The Cost
of an Exhausted Mind
to the Business

Over more than 16 years of teaching this technique, with approximately 7,000 students and more than 3,000 lectures delivered to audiences throughout Brazil. According to her, exhaustion rarely manifests as a single obvious symptom. It manifests as two opposing behaviors that, at first glance, seem like different leadership styles, but stem from the same root.

One is paralysis disguised as caution: important decisions are put off month after month because the leader no longer has the clarity to assess the risk, only a vague sense that something might go wrong. The other is impulsiveness disguised as agility: cuts, layoffs, or course corrections made too quickly as a way to relieve internal tension—not because the decision itself was well-considered. “The two seem like different leadership styles. In fact, they are the same exhaustion manifesting itself in opposite ways,” explains Elisa.

This wear and tear comes at a cost, and it shows up in places rarely associated with the cause.

Turnover driven by issues with leadership, negotiations that drag on because decision-makers are procrastinating, hires reversed months later because they were made under pressure, and a team culture that mirrors the emotional state of those at the top.

It is this last point that she considers the most underestimated. “A team doesn’t copy the leader’s strategy. It copies the leader’s nervous state. If the leader is at their limit, the team learns—without anyone saying a word—that this is the acceptable standard of operation,” she says. The result, according to her, doesn’t usually manifest as a single, visible crisis—it manifests as a company that, month after month, accepts delivering slightly less than it could, without anyone being able to pinpoint exactly when this began.

The Tonos Mental method was developed to restore to leaders something that the high-performance routine erodes first: the ability to truly rest, even if only for a few minutes, and regain the clarity needed to make decisions. Twenty minutes of deep rest while remaining alert, practiced regularly, provide the brain with a regenerative effect comparable to that of a full night’s sleep—without taking the executive away from their routine, without requiring a retreat, and without halting operations.

In companies, the program typically follows a three-pronged approach. First, an assessment of the leadership team’s current state—an analysis of how fatigue and overload are, in practice, shaping recent decisions. Next, individual sessions with those in positions of greatest decision-making authority, where the brain reset is taught and incorporated into their routine. And finally, cultural development work with the team surrounding the leadership, so that the benefit isn’t limited to a single person but spreads to those who work with them every day.

But Elisa is emphatic: the technique alone isn’t the point. The point is the shift in understanding it brings about.

She observes a shift in behavior between the companies that seek her out today and those from a few years ago. Today, more and more companies reach out before a crisis hits, driven by a simple calculation: investing in the mental health of decision-makers costs a fraction of what a bad decision, a lost talent, or a culture eroded by months of leadership operating at the breaking point costs.

This shift is part of a broader movement. With the update to NR-1, which now requires companies to manage psychosocial risks in the workplace, the issue has moved beyond mere HR discourse and entered the compliance and governance agenda. For Elisa, this is real progress—but insufficient if it remains limited to legal obligations. “The law may require a company to map the team’s psychosocial risks. But no one is going to fine a partner for making bad decisions because they haven’t slept in months. That will only change when the leader himself understands the magnitude of what is at stake,” she says.

Reducing this debate to avoided costs is only looking at half the problem. “If we only talk about mental health because it’s expensive not to take care of it, we’re still treating people as resources. In her view, mental health isn’t just another item on the list of business priorities: it’s the foundational condition upon which all other priorities rest. Without it, there is no well-executed strategy, no consistent decision-making, and no leadership capable of inspiring—there is, at best, borrowed performance, which eventually runs dry.

That’s why Elisa insists on distinguishing between two concepts that are often conflated: mental health as a benefit—something a company offers when there’s money left over—and mental health as a foundation, present in every decision, every meeting, and every leadership relationship, whether it’s being addressed or not. “The question is never whether mental health influences business. It always does. The question is whether it’s being managed conscientiously or left to chance,” she summarizes. A company may even grow for a while under leadership that is burning out from within—but the price is paid, sooner or later, in the form of poor decisions, lost talent, and missed opportunities that go unnoticed because those who should have spotted them no longer had the clarity to do so.

“No one puts this in the spreadsheet, but they should. Before any strategy, any goal, or any growth plan, there is a simpler and more decisive question: How is the mind of the person who will be in charge of all this? The answer to that question is what determines the true scale of everything else,” concludes Elisa.