What Pressure Reveals About Your Leadership

Several years back, we had a massive IT outage. About half of our employees were having trouble working from home, and several of our systems were unavailable. As the panic arose on my team, I was so tempted to join them. Instead, I took a deep breath, and began to triage and document. As a CIO, most people expect me to know all the ins and outs of networking, but truthfully, I’m more aware of the expanse of what I do not know about the network. It was never my specialty, and as the network went down, I had to actively tamp down my imposter syndrome. My team didn’t need me to fix the network as much as they needed me to stay calm and help them through the situation. I did what I did best: I kept them organized, I asked a lot of questions, I communicated with end-users so they could stay focused on solving the issue, showed up with snacks and energy drinks and encouraged them as much as possible. It took us a couple days to get things back up and running, but we did it. Turns out it was two things: one was caused by a team member oversight while the other was a technology failure.

And then, the questions from leadership came: whose fault is it? Should we fire them? How will we prevent this from happening again? Some of this was fair. As an organization, it is imperative we have contingency plans and understanding for how to strengthen our systems. But as the leader of the team, I couldn’t let a mistake (one that could happen to anyone) become job-ending. The team and I fixed our processes, and I reported back to leadership that no one should get fired. As they pushed, I offered to let them fire me since it was on my watch that this happened. Ultimately, they moved on and everyone kept their jobs.

We all have these stressful things happen to us. This time it was the network going down. Other times it’s projects on tight deadlines. Or a difference of opinion on how well someone was doing their job. Perhaps it’s a lack of budget or employee turnover during critical times. These leadership stressors come up constantly.

Someone once told me that people are like tubes of toothpaste: when life squeezes them, what’s inside comes out. Years later with many life squeezes, this remains true – especially for leaders.

You see, the pressure itself wasn’t actually the problem. It rarely is. In this particular case, the outage didn’t create my leadership. It revealed it. When everything is calm, it’s so easy to believe we’re leading intentionally. We have to think, respond, and show up as our best selves. But stress removes that luxury. When the pressure increases, we stop leading from our aspirations and start leading from our defaults. And frankly, those defaults tell us far more about ourselves than any leadership or personality assessment ever will.

Your Leadership Patterns Live Under Pressure

Every leader has inherited leadership patterns. Some become hyper-controlling. Some disappear and hope the conflict resolves itself. Some work harder, take everything on themselves, and become the bottleneck. Some become defensive. Some seek approval before making every decision. Some start blaming. Some become perfectionists.

It’s important to note that none of these patterns usually begin because we’re bad leaders. Most of them began because, somewhere along the way, those behaviors helped us survive. Maybe they kept us safe. Maybe they earned praise. Maybe they prevented criticism. Maybe they gave us the certainty we craved when everything else felt chaotic. 

The problem is that survival strategies aren’t usually growth strategies. And as much as we’d like them to, survival strategies don’t magically disappear when we become leaders. They get promoted with us.

Stress Reveals Our Conditioning

Stressful seasons can become some of the greatest leadership teachers. Stress exposes the places where we’re still leading from old agreements and patterns instead of intentional authority. What happens when everything falls apart? Do we like the leader that shows up when we’re under pressure? Or could we take a moment to notice:

• What am I afraid will happen?
• What responsibility am I taking that isn’t actually mine?
• What am I trying to control?
• What part of this situation feels strangely familiar? 

You might find that those answers have little to do with the current situation and more to do with a pattern you’ve been carrying for years. That’s good news because once you can see the pattern, you can choose something different. And with a little practice, you can move from a reaction to a thoughtful pause so you can move towards intentionally showing up. For the organization. For the team. But most importantly, for yourself.

You Won’t Eliminate Stress

This work isn’t a magic bullet. You’re not going to find everything to be easy after this. Leadership will always include difficult conversations, failed projects, uncertainty, impossible deadlines, and everything else that keeps you up at night. The goal isn’t to just be someone who doesn’t get stressed. The goal is being able to recognize your patterns before they make the decisions for you. And the more awareness you have, the more choice you have in how you show up. 

Every difficult season leaves us with two options: we can simply survive it. Or, we can let it teach us something about the leader we want to be. Pressure has a remarkable way of revealing what patterns we’ve inherited. The question is whether we’re willing to pay attention so we can choose what toothpaste comes out.

Authority Reset

What does pressure reveal about your leadership? If your answer includes over-functioning, people-pleasing, carrying responsibility that isn’t yours, or constantly feeling like you have to prove yourself, you’re not alone. Most leaders could benefit from understanding the patterns they’ve been leading from all along.

Authority Reset is my eight-week leadership cohort designed to help you uncover those inherited patterns, understand where they came from, and replace them with intentional, sustainable leadership practices. Because leadership isn’t about never feeling pressure. It’s about knowing who you are when the pressure arrives.

If you’re ready to lead with more clarity, confidence, and authentic authority, I’d love to have you join us. Join the Authority Reset waitlist today.