Unlearn

Scaling The Heights of Human Performance with Annastiina Hintsa, The CEO of Hintsa Performance

Jul 17, 2024

37:47

Leadership is about embracing sustainable practices, fostering continuous improvement, and aligning personal values with professional goals. Today's guest, Annastiina Hintsa, CEO of Hintsa Performance, shares her insights on achieving peak performance in both business and sports.

Annastiina Hintsa is the CEO of Hintsa Performance, a world-leading evidence-based coaching company that helps top athletes and business professionals achieve sustainable success. Driven by science and guided by people, their methods have been tested in some of the most challenging business and sporting environments. Annastiina's journey began with her father, Dr. Hintsa, whose pioneering work with athletes like Haile Gebrselassie laid the foundation for their holistic performance model. Annastiina has expanded this legacy, working with over 50% of Formula One drivers and Fortune 500 CEOs, ensuring they reach and maintain high performance.

Host Barry O'Reilly invites Annastiina to discuss her journey and the impact of Hintsa Performance. From her early involvement in the company to her leadership role today, Annastiina shares valuable lessons on balancing professional and personal well-being. The conversation covers the holistic nature of high performance, integrating physical activity, nutrition, mental energy, and more. Annastiina emphasizes the importance of defining personal success and maintaining perspective through life's challenges.

Key Takeaways:

Holistic Performance: Sustainable high performance involves a balance of physical activity, nutrition, sleep, mental energy, general health, and biomechanics.

Defining Success: Personal success should be clearly defined, considering who you are and what you want beyond professional achievements.

Maintaining Balance: Regularly scheduling recovery and downtime, both on a macro (yearly vacations) and micro (daily detachment rituals) level, is crucial for long-term success.

Perspective and Resilience: Building resilience through multiple identity pillars helps maintain performance and happiness despite setbacks.

Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Embracing a mindset of continuous improvement and being open to unlearning outdated practices is key to sustained growth.

Additional Insights:

Personal Influences on Leadership: Annastiina’s father, Dr. Hintsa, played a pivotal role in shaping her understanding of high performance and well-being.

Handling Setbacks: Viewing setbacks as opportunities for growth and maintaining a broad perspective helps in overcoming challenges.

Technology and High Performance: The rapid advancement of technology necessitates leaders to stay mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared for continuous adaptation.

Episode Highlights

00:00 - Introduction to the episode

02:56 - Annastiina on her early career and her father's influence

"I worked with my dad early days. I was employee number three in the very, very early days..."

03:25 - The turning point of joining the family business

"when my father got sick. So he was, uh, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, passed away 16 months after. And it was a turning point for for me personally"

07:26 - Defining and achieving sustainable high performance

"Our mission is to help people live better lives and as a consequence, perform better..."

27:29 - Importance of balance and avoiding the middle gear

"We get stuck in the middle gear. We get stuck in this kind of like execution mode where we're constantly just, you know, yeah, we're not we're not at our peak. We're also not recovering and resting. We're at this middle gear checking our emails, you know, responding, uh, executing. But when the time comes, when we would actually need to get to that high gear, get to the peak performance"

31:40 - Technology's impact on high performance and the need for human readiness

"how do we make sure that we as humans are ready for that shift?"

36:03 - Practical tips for achieving better performance

"start with the critical questions and you start with that. Do you know who you haven't really think of? Who are you as a person, not just you at work or your job title. How do you actually define success? What is it that you really want? What are the different points of success for you? And then the final question is around sort of control, which is as much as it is about, you know, what are the things that we can control and we can influence."

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