to play its own “inner game” – performing from confidence instead of compliance.
5. Practicing the connection. A broken mind can literally kill the body. Here are a few ways to prevent that:
- Hold day-tight reviews. Focus meetings on what can be acted on now, not distant hypotheticals.
- Observe before judging. When something goes wrong, describe what happened before assigning blame.
- Trust trained reflexes. Once systems and people are skilled, loosen the grip and let them play.
- Restore feedback pathways. Make information visible and safe to discuss – especially the uncomfortable kind.
- Re-center on purpose. Remind the “mind” (leadership) why the “body” moves at all.
Creating the embodied enterprise.
A well-run company, like an athlete in flow, doesn’t feel forced. Its mind is clear, its body responsive, its energy directed toward a meaningful goal. Carnegie teaches it to breathe; Gallwey teaches it to swing. Together they remind us that success – personal or corporate – is less about control and more about cultivating presence, trust, and rhythm.
When the mind and body of a business move as one, work stops feeling like strain and starts feeling like life.
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Tom Godin is a senior director at Zweig Group and the leader of the firm’s Performance Consulting practice. Contact him at tgodin@zweiggroup.com. |
