The Buoyant Leader

“Why do we need leaders at all?” is a better question than you might think. We’re so used to hierarchical structures and others telling us what to do from infancy on, that the idea that leadership has a function — that it’s more than “just the way things are” may escape us.

In We the People, Sharon Villines and John Buck write: “Unpredictable events will always occur as we pursue our aims. The purpose of leadership is to steer us through or around them.”

Notice that they said “leadership,” not “leaders.” They define leadership as a cybernetic process that exists in relation to the gap between expectation and occurrence.

The other gap — the one that most of us think of as the purview of leadership —the one between current and desired reality, isn’t the point. As Villines and Buck point out, “Without disturbances, we could organize our work processes just once and function robotically without leadership. Everyone would show up for work on time and never take more than the allotted time for lunch.”

Leadership exists because of uncertainty about the future.

What does this mean for those of you who aspire to leadership? What are the requirements of effective leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world?

Four things that have nothing to do with motivation or control come to mind:

1. You need a 35,000 foot perspective. While team and individual contributors benefit the whole by focusing on their parts, the leadership point of view must be informed by more external inputs and a greater range of interests.
2. You need a rapid and valid feedback from all parts of the system as you move forward. You need to know what’s happening within and without our organizations in as close to real time as possible. This means that channels of communication must be highly efficient in both directions, and there has to be a baseline of safety and trust among all nodes.
3. You need a nervous system that can handle making decisions with limited knowledge. That doesn’t need to wait for perfect information (which, if it exists, always shows up too late). That doesn’t make unilateral gut-based decisions in the absence of whatever data exist inside and outside your organization.
4. You need to cultivate the ability to perceive reality as it happens, without routing it through the lens of your past conditioning (ie “fighting the last war”). To be able to see patterns where they exist, and novelty where old paradigms are irrelevant.

So here’s a quick diagnostic to assess how your leadership operating system is likely to perform under pressure. No one’s going to see your answers but you, so please pick the response closest to what your honest default would be — not necessarily you at your best.

1. You’re in the middle of executing a plan that’s working. Then you come across an article, a conversation, or a data point that suggests the broader landscape your organization operates in may be shifting in ways your current strategy doesn’t account for.

1. A) I register it, but I stay focused on execution. We set this plan for a reason and I don’t want to chase every shiny object.
2. B) I forward it to my team and ask someone to “keep an eye on it” — though I know that usually means it disappears.
3. C) I have a regular practice of scanning for exactly these kinds of signals — economic, technological, cultural, regulatory — and a framework for deciding which ones warrant a strategic conversation now versus later.
4. D) I find these moments unsettling. If I’m honest, I tend to avoid information that might complicate a plan that’s already in motion.

2. A major initiative you launched three months ago is getting quietly deprioritized by two department heads. You find out from a junior employee at a company offsite.

1. A) I’m frustrated but not surprised — I know information gets filtered before it reaches me. I just don’t know how to fix that.
2. B) I set up a meeting with the department heads to get the real story and course-correct.
3. C) I’m genuinely caught off guard. I thought the weekly updates I was getting meant things were on track.
4. D) This wouldn’t typically happen because I’ve built channels — skip-levels, anonymous inputs, informal check-ins — specifically designed to surface this kind of signal early.

3. You need to make a significant hiring decision for a role that will shape your company’s direction, but the two strongest candidates each represent a very different bet on the future. The data supports both cases.

1. A) I delay the decision until there’s more clarity. The wrong hire here would be costly.
2. B) I go with my gut. I’ve built this company, and my instincts about people and direction have gotten me this far.
3. C) I synthesize the available data, name what I don’t know, consult 2-3 people whose judgment I trust, and make the call within a defined timeframe — knowing it’s a bet, not a certainty.
4. D) I hire the one who most reminds me of what’s worked before. Culture fit matters.

4. Your industry’s conventional wisdom says the next 18 months will look like the last 18 months, but you’re noticing a few weak signals that something fundamental might be shifting.

1. A) I note the signals but stick with our plan. We’ve been successful with this model and I don’t want to overreact to noise.
2. B) I find myself torn — part of me sees something new, but I keep defaulting to frameworks that have worked in the past. I’m not sure I trust what I’m seeing.
3. C) I’ve learned to distinguish between genuine pattern recognition and anxiety masquerading as insight. I’d test the signal with small experiments before making any big moves.
4. D) I raise it with my leadership team, but when they push back with “that’s not how our industry works,” I defer to the consensus.

If you’d like to debrief your responses and what they say about your VUCA leadership style, DM me on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] and we’ll find a time to chat.

A stubby-fingered piano player with little formal training who couldn’t read music composed and recorded one of the recognizable melodies that the US has ever produced.

For many people of a certain age, hearing the first two seconds of the piece will bring back memories of childhood.

When you pay attention to what’s going on musically, you begin to hear that the distinctive chords, funky rhythms, and repetitive bass lines are all adaptations made by a guy whose fingers couldn’t span even one octave on the keyboard, and who had never learned the rules so he didn’t know what he wasn’t supposed to do.

Because his hands couldn’t span an octave, he invented a style built on (and here I have to use a wee bit of music jargon) ostinato bass lines, 3rds and 6ths, and hypnotic repetition to create a sound that was like no other.

The piano player is Vince Guaraldi, the piece is “Linus and Lucy,” and the reason it’s so famous is that it was used in scoring the first Peanuts TV show, A Peanuts Christmas Special.

Every team has at least one member whose constraint is visible and real. They’re too valuable or entrenched or loyal to get rid of, but that weakness or trait is just so predictably annoying and limiting.

Modern management theory treats every such constraint as a gap to close. So the annual review comes laden with performance improvement language and development goals, followed by coaching plans with progress metrics.

Sometimes that’s the way to go. If the gap is a learnable skill, like public speaking or pitch deck design, then improvement plans make sense.

But life is often messier than that. Sometimes what appears at first blush to be a behavior to correct is actually a structural reality to work with.

Some examples:

This can look like being unprepared for meetings or rambling during presentations.

But this person may create their perspective and approach by talking rather than sitting in front of a computer or whiteboard and writing. Their best thinking occurs in dialogue with others.

The fix here isn’t “prepare more thoroughly.”

Instead, make sure they have a thinking partner and an uninterrupted hour before the big meeting, and have an AI-powered voice recorder turn their stream of thought into coherent contribution.

That works with their processing style, not against it.

You know this person. They need to “build stronger cross-functional relationships” and are “not seen as collaborative.”

But they’re also the person who will stay until 10pm to help you solve a hard problem. They build relationships through shared work, not “rapport-building” chit-chat.

The fix here isn’t a networking goal on their development plan.

It’s translating their style into operating instructions for your team: “Sarah’s not going to be the one working the room at the offsite, but if you need someone to sit with a hard problem for two hours, she’s the first person I’d call.”

They’ve got nitpicky questions. They’ve got doubts. They’ve got objections. They view everything as a risk to be avoided, and just can’t seem to grasp the big-picture vision you’re so excited about.

But their value is their granularity and their attention to detail; their ability to see what everyone else glosses over. Pushing them to “think more strategically” often just makes them worse at the thing they’re great at without making them good at the thing they’re not. The move is to pair them with a strategic thinker and make the partnership the unit, not try to turn one person into both.

In all three cases, we’re not “giving in” to a lower standard of performance. We’re just changing the path to meeting that standard. They still need to contribute in meetings, or relate effectively to others, or connect to strategy.

But they don’t have to get there through the same door as everyone else.

Vince Guaraldi’s constraints didn’t produce his genius on their own. His environment — the San Francisco jazz scene of the 1950s and early 1960s — provided three elements crucial to his ultimate success:

Belonging: he was embedded in a music scene that accepted him and gave him steady work, allowing him to iterate and find his own unique style

Autonomy: nobody told him to fix his hands or switch instruments; he had control over his musical choices

Framing: his constraint wasn’t treated as a deficiency to be corrected; it was just a reality he could route around creatively

In a word, his environment gave him enough security to invent, rather than mask and compensate for his shortcomings. This was the difference between a demand that he “try harder to span the octave” and the invitation to play with 3rds and 6ths in ways that nobody else was doing.

The language of performance improvement is based on the notion of deficits and gaps. When you use this language in reviews, one-on-ones, and feedback conversations, you limit what’s possible.

Sometimes that is the right framing, when there exist genuine performance issues in need of remediation. I’m not saying that you should never give constructive feedback, or that all weaknesses are secretly strengths.

The key is to hold open the possibility that someone’s cognitive style, personality, and neurological wiring are fixed constraints that can be leveraged into greatness rather than merely “managed” or “overcome.”

Some questions to ask as you strive to bring out the best in the people around you:

What would it look like if this person’s “weakness” were actually a gift?

Where might this person already be routing around their constraint in ways I’m not noticing?

What would it look like to build on those strategies instead of fighting against them?

Vince Guaraldi could have ended up a mediocre imitator of technically superior pianists. Instead he became the only person who sounds like Vince Guaraldi.

And the same can be true of the people on your team, if you create an environment that supports and values their differences.

I’ll leave you with this gentle provocation:

Who on your team are you asking to span the octave?

For a deep dive, check out Derrick Bang’s book Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.

The Mindset Mastery Memo is for ambitious professionals who want to lead with clarity, calm, and confidence. Each edition offers practical tools, mindset shifts, and real-world examples to help you navigate pressure, build stronger teams, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can lead with intention, not reaction.

The Mindset Mastery Memo is for ambitious professionals who want to lead with clarity, courage, and confidence. Each edition offers practical tools, mindset shifts, and real-world examples to help you navigate pressure, build stronger teams, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can lead with intention, not reaction.

Experience is a good thing.

You definitely want seasoned pros in your organization — the folks who’ve put in their ten thousand hours, have “seen it all before,” and can handle whatever comes their way.

And…

You also want fresh-eyed beginners.

In fact, the more unpredictable and volatile the world in which your organization operates, the more valuable “beginner’s mind” will be.

Here’s an example from Andy Clark’s book The Experience Machine. Veteran drivers are good at predicting common roadway events. Through thousands of hours on the road, they’ve built mental models that allow them to adjust to a red light or a busy intersection far in advance of newbies.

The downside of that is, they’re less responsive to unusual situations or events — say, a bicyclist entering a roundabout from the wrong direction — than the rookies. Because their brains know exactly what to look for, they take longer to recognize and deal with the unexpected.

Novice drivers, on the other hand, tend to get surprised by the mundane things that experts take for granted, like an upcoming green light turning amber. (It turns out that smashing the accelerator to the floor in frazzled confusion isn’t the pro move in that situation, which my father never let me forget.)

But — and this is a big but and I cannot lie — beginners are much better than seasoned drivers at spotting highly unusual or rare events. Because their brains haven't been trained to look in the same specific places every time, they remain more flexible. Because they aren't tightly tethered to their expectations, they’re more observant when things get weird or volatile.

Is your team, organization, or industry currently facing a lot of randomness or rapid change? Would you consider your environment volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous?

If so, the mental models that your “experts” use to navigate and act can actually become a liability. Their perceptual filters can cause them to miss the metaphorical peloton of bicyclists entering the roundabout from the wrong direction — whether that refers to global geopolitical instability, climate chaos, AI earthquakes, or more alarming revelations about the ruling classes and their crimes.

The novice doesn't have those rigid filters yet, which might just allow them to see the reality of new and strange situations, rather than just a reflection of past experiences.

If you feel like your organization is navigating a volatile landscape right now, it is time to start leaning on your beginners. Don't just teach them “how things are done.”

Ask them things like:

“What risks and opportunities are looming that our experts are unlikely to notice?”

“What assumptions do you notice people making that might not actually be true anymore?"

"What patterns or trends are you seeing that others seem to dismiss or overlook?”

So far, this article feels straightforward:

1. Here’s a cognitive science insight about beginners seeing certain things sooner and more clearly than experts.
2. Your organization is probably facing massive uncertainty and disruption in the coming months and years.
3. Take advantage of your beginners’ cognitive advantage in anticipating and preparing for opportunities and threats.

But there's something missing.

Safety.

You’re asking your rookies to do something scary.

To buck conventional wisdom while lacking job security and self-confidence.

To point out where their managers and mentors might be wrong or over-confident, too comfortable or just plain deluded.

Lack of safety doesn’t just make your rookies less willing to speak; it also renders them less able to see.

So here’s a question for you:

Does your culture encourage and reward unorthodox and controversial thinking?

In other words, do your most vulnerable employees feel safe enough to generate those insights? And do they feel secure enough to share them with you?

If not, you’ve got work to do, and you know what it is.

This episode requires taking a look at some visuals. You can find them here.

Here’s the official logo for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Take a quick look at it before continuing to read this article.

[IMAGE MISSING HERE]

No sooner had it been revealed to the public when a commenter on Reddit noted that it looked like a facepalm. Other Redditers immediately chimed in, “CAN’T UNSEE.”

The “Can’t Unsee” meme is all over the internet, and refers to a fascinating function of the brain: once your perception is changed in a particular way, you literally can’t go back to your old way of perceiving.

You may have seen three hands wrapped around a soccer ball when you first glanced at the FIFA logo. If you’re familiar with the world cup, you may have noted that the hands form the rough shape of the actual cup that goes to the winning team.

But once you saw the word “facepalm,” there is it, isn’t it? Try NOT to see the yellow hand covering the chagrined face — impossible.

Here’s a different example of #cantunsee, courtesy of Andy Clark’s 2023 book The Experience Machine. What do you see when you look at this image?

[IMAGE MISSING HERE]

I’ll tell you what it is: a black and white rendering of a greyscale photograph.

And I’ll write a couple more paragraphs so your eyes don’t accidentally see the photograph itself before you’re ready.

Most people who are shown this image see blotches of black ink and white spaces in the rough shape of a rectangle. (Of course, there’s isn’t any rectangle, but we’ll let that curiosity pass for now.)

The really interesting this about this image is that, after you see the second image, you’ll never be able to see it the same way again: as random blotches. You brain will have been irrevocably changed, with no going back. So don’t continue down this page unless you’re sure that you want to change your perception forever; as we used to say during playground tag, “no backsies.”

Ready for the second image?

OK, here it comes…

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…

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[IMAGE MISSING HERE]

You don’t have to look at it for long. A quick glance will probably do the trick.

Now scroll back up to the previous image. Do you see the Dalmatian? Even if you try not to?

Do your eyes pay special attention to one area of the image now? I’m guessing it’s the eyes and nose that have additional salience compared to when you first looked a couple of minutes ago.

OK, so that’s a cool / cute / pointless phenomenon that you can now use to win bar bets. Beyond that, so what?

Here’s the thing: #cantunsee is how we process everything. The words you’re reading now were once scribbles on paper, until you learned to read. Now you can’t look at this scribbles without hearing words in your head.

Every thing in your world is filtered through your model of the world, and every time you add new information to your model you change how you relate to that thing.

And it’s true of people as well.

Your inability to unsee can be positive, as in the case of the Dalmatian — you can now find meaning that earlier eluded you.

And it can be, arguably, negative, if I ruined your enjoyment of a perfectly benign sports logo with a snarky reference.

But equipped with an understanding of how #cantunsee works, you can intentionally put it to good use.

For example, you may have formed negative opinions about some people in your life that could be updated by new experiences or information. And that updating could improve your relationships and your experience of life.

After all, we humans are quick to judge, and we’re never fully aware of the reasons for our assessments of others. Maybe your first impression was that Joe was rude, and now your brain is weighting Rudeness over all other behavioral patterns, just like the Dalmatian’s eye and nose.

Now, there is genuinely rude behavior out there, and you’d be a fool to ignore that fact.

But what if your initial impressions were highly incomplete; data collapses that omit the shades of grey?

You can actively look for counterfactuals to your first impressions. Direct your brain to seek out examples of Joe’s good manners and positive intentions.

You may very well find that you’ve tempered your black-and-white image of Joe with some shades of grey.

Maybe Joe brings coffee to Kwesi, who’s still on crutches after his skiing accident.

Maybe Joe’s “rudeness” is really an expression of him getting excited at brainstorming meetings, to the point where he interrupts other people.

Another way to #cantunsee is to make an effort to get to know someone in a fuller way. Initiate a conversation in which you invite them to reveal something tender about themselves, by you going first.

Maybe you discover that Joe spent a couple of teen years in foster care, and now his “rudeness” looks like a coherent stance against getting bullied. His behavior may still code as “rude” to others, but now you see a fuller picture that allows you to pull him aside with kindness rather than dismiss him with disdain.

Because that's the essence of buoyant leadership: choosing to see the world — and the people in it — with fresh eyes, not as threats to defend against, but as opportunities to engage with courage, curiosity, and compassion.

This works both ways, of course: you’re a facepalm or a rectangle full of blotches to others. They’ve got their conditioned impressions of you, and the way you act day to day either reinforces those impressions or does nothing to correct them.

So this poses an interesting and potentially fun challenge: What can you do so the people who don’t know you as a full and complex human, #cantunsee more of the real you?

How can you greyscale yourself, or even add some color, so they #cantunsee your basic goodness even in your less-than-stellar moments?

In other words, what moves can you make that invite others to intentionally step into their own buoyant leadership?

The Mindset Mastery Memo is for ambitious professionals who want to lead with clarity, composure, and confidence. Each edition offers practical tools, mindset shifts, and real-world examples to help you navigate pressure, build stronger teams, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can lead with intention, not reaction.

My ragged breathing is drowned out by the hard rock soundtrack. I’m 7th on the leaderboard, and falling fast. All around me, women and men — mostly women — are sweating and grunting, churning out ergs and spiking their heart rates at paces I’m struggling to match.

This is my first — and probably only — class at Orange Theory, a strip mall gym in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We’re all wearing identical bluetooth heart rate monitors and sitting atop identical Water Rowers that relay our stats to a bank of identical screens on the wall in front of us.

Now 8th. Now 9th. Now I’m 11th, relegated to the second column as Fancy Nan 93 overtakes me in the race for the coveted top 10.

I don’t know why I care about my ranking, but I sure do.

I grit my teeth, tense my fingers, and redouble my effort on the water rower. Faster, faster, faster, I’m doing it, back in column 1, leaving Fancy Nan 93 in the dust, closing the gap between me and NellieCat — when WHAM.

The rowing machine’s seat flies out from under me as I uncoil and I plummet unceremoniously onto the hard wooden frame, bruising my coccyx and wrenching my lower back.

My heart rate also plummets, as do my ergs, and my self-esteem. I will spend the next 6 weeks recuperating, sitting gingerly, and shaking my head at my own foolishness.

I smashed my ass bones because I was bent on competing with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Because I interpreted the existence of a leaderboard as an unrefusable invitation to compete.

Orange Theory provided a literal leaderboard, but most of the leaderboards in modern life are more subtle. Social media in particular can conjure a psychical leaderboard that hovers over every aspect of our lives.

In the quest to be a good enough provider, partner, person, the easiest way to self-assess is to compare ourselves to others.

We compare ourselves to our colleagues when we consider our career trajectory. Do I deserve this promotion more than Kwesi or Pema? Have I added enough value? Burned enough (visible) midnight oil? Kissed enough C-suite ass?

We also compare ourselves to ourselves, via an arbitrary yet compelling imaginary timeline. Am I “there” yet? When will I get there? Have I fulfilled my potential? What are the Objectives and Key Results by which I can measure and judge myself, to use as carrot and stick to keep me on track?

Orange Theory has a leaderboard because it’s motivating. I’ve spent enough time straining on a rowing machine to know how boring, how aggravating, how annoying it can be after the first couple of minutes.

Rowing, after all, is a sport that involves racing against other rowers. The leaderboard at the gym is a way to recreate that incentive.

It makes us work harder. Do more. Transcend our self-imposed “comfort” limits.

Visible competition makes us stay later, ring more doorbells, and push through rejection in our quest to win the car or the set of steak knives.

While leaderboards have their place, they also have a cost. The problems of playing for position on the leaderboard extend far beyond a bruised booty.

Most obviously, playing for position on the board can interfere with our internal motivation. Countless athletes, who mastered their sports through maniacal passion in their youth, burn out when the pressure to win eclipses the joy of playing.

When winning becomes the sole focus, we jettison playfulness, curiosity, and self-awareness. Because they’re dangerous distractions from the “climb the leaderboard ladder at all costs” game we’ve chosen.

Obsessing about our position on the leaderboard can distract us from the fact that we’re not enjoying the game itself. We may want to win because other people want to win, not because it’s something we truly care about in the soft, cuddly parts of our soul.

For a cinematic representation of this phenomenon, I refer you to Steve Frazelli (Ed Norton’s character in The Italian Job, who is the very personification of mimetic desire: wanting what others want only because others want those things).

The upshot: by optimizing our experience for the leaderboard, we sacrifice meaning, joy, and self-expression.

I’ve currently reading Tiny Experiments, by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Highly recommended.

Le Cunff writes as, and for, the Google demographic. Smart young people who jump into an insanely competitive environment, surrounded by other smart young people, and who can climb the ladder of status and money and challenge by playing by the rules. And who find themselves gasping for air in the midst of career win after career win, wheezing out the lyrics to “Is This All There Is?”

The single-minded quest for “success” can blind us to what it takes to have a worthwhile and enjoyable existence. We can run the race, always striving to be ahead of others, and never allow ourselves the recognition that the race itself is making us miserable.

So what can we do? Is it possible to gain the benefits of good-natured competition without making the game more important than the experience?

My friend Keith Corbin offers an interesting thought experiment. Suppose everyone in your organization were paid exactly the same, whether they worked in the mail room or the C-suite. Whether they were a VA or a CFO.

In that situation, what would your ambitions be? What role would you most want?

What would motivate you to perform?

And what would you want to motivate your colleagues?

In the absence of that structure, of course, competing for raises and promotions makes sense for you as an individual.

But taking the time to reconnect with intrinsic values — being of service, solving tough problems, brainstorming new approaches, etc — can serve as a moment-by-moment counterweight to the relentless focus on the endgame.

And, I’d be willing to bet, playing the game for the game’s sake is one of the best strategies for “winning,” both in terms of experience and outcome.

And you’re much less likely to end up with a bruised ass.

In one of my favorite movies, War Games, Matthew Broderick’s character almost triggers a global thermonuclear war by exploiting a backdoor: a vulnerability that was programmed into the core software running the NORAD computer system.

In real life, we each entered this world with a similar vulnerability; a backdoor programmed into our nervous system that allows the world to trigger some of our least useful behaviors. Some of us go apeshit mad; others retreat into timid avoidance; still others babble and blurt words we immediately wish we could take back.

The backdoor is this: your nervous system is deeply influenced by the nervous systems of others. When someone else acts as if they’re threatened, your threat response system comes online and takes over your body.

What does this look like?

Basically, your body prepares you to run away and hide, or conversely, to get big and fight, depending on how your mind reads the situation and what it predicts will give you the greatest odds of survival.

Your vision narrows to focus exclusively on the threat. Your heart beats faster and your breathing becomes shallow and rapid, to get more oxygenated blood into your big “run away or kick or bite or punch” muscles.

Your posture turtles to protect your soft, unarmored neck and belly.

Your bodily functions that aren’t urgent get shut down to save energy. These include growth, repair, healing, digestion, and reproduction.

And your mind shifts from creative, strategic, long-term thinking into a short-term focus on not getting killed in this moment.

This is all extremely useful if you’re a gazelle, say, hanging peacefully with your friends at the watering hole, and Sally, who has a slightly better sense of smell than the rest of you, lifts her head and registers “lion.” Suddenly her ears prick up, her tail twitches white, and she freezes while trying to determine the location of the feared predator.

The sooner you convey Sally’s threat detection to your own nervous system, the more likely you are to skip town and survive.

And if Sally’s wrong, or the scent is just a echo of a lion who was wandering this area a couple of days ago, then no harm done. You tremor a bit to release the tension and blissfully resume grazing and drinking as if nothing had happened.

What’s the big deal? What’s wrong with having your threat response system activated in today’s world?

The problem is two-fold.

First, most of us never encounter predators bent on eating us.

The type of threat you typically face in daily life is much more likely to be symbolic: getting criticized in a meeting; reading a snarky email; finding out about a poor decision by a direct report; hearing a complaint from a significant other; getting stuck in traffic; missing a deadline; forgetting an appointment.

Which means, the flight-or-fight programming is a serious mismatch for what’s actually gonna be useful in those situations. Not just unhelpful, but profoundly counterproductive.

(Just picture yourself leaping over your desk and sprinting out of the conference room, or biting your assistant’s hand to understand just how mismatched your physiological preparation is to those situations.)

Second, our big brains and never-quiet minds can run home movies of past and future threats all the time — even when we’re totally safe in the moment.

This means that you could be in some form of flight-or-fight all the damn time; muscles tensed, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, breathing shallow, torso turtled to protect against an attack on your squishy organs.

If you’ve ever “lost it” at work, you’re probably aware that your leadership took a hit in that moment. Losing your temper, anxiously micromanaging your team, or avoiding challenging conversations are three common results of having your threat response system triggered.

If this happens a lot, your leadership suffers. You appear less trustworthy to the people around you.

And since you’re broadcasting threat, they entrain to your nervous system and start broadcasting their own threat signals. Now your workplace has become a psychologically unsafe zone, with everyone focused more on covering their asses than getting useful stuff done.

This is not a character flaw, this abdication of agency. It’s an involuntary physiological response — one that evolution made non-negotiable a few million years ago.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do about it.

Actually, there are four steps to becoming “trigger-proof”; that is, able to navigate life without going into flight-or-fight at symbolic or imaginary threats.

Here’s a mnemonic: RISE.

The RISE pyramid has four steps:

Regulate Your Nervous System

Inoculate Your Mind

See a Bigger Truth

Engage with Wisdom

Learn what relaxation and stress feel like in your body.

Discover and practice techniques for resetting your nervous system. From breathing to progressive relaxation to body scans to movement to time in nature, figure out what works to bring your threat detection system into harmony with the actual degree of safety and threat in your immediate environment.

The safer you feel in your body, the more it will take for outside events and internal thoughts to rattle you to the point of “losing it.”

Once you’ve regulated your nervous system, you proactively train your brain to stop overreacting by safely exposing yourself to predictable stressors in small, controlled doses.

This process of "extinction" teaches your ancient survival hardware a new lesson (“this is not a threat”), turning a life-threatening alarm into a minor annoyance.

Once your nervous system is regulated and you've inoculated your mind against your predictable triggers, you can replace the narrow, distorted view of a hijacked mind with a panoramic leader's perspective.

The mechanism is simple but powerful: consciously activating curiosity and compassion. This shift allows you to look beyond blame and judgment to perceive the deeper needs and feelings in any situation.

This is the apex; the point where your mastery becomes an active, external force. With a regulated system, a resilient mind, and clear sight, you are completely free to choose to respond with creativity.

You are no longer just behaving well; you are leading well. This means practicing the unexpected move, breaking old patterns, and consistently engaging with the world in a way that elevates everyone around you.

How do you maintain or regain self-mastery over your physiology, psychology, and leadership?

What are your favorite strategies to maintain your stability of intent and action when your inner or outer worlds trigger your backdoor threat response?

What are your go-to resources — internal, environmental, and social — that can dependably bring you back to your best self?

Find out more at HowieJacobson.com.

The coaching question that's changing everything...

Most leaders I work with come to me stuck in "problem mode": focused on what's wrong, what needs fixing, what's blocking their path.

But here's what I've discovered: There's ONE question that transforms problems from brick walls into doorways.

It's not "What outcome do you want?" (though that's important).

It's not "How do we solve this?" (we'll get there).

The question that changes everything is simpler... and more profound.

Read the article to discover how one simple mindset shift can turn any mundane problem into what I call "a doorway to the sacred."

You know what to do. You have the skills. You've bought the tools.

So why do you still feel stuck?

The self-help world blames "limiting beliefs." But that frame is often the very thing holding us back. It suggests we have a cognitive flaw we must fight.

In today's newsletter, I offer a useful reframe: from "limiting beliefs" but "protective knowings."

Here's what I love about that shift.

From Limiting to Protective: It's not a bug; it was a feature. A shield you created to survive past challenges.

From Belief to Knowing: It’s not just in your head; it’s a deep, experiential truth that lives in your gut.

From Victim to Agent: You aren't flawed; you were resourceful. And you can draw upon that resourcefulness once again.

By thanking that protective part of you for getting you this far, you can finally partner with it to decide if its strategy is still useful. You stop fighting yourself and start evolving.

The "agreeable" people on your team might be more triggered than you think.

They look calm. They sound reasonable. They don't raise their voice or storm out of meetings.

But here's what I've learned: appeasers often carry the most tension.

Two telltale signs:

— Their energy feels "off" even when their words are perfect

— They leave critical thoughts unsaid to avoid discomfort

If that's you (and it's definitely been me!), how can you move from appeasement to genuine ease, where your words and energy align?

That moment when someone challenges your idea in a meeting and you feel your jaw clench...

Most leaders think they have two choices: react defensively or bite their tongue and stay quiet.

But there's actually a third option that changes everything.

Understanding it has transformed how the executives I coach handle pressure, conflict, and unexpected challenges.

Here's the thing: What feels like an instant reaction (trigger → response) actually has two invisible steps in between where you can completely redirect the outcome.

In my latest article, I map the 4-step process and share three practical intervention points you can start using immediately.

This isn't about suppressing your emotions or "staying positive." It's about rewiring your leadership responses at the neurological level.

Worth sharing with your leadership team?