Dr Erin Quinane
Nearly a decade ago, I stopped being able to do the thing I was best at.
I had spent twenty years as the person who could carry more. Longer hours, harder problems, the file nobody else wanted. I was an overachiever and a perfectionist, and both were working beautifully, right up until they were not.
What happened was a breakdown, driven in large part by corporate burnout.
Here is the part I still find most interesting. Nobody saw it coming, including me. I was not hiding anything. I was delivering. My reviews were strong. By every measure my organisation had, I was fine.
The measures were wrong.
What I went looking for
When I started reading the research, I found a great deal on resilience and wellbeing, and almost nothing on the level at which I had actually failed.
Not my skills. Not my commitment. The system underneath both: a nervous system running without recovery for two decades, and a set of decisions I had made very early about who I had to be in order to be valued.
Nobody was measuring either one. So I went and did a doctorate on it.
What I built
At Ashurst, as Head of Cognitive Endurance and High Performance, I designed the world's first integrated cognitive endurance programme for law firm partners and senior executives. Neuroscience, physiology, occupational health, leadership development and data analytics, in one system.
It worked because it treated the whole system. Not physiology in one programme and leadership development in another, run by different people who never spoke, but one sequence where each part was a precondition for the next.
That is still what my practice is built on. Not a single method and not a single measurement. The argument that these layers are inseparable, and that working on any one of them alone will eventually fail the leader it was meant to serve.
What I do now
Everything I do runs on one model. The Integrated Leader Performance Model has three layers, and each one is a precondition for the one above it. That sequence is not a teaching device. It is structural.
Layer one. The Deep Current.
Your physiology. I measure it with medical grade heart rate variability data, collected across your actual working days rather than in a lab or at rest. For most leaders it is the first objective account they have ever had of what their instrument is genuinely doing.
Layer two. Your Inner Architecture.
The decisions you made very early about who you had to be in order to be safe, valued or successful, and how those decisions are still running your leadership decades later. Six pillars, in a necessary order: your story, your identity, your values, your inner authority, your leadership energy, and your presence.
Layer three. Leadership Execution.
Not a separate component. What becomes available when the first two are holding. Decisions made from centre rather than from anxiety. Judgement that survives pressure. A team that is safer and sharper because of the state you are in.
Three ways to work with me
Leading from Your Own Ground Coaching Programme.
My twelve month senior executive coaching programme, for chief executives and senior leaders twenty years into their careers. Full physiological diagnostic, then the six pillars in sequence. Selective intake, because this work only functions when the fit is real.
The Emerging Leaders Programme.
The same framework, built for a cohort of six to ten leaders who are ten to fifteen years in and already carrying complexity. The point is to build the foundation before the role hardens around them.
Speaking.
Seven sessions across the first two layers, for conferences, partner groups, executive teams and leadership cohorts. Or something built for whatever your organisation is actually carrying.
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch so we can start working together.
