Performance Intelligence

Backstage. Heart hammering. Sweat beading. Every mental tool in the toolkit, breathing, self-talk, all of it, failed Dr Michael Gervais in real time.

Michael is one of the world's leading performance psychologists and was moments away from presenting to the international body of sports psychologists. The researcher whose theory he was challenging was sitting in the front row. And he was falling apart.
What pulled him back had nothing to do with technique. It was accidental. Mundane, even. And it became the foundation of a 27-year daily practice that he still runs today.
Presence is not a personality trait. It is not something you either have or you don't. It is a trainable skill, and most of us have never once trained it deliberately.
This conversation will change how you think about pressure, performance, and what it actually means to show up when the moment counts.
You can find Dr Michael at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmichaelgervais/
Listen to the Finding Mastery Podcast: https://findingmastery.com/
You can find JC at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-clarke-1152a065/?originalSubdomain=au

Use Code "PQPODCAST10" to get 10% off your Lumo Coffee order:https://lumocoffee.com/
Interested in sharing your story? Email Producer Shannon at [email protected] today with your story and contact details.
Learn more about Andrew and Performance Intelligence: https://performanceintelligence.com/
Find out more about Andrew's Keynotes : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/
Follow Andrew May: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmay/
Watch the Performance Intelligence Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast
If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most people think they're pretty good at reading people. Maz Farrelly says they're not, including you. 
Maz has sat across from more than 20,000 people across 30 years of television production. Big Brother. X Factor. Celebrity Apprentice. She has watched people try to hide, perform, charm and deceive their way through a room. She knows exactly what they're doing.
Maz shares what three decades of casting, producing and reading talent has taught her about human behaviour, and why most of us are missing signals that are right in front of us. She unpacks her ABCDE framework for reading anyone in the first minute, explains why the word "authentic" is almost always a red flag, and tells the story of the moment Arnold Schwarzenegger taught her something fundamental about how culture actually travels through a team.
30 years of watching humans perform under pressure will teach you things no leadership course ever could.
If you want to get better at reading people, hiring well, or simply understanding what you're signalling before you open your mouth, this conversation will change how you walk into your next room.
00:00 Meet Maz Farrelly — 30 years, 20,000+ interviews, Big Brother to X Factor
02:37 Can you spot a star before they blow up? The reality TV casting truth
03:00 Why sincerity beats talent — even being "sincerely awful" works
05:46 The 10,000 hours debate: Gladwell vs. Epstein on mastery and range
09:21 How to read anyone in the first minute — the A-B-C-D-E framework
10:28 Clothes, body language, content, delivery, entertainment — what yours says about you
13:46 Charisma: why it makes great CEOs, cult leaders, and con artists
16:00 Big Brother casting gold — the man living in a car park with a British accent
35:10 Maz reads the host live — and nails it
39:33 The authenticity myth: why saying "I'm authentic" proves you're not
44:57 Confidence paradox — the moment you think you've cracked it, you're done
55:08 How to find out who you really are: the question framework that actually works
57:09 Why failure is where the smart money is
59:54 Women read the room differently — and why that's not a compliment to society
1:06:00 Attention is currency: what Ozzy Osbourne and McEnroe understood that most don't
1:11:15 Ozzy Osbourne, ants, and a straw — completely on brand
1:14:23 Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paula Yates, and one very awkward seven minutes
1:18:13 The leadership lesson Arnold didn't know he was teaching
1:21:01 Why most people can read a stranger in three seconds and don't realise it
Find Maz at https://www.mazspeaksglobal.com/

Use Code "PQPODCAST10" to get 10% off your Lumo Coffee order:https://lumocoffee.com/
Interested in sharing your story? Email Producer Shannon at [email protected] today with your story and contact details.
Learn more about Andrew and Performance Intelligence: https://performanceintelligence.com/
Find out more about Andrew's Keynotes : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/
Follow Andrew May: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmay/
Watch the Performance Intelligence Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast
If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

8 blokes showed up to help a mate with prostate cancer. They cleaned his house, mowed his lawn, scrubbed his kitchen. 3 hours of work. No gym. No program. No heart rate monitor.
Dr Paul Batman ran the numbers afterwards and told them what they'd actually done. The equivalent of three five-hour marathons.
Most of us have been thinking about movement the wrong way. We wait for the perfect workout, the blocked hour, the gym membership we'll actually use. Meanwhile the people living longest are the ones carrying their own groceries, climbing their own stairs, and mowing their own lawns.
Dr Paul Batman is an exercise physiologist, university academic, and one of Australia's leading voices on active living. In this conversation, he breaks down what METs actually mean, why fitness snacks work, and how to build more movement into the life you already have, without overhauling any of it.

You can find Dr Paul at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-paul-batman-9092a052/

Use Code "PQPODCAST10" to get 10% off your Lumo Coffee order:https://lumocoffee.com/
Interested in sharing your story? Email Producer Shannon at [email protected] today with your story and contact details.
Learn more about Andrew and Performance Intelligence: https://performanceintelligence.com/
Find out more about Andrew's Keynotes : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/
Follow Andrew May: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmay/
Watch the Performance Intelligence Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast
If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

Most conversations about ADHD stop at the diagnosis. This one goes further.
ADHD expert, Lindy Hadges, gets specific across the three groups where ADHD is most misunderstood and most consequential: high performers in business and sport; women, who are being diagnosed in their mid-50s after decades of masking; and children, whose ADHD behaviours look very different at home than at school.
Lindy is an ADHD specialist, clinician, and director of the ADHD Foundation Australia. She brings science, honesty and genuine compassion to a conversation that is long overdue.
If someone in your life needed to hear this, send it to them.
1:45 Why the 9 to 5 desk job is one of the worst environments for the ADHD brain, and what works instead.
4:20 Brain breaks, pulsing and the panoramic gaze: practical strategies for ADHD in a corporate role.
5:55 How the ADHD brain self-medicates with stress, deadlines and adrenaline, and why that often backfires.
7:40 Why ADHD brains need protein every two hours, and why fasting may be working against the ADHD brain.
12:15 The only way to recharge an ADHD brain to 100% and why it has to be done alone.
15:15 ADHD and sleep: why the brain skips REM, the long term costs of that, and what magnesium can do about it.
17:50 Why ADHD people need a body double, what that relationship looks like when done well, and how to avoid making it exploitative.
22:20 Self disclosure at work: who to tell, what to say, and why transparency protects the whole team.
27:30 ADHD in women: why it's chronically underdiagnosed and why menopause is one of the most common triggers for late diagnosis.
31:05 The grief of late diagnosis at 55: finally understanding three failed marriages.
33:40 Lindy's choice to homeschool five children, and what the classroom gets fundamentally wrong for ADHD kids.
37:25 The brain girdle: why ADHD children behave at school and fall apart at home, and what parents can do.
41:35 Practical school advice: Montessori, monthly brain break days, and what good classrooms can look like.
47:30 What Lindy wants to see in the next ten years: moving past both deficit language and toxic positivity.
50:25 Where to get help: ADHD Foundation Australia, low-cost counselling, and the next practical step to take today.
View the ADHD Cake model: https://performanceintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ADHD-Cake-of-Understanding.png
Find out more about the ADHD Foundation: https://adhdfoundation.org.au/about-us
Connect with Lindy: https://ccaa.net.au/practitioner/200102-14/

Use Code "PQPODCAST10" to get 10% off your Lumo Coffee order:https://lumocoffee.com/
Interested in sharing your story? Email Producer Shannon at [email protected] today with your story and contact details.
Learn more about Andrew and Performance Intelligence: https://performanceintelligence.com/
Find out more about Andrew's Keynotes : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/
Follow Andrew May: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmay/
Watch the Performance Intelligence Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast
If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.

A leader from one of Australia's biggest banks called Andrea Clarke with a problem. 5000 employees. 1 AI tool. 0 opens.

Not one person had clicked the app.
Andrea's response wasn't to talk about technology. It was to talk about fear. Because what that leader was really dealing with wasn't a training gap or a communication failure. It was something older and more fundamental: we are not wired for change. We are wired to protect what we have, conserve energy, and stay exactly where we feel safe.
Status. Identity. The quiet confidence of knowing how to do your job well. AI doesn't just threaten people's roles. It threatens all of it at once.
Andrea Clarke is one of Australia's leading voices on change leadership, and in this Bite Size she makes a case that most leaders aren't ready to hear: the problem with your AI rollout started before you introduced the tool. You skipped the conversation people actually needed. 
Still on the fence? Andrea has these words: Redeploy yourself before AI redeploys you.

Subscribe to the Performance Intelligence Podcast for more.
You can find Andrea at her website: https://www.andreaclarke.com.au/
Or at her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaclarke2020

Use Code "PQPODCAST10" to get 10% off your Lumo Coffee order:https://lumocoffee.com/
Interested in sharing your story? Email Producer Shannon at [email protected] today with your story and contact details.
Learn more about Andrew and Performance Intelligence: https://performanceintelligence.com/
Find out more about Andrew's Keynotes : https://performanceintelligence.com/keynotes/
Follow Andrew May: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmay/
Watch the Performance Intelligence Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@performanceintelligencepodcast
If you enjoy the podcast, we would really appreciate you leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps us build our audience and continue to provide high quality guests.