291: Tap into Performance Science with Carla Fowler

https://youtu.be/Me3XLCOh1iM Carla Fowler, MD, PhD and CEO of THAXA Executive Coaching, is driven by a mission to help ambitious leaders perform at their best by applying the principles of performance science. We explore Carla’s journey from scientist to coach and explore her Performance Framework, a science-based model that guides high achievers through four core areas: strategy, execution, mindset, and physiology. Carla explains how strategic clarity and resource prioritization drive focused leadership, and how physiological resilience and mental perspective are essential to long-term success. She also shares how she applies scientific tools to coaching engagements to help leaders build empowered teams and make high-quality decisions under uncertainty. --- Tap into Performance Science with Carla Fowler Good day, dear listeners, it's Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today my guest is Carla Fowler, who is an MD, a PhD, and also the CEO of THAXA Executive Coaching, which helps CEOs and executives with clarity, focus, growth, and support using a proprietary process based on performance science. So welcome to the show, Carla. Thanks so much, Steve. It's really fun to be here chatting with you. It's exciting to have a scientist who is also a coach because I love to combine the two and to have the scientific approach in coaching. I'm trying to do the same thing, but I'm sure I'm not mastering it to the degree that you are. So I'm all ears of how that works. But let's start with my favorite question for guests, which is, what is your personal “Why” that drives you to do what you're doing and how are you manifesting it in your practice? I love that you asked this question, Steve, because I think taking this moment, like there are often a lot of different “Why's” along the way, but for me, I think in reflection, one big “Why” was that as a young person growing up, I always looked out at the world and saw there were a lot of things you could go do. There were exciting goals that you could set for yourself. And I wanted to figure out how to go do that. That was just a very pure sort of desire that even as a young person I had. And I also was very interested, I mean, I certainly had some talents, but I wanted to know like, what could someone do? What did someone have control over? To have more agency in your life as you were trying to navigate and do all of that. And so I think for me, how this manifest was number one, an interest in science, like approaching things scientifically, because certainly my coaching practice, I look at performance from a scientific standpoint, which is to say, what are the principles that really guide how we perform and how it is received and what results we get that has nothing to do with our talent? I mean, we get whatever talent we're born with and we don't really get to control that. But when we think about performance scientifically, now we're talking about things that anyone could access that might help them improve their leadership and I really liked that idea.Share on X Like it motivates me not just for myself to say, well, these are principles I can access, but also to say, these are principles I can share with other people. And regardless of what talent they were born with, we could use them and apply them in day-to-day life and work. That would be really helpful to them. And to me, that just feels like motivating. It feels inclusive, and that's my “Why.” Wow. Okay, so let's dig in and see how that works. So these scientific principles, so how do you connect it to the work at hand? So you're talking to a CEO or an executive, you're trying to figure out what they need to do to perform better. How do you apply principles? Like you observe what's going on and then intuitively some principles flash into your mind and then you say, okay, that would work here or you have a process that you walk people through?