Steven MacGregor
Senior leaders are being asked to deliver under conditions that erode the capacity required to deliver. Cognitive load, decision volume, and chronic uncertainty have become the steady state, not the exception. The unresolved question is whether the operating discipline that keeps leaders clear, recovered, and capable belongs in HR as a wellbeing benefit, or inside leadership development as performance infrastructure.
Steven MacGregor helps senior leaders sustain performance under pressure, building the resilience, clarity, and operating habits that hold up when the workload does not.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Steven MacGregor
- He has built a single, named methodology, the Sustaining Executive Performance programme, and tested it on more than 20,000 executives in person across markets ranging from Peru to Qatar.
- The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform gives senior teams an operating model for sustaining leadership performance under pressure, delivered inside Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle.
- He founded the General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel partnered with Pinsent Masons and shortlisted for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year at the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026, evidence the platform holds up in one of the highest-pressure leadership populations.
- A decade-long trilogy, Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), and The Daily Reset (2024), gives him a coherent body of work that connects performance science, organisational design, and behavioural change.
- He sits inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice as a Senior Advisor, so the work is calibrated to how serious operating companies actually run.
Biography highlights
- Founder, Chief Wellbeing Officer (CWO) leadership development platform, delivered to executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle
- Founder, General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel with chapters across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East
- Founder and CEO, Leadership Academy of Barcelona (LAB)
- Senior Advisor, People and Organizational Performance practice, McKinsey & Company
- Honorary Professor of Health and Wellbeing, Glasgow School of Art
- Faculty experience at IESE, IE Business School, IMD (Lausanne and Singapore), and CEIBS (Shanghai and Jakarta)
- Author of Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018, with Rory Simpson), and The Daily Reset (2024)
Biography
Most senior leaders today are running a workload their predecessors would not recognise. Decision volume has compounded, recovery time has collapsed, and the pressure is no longer episodic. The harder question is what organisations actually invest in to make that sustainable. That is the line of work Steven MacGregor has spent two decades building, first inside business schools, then through the Leadership Academy of Barcelona, and now through the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform and as a Senior Advisor inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice.
The Sustaining Executive Performance programme started as an applied research project drawing on elite sport, including time with FC Barcelona’s athletics team, and elements of human-centred design. It has since been delivered to more than 20,000 executives in person, from Peru to Qatar. Today the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform sits on top of that foundation, and is delivered inside executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle, with teaching at IESE, IE, IMD, CEIBS, and the Glasgow School of Art.
The decade-long trilogy gives the work its intellectual spine. Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015) set out the evidence-based link between wellbeing and decision-making, clarity, and long-term execution. Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), written with former Telefónica Chief Learning Officer Rory Simpson, formalised the argument that wellbeing needs an owner at the top table, with metrics, budget, and authority. The Daily Reset (2024) translates behavioural science and habit formation into the everyday practices that make performance stick.
The General Counsel Wellbeing Network, which MacGregor founded in 2024, is where the platform meets one of the most pressured leadership populations in business. It now operates across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East, with a partnership with Pinsent Masons and a Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026 shortlisting for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year. His training is unusual for the field: a doctorate in engineering design management with research periods at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, and an Honorary Professorship at the Glasgow School of Art. That background shapes the work. The focus is less on motivation and more on the design of work itself, which is what makes the material useful to senior teams trying to convert wellbeing language into operating change.
Key speaking topics
- Sustainable leadership performance under pressure
- Executive resilience, clarity, and recovery
- Workplace wellbeing as an operating discipline
- The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform
- Personal energy and recovery for senior leaders
- Health, performance, and the design of work
- Behaviour change inside corporate environments
Ideal for
- CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Chief Wellbeing Officers building enterprise-wide leadership performance and wellbeing strategies
- Executive committees and boards reviewing burnout, attrition, and human-capital risk
- General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, and senior in-house counsel managing performance under chronic load
- Partner groups in professional services and law firms managing performance under chronic load
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of what wellbeing means as a leadership performance discipline, not a benefit category
- The Sustaining Executive Performance framework as a concrete tool for senior leaders to apply to themselves and their teams
- A view on where the Chief Wellbeing Officer function sits in an operating model, with named accountabilities
- Practical habit-formation tools drawn from elite sport, behavioural science, and design that senior leaders can adopt in their own week
Talks
How high performance actually works for senior leaders, and what makes it sustainable rather than accidental.
Key takeaways:
- The Growth Equation as a model for managing stress and recovery, with what leaders can control and what they need to let go of
- A practical framework for sustaining energy across four batteries: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
- A personal energy blueprint that turns recovery into a designed habit rather than a residual one
Designing a workday that supports clarity and good decisions under pressure, instead of reacting to whatever the calendar brings.
Key takeaways:
- An audit of the micro-moments that shape executive performance, including morning rituals, meeting quality versus volume, and protected thinking time
- Chronotype analysis applied to scheduling, so leaders work with their biology rather than against it
- A redesigned daily structure that supports deep work and better decisions when the load is heaviest
How leaders shape the climate their people experience every day, and the practical mechanics of building cultures where good work happens.
Key takeaways:
- The Design Vowels framework (Ambiguity, Empathy, Iteration, Observation, Understanding) as a working model for modern leadership
- How psychological safety, humility, and servant leadership translate into specific leader behaviours
- What it takes to rebuild trust and culture in teams under pressure, scaling fast, or recovering from change
Why inspiration fails and implementation works, and how leaders embed behaviour change so it actually sticks.
Key takeaways:
- The mechanics of habit loops, cues, friction, and accountability, drawn from behavioural science and applied to senior leadership routines
- How to start small, break entrenched patterns, and build the conditions for flow
- The link between neuroscience, daily practice, and high performance without burnout