The Bipolar Paradox: How Do Mood Disorders and High Performance Intersect?
Why?
If you lead, manage, or work alongside high performers, understanding this paradox matters. The same traits that can destabilise performance in one context can accelerate innovation and execution in another. By seeing mood disorders through the lens of cognitive range rather than psychological risk, you gain a competitive advantage in how you recruit, support, and retain exceptional people. When leaders learn to create the right conditions, variability becomes a force multiplier, not a fault line, for team performance.
What?
At forty-five, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II. The label explained a lifetime of intensity I’d previously interpreted as drive, restlessness, or overcommitment. What appeared to others as volatility was, in practice, a pattern of heightened focus, rapid ideation, and deep fatigue that followed periods of extreme productivity. This case study explores how mood disorders and high performance intersect. It challenges the assumption that bipolar traits are purely disruptive, showing instead how they can fuel creativity, strategic insight, and sustained output when correctly managed.
How?
In many organisations, the individuals hiding in plain sight with undiagnosed mood variation are often the smartest and most productive members of the collective. Recognising and managing that variability is not about accommodation; it’s about optimisation. To explore this we will answer three key questions:
What is bipolar disorder, and how does it manifest in behaviour and performance?
How does research, such as the ALSPAC study, explain the relationship between bipolar traits, intelligence, and creativity?
What conditions allow someone with bipolar disorder to achieve flow and sustain performance without triggering instability?
BiPolar Disorder
The model below is based on the work of Dr Emil Kraepelin, Professor of Psychiatry at the Imperial University of Dorpat, who in 1913 developed what is now recognised as the Manic-Depressive Spectrum. Kraepelin was the first to conceptualise mood disorders as a continuum of intensity rather than discrete illnesses, describing mania, depression, and mixed states as different expressions of the same underlying process. In the context of this case study, the model is used to illustrate the cyclical nature of mood variation and its influence on performance, creativity, and recovery. It provides a visual framework for understanding how energy, cognition, and emotion oscillate over time, and how these fluctuations, when managed correctly, can enhance rather than hinder output.
Mood Disorder Sine Waves | Source: Based on Kraepelin’s Manic Depressive Spectrum 1913 & Kenny Wallace 2022
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is characterised by oscillations in mood, energy, and activity that can last from days to months. Rather than viewing these as separate episodes, it’s more accurate to picture them as sine waves along a continuum, each representing a different degree of mood intensity over time. Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and Cyclothymia are mapped across peaks of mania or hypomania and troughs of depression, with Bipolar I representing the most severe elevation, often including psychosis.
I’m not going to go into detail on the various types mentioned in the model above as its purpose in the case study is to highlight the four particular mood states associated with mood disorders. These lists are not definitive, but will provide some insight on what an individual can experience throughout their up’s and downs.
Mania: Abnormally energetic, happy or irritable, impulsive, disregard for consequence, severe insomnia, possible psychosis.
Hypomania: Overwhelming sense of wellbeing, mentally sharp, highly creative & productive, mild insomnia, anything is possible.
Minor Depression: Negative outlook, emotionally detached, increased need for sleep, simple tasks become taxing.
Major Depression: Diminished mental capacity, physically exhausted, noticeable lack of self care, potentially suicidal.
Let me give you a personal example of how it can all start with a snapshot of an up and down:
Bipolar II was more of a decoing than a diagnosis. It explained decades of oscillation between boundless drive and complete depletion. With the help of a psychiatrist, I traced the origin of this pattern to an early mismatch between temperament and environment: a shy, risk-averse child masking discomfort through impulsive action. In order to function in day to day life I had to figure out how to navigate nursery, school, kids parties, etc, all of which I couldn’t stand. I had no interest in any of these things. My coping strategy became: Leap before looking, which proved both adaptive and destructive. It created momentum and opportunity, but it also normalised intensity without consequence.
I’ve been unable to plan beyond immediate gratification my entire life, in fact I find planning and long lead-times for work and play immensely stressful. The opposite is also true. I remain calm in the chaos with an objective head, especially in emergencies and dangerous situations. Wait times between agreeing a course of action and executing for a client can be distressing, yet I’m unphased when keeping a casualty conscious and alive until paramedics arrive. During my time in the Parachute Regiment I always requested to be first man out the door on a jump, not for bravado, but to reduce the intense discomfort of time spent waiting. I’ve walked on-stage ad-hoc at a client’s global conference and numerous live interviews on the BBC without any perceivable preparation, conversely I’ve written and planned a TEDxTalk over an agonising 12-week period before delivery resulting in severe anxiety on the day.
The adaptation to favour leap before looking inevitably led to many hedonistic outlets and thrill-seeking behaviours. One I still struggle with to this day is spending habits. I have a very poor understanding of how to leverage money as an asset, it’s a genuine liability in my hands. I have no skill or capability to develop, manage and grow wealth. Yet. But, I’m working hard on this now as everything caught up with me decades later, hence being referred to a psychiatrist at the age of 45.
When in a depressed state I can become curt and dissociated. My joints become inflamed and stiff like the tin man from the Wizard of OZ, literally unfurling my toes and fingers, legs and arms to get out of bed. If I make it to the shower I can forget to wash, standing under the flow of water with no concept of time until it runs cold. I struggle to fully form thoughts and I sleep a lot while feeling continually tired and ready for bed. Successfully washing and putting on clean clothes is considered a good day.
When in an elevated state I don’t experience a need to sleep, even though logically I know it’s something I need do. I can also forget to eat and drink. In terms of creativity and productivity these explode. Idea’s and connections with disparate data present like a tsunami of images faster than I can write or speak, but we’ll come back to this later under the section on high performance.
Having great people around me, bits of technology, occasional medication and a daily routine built around physical activity, healthy food (mostly) and sleep keeps me relatively balanced, clipping my peaks and troughs, and moving in the right direction. Working to master my BiPolar cues to determine when to press forward and send it vs ease off and rest is a constant work in progress. I used to treat everything as a series of back to back sprints, I now know balance and longevity are found in the acceptance that life is an ongoing multi-sport adventure race.
While my own experience provides one lens on the bipolar spectrum, research helps us understand its wider patterns. Large-scale longitudinal studies have begun to connect the dots between bipolar traits, intelligence, and creativity, suggesting that what looks like volatility in one context may, in fact, be a marker of exceptional cognitive range.
Research
The model below is based on the work of Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, who in the early 1900s developed the first intelligence test to measure a person’s capacity for reasoning and problem-solving. The scale was later refined by Dr Lewis Terman, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, who introduced the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and the now familiar bell curve to describe the distribution of intelligence across a population. In essence, IQ reflects a person’s ability to process information in terms of volume and complexity in any given moment. The greater the volume and complexity of information an individual can process, the higher their IQ score.
IQ Distribution Bell | Source: Stanford Binet Simon 5th Edition 2003
You can see the model demonstrates the distribution of IQ across the population and below is a list of IQ classifications and associated definitions:
140+ Genius.
120–140 Very superior intelligence.
110–120 Superior intelligence.
90–110 Normal, or average, intelligence.
80–90 Dullness, rarely classifiable as feeble-mindedness.
70–80 Border-line deficiency, sometimes classifiable as dullness.
70– Definite cognitive deficiency.
A study called the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry from the University of Cambridge, which involved over 14,000 participants over three decades and counting.
One finding was individuals who scored in the top 10% of BiPolar traits had a mean IQ 10 points higher than their low trait scoring peers. The study suggests that “serious disorders of mood such as bipolar disorder may be the price that human beings have had to pay for more adaptive traits such as intelligence, creativity and verbal proficiency". To be blunt: There appears to be a correlation between BiPolar Disorder and being smart as fuck.
This was particularly interesting to me having been told by my teachers I’d be lucky to secure an “O” Grade in Arithmetic, to be fair I was probably more distracted than I remember. Formal education was a bewildering experience I never saw the point of, an endless mind-numbing memory-retention test of meaningless force-fed data with no demonstrable relevance or context. I was also outspoken when I disagreed with something, which I got into trouble for a lot.
There was only one teacher I could ever relate to in high school, Dr Gorton. A very clever double-doctorate man incredibly well read in the sciences, to the degree even the other teachers openly mocked him for what they thought were odd and eccentric behaviours. I could easily converse with him on a level others couldn’t and he worked tirelessly with any student who expressed genuine interest in his favourite subjects. Why I connected with him is about to become abundantly clear, though I didn’t figure this out until my late 30’s.
Overall my experience of formal education is a stark contrast to the discovery of possessing a genius IQ. A real shock given that most of my life I thought I wasn’t particularly bright as I didn’t really connect with, or relate to, my peers. My academic results in high school supported my original self-perception as an under-performer in exam conditions. Even though I have a love of language and very high verbal proficiency, I have no formal qualification in english.
If elevated intelligence and creativity are linked to mood variability, then the challenge isn’t capability, it’s control. High-performing individuals with bipolar traits don’t struggle with potential; they struggle with regulation. The next question, therefore, isn’t how smart someone is, but how stable the system around them is. Creating the right conditions for flow, where focus, challenge, and energy align, can turn volatility into velocity.
High Performance
Below is a representation of an ideal development scenario using a simplified version of Prof. Mihály Csikszentmihályi Flow model, which he originally discovered in 1975 after identifying the components of high performance. I have updated this to demonstrate the relationship between Strategy, Operations and High Performance, which can be applied to any individual, team or organisation. By looking at the relationship between Challenge, defined as: Degree of difficulty to be overcome, and Support, defined as: Available resources. Four states emerge:
Flow | Source: Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi Carli 1987 & Kenny Wallace 2019
These four states correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
Anxiety: Missed deadlines, avoidance of interaction, likely negatively impacting employee sickness absence.
Apathy: Absence of enthusiasm or presence of indifference, likely negatively impacting employee retention.
Comfort: Lack of activity and accountability, likely negatively impacting employee productivity.
Flow: Pro-active, self-directed, emphasis on personal responsibility, likely positively impacting all above.
From experience, the rate of solution generation for complex problems during flow is extraordinary. It’s characterised by rapid pattern recognition, connecting seemingly unrelated data faster than others can process it. The world slows down while cognition accelerates; imagine Carrie Mathison from Homeland, minus the psychosis and chaos.
Projects that typically take weeks take days; projects that normally take days take hours. For example, I once created a full marketing strategy for a startup bike manufacturer in 90 minutes, and an operations strategy for a life sciences company in eight hours. For a large enterprise CFO, I diagnosed and began resolving a systemic HR issue in eight days that the HR department of 100+ people failed to identify over two years. When working in one to one scenario I can usually pinpoint the core issue within 20 minutes, regardless of scale, and immediately begin forming a practical, testable solution.
This creates an unusual challenge when it comes to pricing performance-based work. Delivering meaningful outcomes at speed can provoke disbelief, which is reflected in client feedback. What feels normal to me is often experienced as profound by others, leading me to undervalue what I deliver. I’ve learned to rely on my clients’ perspective rather than my own when determining value.
The results speak for themselves. A startup leadership team plateaued at £750k annual turnover, invested £30k with me over 18 months, yielding £250k additional annual revenue for three consecutive years, doubling their turnover to £1.5 million while reducing overheads by 60%. As a result this startup became scottish government case study and was snapped up in a successful acquisition shortly after.
In large-enterprise consulting, the benefits realisation from transformation programmes has been measured in millions of pounds. In both cases, flow, the alignment of challenge, support, and readiness, remains the common denominator.
Conclusion
So what?
Around 1.3 million people in the UK live with bipolar disorder, roughly one in fifty, split almost 50/50 between men and women. The challenge isn’t to contain this population within rigid systems, but to design ways of working that allow their intelligence and creativity to flourish. Trying to hammer square pegs into round holes only wastes potential and diminishes morale.
Leaders who invest time in understanding the opportunities that accompany mood variability will be astonished not only by the scale and impact of the ideas generated but also by the speed at which they materialise. When bipolar traits are recognised as indicators of cognitive range rather than risk, the link between emotional depth and innovative output becomes undeniable.
People like Hilary Spence, Jos van der Burg, and Nick Cohen created the conditions that enabled me to operate at my best long before I had a diagnosis. For someone living with bipolar, the most valuable thing you can offer isn’t sympathy, it’s the space and autonomy to exercise their mind fully while managing their own rhythm. That freedom is the real differentiator between dysfunction and brilliance.
Now what?
When organisations learn to view mood variability through a performance lens, they begin to design systems that are more humane and effective for everyone. The practices that help people with bipolar thrive, clear communication, structured autonomy, balanced workload, respect for recovery, are the same foundations that elevate collective performance. What starts as inclusion becomes optimisation.
The research–performance link also extends beyond mood disorders. The same mechanisms that allow a bipolar brain to connect disparate ideas under pressure exist in creative agencies, tech startups, sports teams, and elite military units. When challenge and support are calibrated correctly, speed, precision, and originality all rise together.
At the level of culture, flow becomes a model for governance. It shows that performance stability is not the absence of emotion but the intelligent regulation of it. Whether in leadership, education, or public service, the principles are transferable: psychological safety enables exploration, structure enables scale, and together they form the infrastructure of sustainable excellence.
What next?
Now that you’ve seen how mood variability, intelligence, and performance intersect, and how the right conditions can convert instability into flow:
How might you manage your own energy rather than your time to stay in your optimal performance zone?
How could your team normalise cognitive and emotional diversity so that difference becomes a strategic advantage?
What systems or processes could you redesign to unlock the full potential of neurodiverse thinkers?
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If you are in the process of preparing to execute an Organisational Transformation and have concerns then do consider working with me to either assess your Organisational Readiness or address issues that have come to your attention as result of this case study.Related Case Studies:
