Grounded and Balanced: Why Physiological Intelligence Matters in an AI-Driven Workplace

By Chris Tamdjidi, Co-Founder, Awaris, co-author of The Resilient Culture, who looks at physiological intelligence in this article.
I was in Switzerland recently, preparing for a day of meetings. Before leaving the hotel, I checked the news on my phone. Within minutes, the world appeared filled with bad people doing bad things. Something tightened in my chest.
Then I walked for an hour through a town near Lac Léman. A woman helped a stranger with a heavy bag. A shopkeeper exchanged unhurried words with a regular. Something shifted in me. I hadn't reasoned that most people are decent — I'd felt it. The phone had fed me a distortion; my senses showed me what was true. Most people are good, most of the time, and most things work out.
Why Physiological Intelligence Matters
That small experience captures a crucial skill. As AI mediates more of our work and information, a new question will arise: can we still feel what is real in our own experience? In an industry racing to deploy generative systems, this is a core competence. We call it physiological intelligence: the trained ability to perceive and interpret signals from our body and the real world around us, and regulate our internal state to sharpen judgement and stay grounded. It is the deeper level of emotional and social intelligence which helps us stay grounded in what is real – and not just on our screens. Crucially, this felt connection to ourselves and others also helps us sense what is ethical — and what isn't.
Most current conversations about AI at work focus on what machines will do to our jobs or our brains. A missing question is what AI will do to our bodies. When LLMs handle the first draft, the initial analysis, the boilerplate code, the effort-reward loop that generates felt efficacy — the bodily sense that your actions matter — weakens. You review instead of create. You approve instead of struggle. Over months, this registers as a vague flatness, a loss of appetite for the work and a loss of meaning in work.
Meanwhile, as in-person meetings move to Slack and video tiles, the social signals that maintain trust — micro-expressions, tone, the felt sense of being seen — degrade. We process these through our bodies, faster than conscious reasoning. Strip them away and the social contract erodes silently.
Finally, as work accelerates and AI agents take on more tasks, boundaries will blur and stress will rise. HBR has already highlighted this spillover. But the real issue is that many don't feel how stressed they are. In our data, only 20% of 600 leaders report high stress, yet biometrics show up to 50% in sustained stress activation. Tech leaders are often the worst: always-on Slack, late-night pushes, intense evening workouts that spike cortisol when the body should be winding down. The result is a growing gap between perceived mental energy and physiological strain.
A leader who cannot feel their own stress broadcasts it anyway – research shows that merely observing a stressed person raises cortisol in observers. In a culture already prone to burnout, physiologically-disconnected leaders accelerate the very erosion they need to prevent.
These risks are real — and underestimated. Our experience of work, meaning, connection and wellbeing is felt, not just thought. As that begins to erode, confusion will follow — and words alone won't fix it. We need to stay grounded and train our felt sense: what gives work meaning, builds connection, supports recovery, and still feels ethical as AI reshapes roles and power?
This is the intelligence AI cannot replicate. An algorithm can detect emotional cues in a face. It cannot feel the gut clench when trust is violated, or the warm signal of a team clicking into flow. These somatic signals are the primary data through which humans navigate relationships, make ethical calls and sustain meaning.
As AI capabilities become commoditised, the scarce resource in tech won't be model access or processing power, but grounded humans with jud...