Physicist, hedge fund manager and serial entrepreneur Serge Santos argues that the best leaders think like scientists. In this exclusive interview, he explains why leadership depends less on charisma and more on structure, accountability and emotional regulation – and why senior EAs are essential to keeping executives focused and strategically aligned.
Q: You have degrees in physics, finance and computational chemistry and have worked across hedge funds, consulting and fintech. How has that scientific background shaped how you lead?
A: I didn’t plan this cross-disciplinary path but I see now there’s a core skill underlying all of it – structured, rational thinking in the face of uncertainty.
Physics taught me to look for the governing structure beneath any system. Strip away the noise and most problems resolve into a handful of key principles. Hedge funds and consulting added the discipline of the scientific method under high stakes – form a hypothesis, test it before committing resources, learn and refine. Computational chemistry put me inside systems with many interacting components, where, as in business, you have to work out which variables actually drive the outcome and which are just noise.
Q: Leadership is often described as charisma or inspiration. Why do you argue it’s better understood as a science?
A: Charisma isn’t teachable and it doesn’t scale. Above all, it doesn’t explain what happens to performance when you leave the room.
What does explain that is the kind of framework science gives you – repeatable processes for setting expectations, making decisions, creating accountability and generating feedback. Those things can be designed, measured and improved.
The best-performing teams are led by people who treat the fundamentals as a discipline. Inspiration matters, but it’s better seen as an output of good systems, not a substitute for them.
Q: What does a scientific approach to leadership look like in everyday executive decision-making?
A: It means structured problem-solving. Define the problem precisely, gather evidence, test and iterate. It means learning to distinguish signal from noise; knowing which variables are actually driving outcomes.
I’d expect any leader to have a direct line to their key financials at any moment – gross margin, the split between recurring and one-off revenue, payroll costs and so on.
It also means running small experiments before committing to big bets. Testing assumptions in a controlled way before you scale and documenting the reasoning behind decisions, which often yields valuable insights.
Q: What happens when leaders make decisions under chronic stress?
A: The brain shifts into survival mode and prioritises whatever feels most urgent rather than what’s actually most important. Stressed leaders see threats everywhere, become reactive and start to communicate poorly, either micromanaging or withdrawing completely. A downward spiral can set in quickly.
Q: You say emotional regulation is a core leadership skill. Why?
A: When we’re stressed, our brain goes into fight-or-flight mode. That’s useful if a lion is chasing you but catastrophic if you’re making a capital allocation decision.
Emotional regulation doesn’t mean keeping a tight lid on everything. It’s about creating a gap between a stimulus and your response, so you get to choose your reaction rather than being controlled by it.
The research is clear. Chronic stress impairs judgement, narrows focus and erodes trust. I’ve seen entire strategies derailed by a leader who couldn’t manage their own anxiety. But if you can develop this skill, it has a powerful knock-on effect. When you’re calm and deliberate under pressure, the people around you have space to think clearly.
Q: You highlight accountability, discipline and integrity as the foundations of leadership. Why are these so important?
A: These three words can sound like clichés, but they’re core to everything.
Accountability is about information flow. When it’s clear who owns what and what the standard is, problems surface quickly and get resolved. Discipline connects intention and execution. A strategy is nothing unless you’re prepared to execute it consistently, even when that feels tedious. Integrity underpins trust, the operating system of any high-performing team. Without trust, decisions get second-guessed, information gets withheld and alignment erodes.
These values are mutually dependent. Remove any one of them and the system degrades – slowly at first, then all at once.
Q: Can leadership skills be trained?
A: Yes. The idea that leaders are born, not made, is a damaging myth. Leadership is a set of behaviours and thinking patterns, and both can be developed.
Start by growing your self-awareness because you can’t improve what you can’t see. Ask for and really listen to honest feedback on how your behaviour affects others.
From there, work on your decision-making. Separating emotion from analysis, thinking in probabilities rather than certainties, building structured habits for evaluating options. Then stress-test your frameworks in real situations. Leadership is a contact sport that requires repetition and reflection.
Q: Senior EAs work closely with top executives every day. What can an EA do to support better leadership at the highest level?
A: A great EA is a force multiplier for good leadership. They protect the leader’s time and attention (the two most valuable but most poorly managed resources in any organisation).
But a great EA is so much more than that. With their position at a unique intersection in the organisation, they provide leaders with invaluable feedback and perspective.
The best EAs I’ve worked with operate as thinking partners, keeping the leader calibrated, accountable and focused on what matters most. It’s a vital strategic role.
Serge Santos, The Business Physicist.
drserge.com
