Podcast guest

I asked forty senior leaders what the role cost them, rather than what it took. Thirty-one of them named the exact thing that protects them, instantly and without hedging. It was also the first thing they cut when load arrived.

Zero counter-examples across the whole set

Rachel Taylor MSc(Hons)
Biochemist & geneticist

Your audience is doing this while they listen.

I am not here to tell anyone to sleep more. The interesting part is why people who know exactly what protects them stop doing it.

What the interviews kept returning to

Not the meetings. Not the reporting. The swim, the run, the walk, the thing that keeps them upright. It goes first, and they can all name it.

I am a biochemist and geneticist. I spent a year interviewing leaders across four countries about what their work costs them, and the same patterns came back regardless of sector, gender or seniority.

Episodes I can carry

Five that have never been done.

The first thing to go is the thing that was working

Thirty-one of forty named their protective habit without hesitating, then described cutting it under pressure. No counter-examples. Why the most reliable lever is the least defended.

You can hear depletion in someone’s grammar

Thirty-eight of forty hold “I” perfectly well for competence and for triumph, then switch to “you” the moment the subject is their own failure or exhaustion. It switches topic by topic, which means it can be tested live, on air.

Why you get sick on the first day of the holiday

Twenty-six of forty only recognised the depletion looking backwards. The body files its report late, and then the report gets misread as a virus, age, or a bug off the plane.

The people running the wellbeing programme are not on it

Twenty-eight of forty build care structures for everyone else while rationing it for themselves. What that does to a culture that is watching them.

What a genetics test can and cannot tell you about your work

Where the science genuinely helps, where it is being oversold, and why “get a proper clinical test, not a spit kit” is the most useful sentence in the field.

The research behind it

Original, and not yet published anywhere.

senior leaders interviewed across four countries, one hour each

37h

of recorded conversation, coded line by line

31/40

named the thing that protects them, then cut it first

38/40

change pronoun on exactly one kind of material

Chief executives, chairs and founders, in finance, health, technology, media, law and the public sector. A book drawn from the work is forthcoming.

Hear me first

Rather than take my word for it.

Forty-seven minutes on the biology underneath leadership, the genetics that actually matter, and why the people who know what protects them stop doing it.

Why Grit Isn’t Enough · Fireside Leadership Podcast

For producers

Everything you need, without having to ask.

Short bio, for show notesRachel Taylor MSc(Hons) is a biochemist and geneticist, and co-founder of Taylored Health & Performance Technologies. She spent 2026 interviewing forty senior leaders across four countries, asking not what it took to succeed but what it cost them. A book drawn from the work is forthcoming.

Long bioRachel Taylor MSc(Hons) is a biochemist and geneticist, and co-founder of Taylored Health & Performance Technologies. She spent 22 years in biotechnology and personalised health, including building LC-MS analytical methods for forensic toxicology, before turning that training on a different question: what leadership does to the body of the person doing it.

She authored the Leadership Capacity model and designed the Taylored Precision Health Protocol. In 2026 she interviewed forty senior leaders across New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, asking each what the role had cost them rather than what it took. The patterns held across sector, gender and seniority. A book drawn from that research is forthcoming.

One lineBiochemist and geneticist researching what leadership costs the body of the person doing it.

TopicsLeadership capacity · the biology of decision-making · genetics without the hype · why high performers stop doing what works

FormatRemote or in studio. Based in Hamilton, New Zealand, on New Zealand time. Comfortable with long form, live audience, and being challenged on the science.

Email me directly

rachel@taylored.health · taylored.health

Podcast Guest