When strengths go too far under pressure

When we're stressed, we regress.

We fall back on what we know. We do more of what has worked before, even when it may not be what the situation now needs.

Most leaders have a way of operating that the people around them value. They stay calm when things get difficult and they make decisions quickly. They bring order to confusion or hold a team together. These are real strengths, and often part of why someone was promoted.

When pressure builds, the natural response is to lean on those strengths even more. If people rely on you to make decisions, you move faster. If you are known for creating order, you add more structure. Nothing about that feels unreasonable. It feels like the responsible thing to do.

The difficulty is recognising when it stops helping.

Jon Miller and Drew Keller explore this in a recent HBR article about how leaders respond to stress. They report that Brunswick Group's Leadership Stress Index is now higher than it was at the peak of the pandemic.

In their survey of 400 C-suite leaders across the US, the UK, Germany and Japan, more than half described themselves as very stressed. Nearly two-thirds said their stress had risen over the previous year, and most expected it to rise again.

The concern is not only what this does to leaders' wellbeing. Short bursts of stress can sharpen focus, but sustained pressure narrows it. Thinking becomes more reactive and judgement less reliable. At the point when leaders most need a range of options, they can find themselves relying more heavily on just one.

Miller and Keller describe six common responses to stress, each with its own strengths and risks.

Calmness can steady a team, but a leader who becomes quieter and more self-contained may be experienced as distant. Decisiveness creates momentum, but moving too quickly can leave too little room to think or involve others. Structure brings order, but too much of it can feel like control. Attention to relationships can preserve trust, but it can also lead to a difficult conversation being postponed.

None of these responses are wrong. At times, each may be exactly what the situation needs. The problem comes when it becomes automatic.

From the inside, it can feel as though you are giving the situation more of what it needs. The people around you may be experiencing something quite different.

I see versions of this in coaching. A leader is under real pressure, working longer and doing more of the thing they are known for, but genuinely puzzled that it is no longer having the same effect.

Coaching is not about telling them that their usual response is wrong. It gives them space to see the pattern, understand how other people may be experiencing it and consider what else the situation might need.

That can start with a few straightforward questions:

• What do I do more of when the pressure rises?

• What are other people experiencing from me?

• Is this response still helping, or is it simply the one I know best?

• What might the situation need that does not come as naturally to me?

Miller and Keller suggest becoming a “student of your own patterns”. That does not mean discarding the strengths that have served you well. It means recognising when they are useful, when they have gone too far and when another response would serve the situation better.

Leaders cannot control many of the pressures around them, and there is little sign of those pressures easing. What they can do is understand what pressure brings out in them and become more able to respond differently when the moment calls for it.

That awareness does not remove the pressure. It gives them a better chance of responding to the situation in front of them, rather than simply repeating what has worked before.

Source: Jon Miller and Drew Keller, “6 Ways Leaders Harness Stress”, Harvard Business Review, July - August 2026.