Can you have work-life balance at the top? Three ex-executives on managing yourself: habits, inboxes and stress.

John Newton, Tarek Anwar and Robin have run schools, banks and global businesses. This month they tackle the discipline none of them found easy: managing yourself. Between them they have coached dozens of senior executives, and more than half of those conversations end up in the same place - how do I get my life back?

Tarek explains the 90-day rule for rewiring your brain: pick one behaviour, practise it intentionally, and it becomes a new neural pathway. He shares the habit that mattered most - uncoupling his self-worth from outcomes - and why ego is what stops leaders asking for help. Robin reveals the coaching question most executives cannot answer ("other than work and family, what is your passion?") and his hard rule for email: once a chain hits five replies, kill it and pick up the phone. John owns up to doing emails on Christmas Eve in the south of France, and the three trade honest stress management techniques: spotting your own warning signs, treating emotions as waves that pass, and why staying calm at the top steadies everyone below you.

Key takeaways:

• Change starts with self-awareness: notice one behaviour, question it, then practise its replacement for 90 days until it rewires.
• Your self-worth is not the promotion, the deal or the bonus. Uncouple identity from outcomes and you become easier to lead and to live with.
• Have a passion outside work and family - and be able to name it. If you cannot answer the question, that is the work.
• Work-life balance is real but moving: it shifts with career stage, family, elderly parents. Review it, adjust it, and do not let the balancing itself become a stress.
• Inbox rules that work at the top: a trusted EA clearing 60-70%, no weekend emails (schedule send instead), and the 4-reply rule - if an email chain is not resolved in four replies, kill it and have the conversation.
• Stress is a killer, but not all stress: planned, managed pressure builds trust in teams. Learn your own early warning signs and get to your outlet before it gets to you.

Chapters:

(00:00) Which Beatle are you?
(02:05) Managing yourself: the topic
(03:30) Self-awareness starts change
(06:25) Rewire your brain in 90 days
(09:12) Self-worth vs outcomes
(10:14) Name your passion
(12:05) Is work-life balance real?
(17:40) When we got it wrong
(20:26) Inbox management rules
(22:35) The 4-reply email rule
(25:40) How to manage stress
(27:45) Emotions as waves
(29:56) Who can a CEO offload to?

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Disruption has stopped being the exception and become the job. Three former chief executives on how to lead through it.

John Newton, Tarek Anwar and Robin are the ExExecs - three former executives from banking and education who talk honestly about what leadership actually demands. No guest this episode, just the three of them on the topic every exec is living right now.

It's Monday morning. Tariffs, conflict in the Middle East and AI are all landing at once, and you're the one people look to. This episode is a practical answer to "what do I do?" - how to gather your team and run a fast, honest crisis session, why trust decides whether anyone tells you the truth, and how to treat AI as a chance to remodel your team rather than a threat to survive. It is full of real stories, including a few that did not go to plan.

Key takeaways:

• Run the reverse-brainstorm: give the team five minutes to say how they would destroy the business, then flip every answer into a fix.
• Disruption is the new business as usual - practise for it with ten provocative minutes at the end of an ordinary meeting.
• Anticipate risk early and act on it, the way a good school leader prepared for the VAT change years before it arrived.
• Lead from the front: take the pay cut, fly economy, walk the floor, be present.
• Do AI with your people, not to them - automate the humdrum, hire for critical thinking, become ambidextrous.

Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(00:26) The disruption leaders face now
(01:08) Cost of living and firefighting
(03:02) Comfortable being uncomfortable
(04:23) Monday morning: gather the team
(05:37) Destroy your own business
(09:14) The school VAT risk lesson
(11:43) The shark in the marina
(13:37) Trust and psychological safety
(14:31) Ownership, notes and brunch
(16:30) Missing the obvious
(17:53) A fleet-footed culture
(19:15) The fishmonger who pivoted
(20:31) Protecting your staff
(23:56) A COVID pay cut
(25:40) Lead from the front
(28:52) The AI challenge
(30:06) Remodel the team
(33:17) The ambidextrous company
(34:24) Words matter: the CEO megaphone
(36:06) Wrap-up

Mentioned: the previous ExExecs episode, Crisis Management with Hania, who led HSBC in Cairo through the Arab Spring. Search "ExExecs" on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to hear it.

If this was useful, follow ExExecs and send us a question or a topic you would like us to take on. We read everything: 3exExecs@gmail.com

Hosts: John Newton, Tarek Anwar and Robin.

On 28 January 2011, Hania was COO of HSBC Egypt. She woke up to find her country had no internet and no mobile phones. Every number on her crisis-team list was unreachable. So she picked up an old phone book.

For Episode 5, John, Tarek and Robin are joined by Hania for the inside story of running a bank through the Arab Spring and what came after. Robin knew the story from the regional COO seat in Dubai. This conversation has been twenty years in the making.

What you'll hear:

• The morning of 28 January 2011 - and the paper phonebook that saved the response
• "Emotional stability" - what one senior member of staff said that changed how Hania led
• Why the right person in a crisis is rarely the most senior person in the room
• How to keep the CEO and the regulator informed without crushing the team doing the work
• The queue outside head office that became the proudest moment of her career
• The CEO who came back from abroad and didn't believe his team had handled it
• "Don't waste a good crisis" - the post-event discipline that compounds across a career

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome and the three-host introduction

01:11 Robin introduces Hania

01:34 Hania on ten years as COO of HSBC Egypt

02:25 Tarek's first question

03:08 28 January 2011: no internet, no mobiles

04:40 Stay calm. Systems fail.

05:58 How do you stay calm when you're panicking?

06:55 "Emotional stability"

07:37 Choosing who is in the room

08:00 Why Hania went to the number two

09:33 The IT outage tension

11:05 Visibility and being seen

13:08 Priority communications

13:50 Cash, queues, and the ATM withdrawal limit

14:27 The queue she looked at with real pride

14:59 The HSBC brand

16:04 Call trees and earthquake-readiness

17:24 Did creativity play a part?

18:37 What you can prepare for

20:44 Drills are too easy

21:43 The Christmas Eve thought experiment

23:34 Bromley + Croydon: the Bank of America story

25:30 Working with the regulator

27:28 Managing up: the CEO came back suspicious

29:53 Seeing seismic risk early

30:43 The cost of having no one in-region

31:47 Recognising vs dispelling a crisis

33:30 Don't waste a good crisis

34:34 Crises that prolong, and team fatigue

34:55 John's recap

If you lead anything that has to keep running when the lights go out, this is the one.

Get in touch: 3exExecs@gmail.com