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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. 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.
TOM GODIN, from page 1
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.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 17, 2025, ISSUE 1610
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