Running on Empty
Years ago, I flew to Bali to deliver a sales training programme — one I had delivered many times, always with excellent results.
Two days before the programme began, I slipped on a pool of water from a leaking air conditioner and hit my head on a tile floor. I was badly shaken, and concussed.
The sensible thing would have been to reschedule. Instead, I told myself the show must go on, travelled on schedule, and delivered the programme.
The sales techniques I taught made sense, but the participants didn't take them in. I had the knowledge, the content, and the experience — but my thinking was foggy. My timing was off, my sense of humour was absent, I couldn't connect with the group. My body and mind were compromised, and the programme failed. A clear case of physiological interference.
In “The Teaspoon Formula” article, I introduced Timothy Gallwey's elegant insight:
Performance = Potential − Interference.
Interference comes in three forms — practical, psychological, and physiological — and I promised to return to the third. Here it is.
Physiological interference is what happens when the body itself becomes an obstacle to performance. Nothing is wrong with your skills, your knowledge, or your commitment. But the physiology that supports them is running at a deficit.
Few professions test the body like hospitality. Split shifts. Long days. Late closings followed by early starts. Meals skipped to feed others. A culture that teaches: the guest comes first, your body comes last. And so hoteliers learn to subjugate or override their own physiology. But every override carries a cost: in a rocky conversation, a poor decision, a moment of slipshod service.
When the body is depleted, the mind follows. Small problems look large. An issue that would normally take five minutes to resolve now feels overwhelming. A colleague's innocent question sounds like criticism. A straightforward decision becomes surprisingly difficult.
When the tank runs low, clarity of mind is the first thing to go. Hunger, exhaustion, and stress narrow our thinking long before mistakes become obvious. And when we are running on empty, we have less access to our best human qualities of empathy, patience, and kindness.
The problem isn't that we get mentally tired. The problem is that we can believe we're seeing things clearly, even when we're not. That was me — bringing a concussion to Bali, thinking it would be ok.
In luxury hospitality, guests expect so much more than simple efficiency — warmth, anticipation, genuine connection. Anticipating what a guest needs before they ask, reading a room, sensing an unspoken mood: these aren't just soft skills. They're some of the most energy-intensive mental work there is, and they're the first to go when the tank runs empty. What's left behind is cold efficiency — genuine hospitality downgraded to transaction management.
In A Handbook for Hoteliers, I share a useful acronym: HALT. Before tackling a significant decision or potentially challenging conversation, check your state. Ask yourself: Am I Hungry? Agitated? Low? Tired? If the answer is yes to any of these, halt. Eat something. Step outside and move the body. Take a ten-minute time-out. Sleep on it if you can. The decision will still be there when the interference has cleared.
Of the three kinds of interference, this one is straightforward. Most of the time, it can be resolved with food, water, movement, rest, or sleep.
And this is exactly why we can easily overlook it — it seems too simple to really matter. Especially for leaders who pride themselves on their capacity to override discomfort, committed to the belief: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
For any leader, physiological interference raises three questions:
• Before your next significant decision, will you check the tank first? HALT only takes ten seconds, but a poor decision can take many months to repair.
• Can you read the signals coming from your team? The grumpy supervisor working a double shift is not revealing their true character — they are showing you their fuel gauge.
• Does your rostering system treat rest as a cost to be minimised — or as an essential ingredient of good judgement and warm service?
We can teach standards, scripts, and skills all day long. But service that is warm and welcoming is a physical product, and clear thinking is a physical achievement.
When you protect the body, you protect the performance.
•••
A Handbook for Hoteliers was written to help leaders recognise and reduce all three kinds of interference — in themselves and in their team.