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( 4-minute read..It's worth it, go grab a coffee. ☕)

Ever had this happen to you? You know exactly what the right call is. You've thought it through and you're clear on the approach.

Then pressure hits and you, well, freeze. Or worse, you do the opposite of what you know works.

Later, sitting there reviewing what happened, the frustration's almost unbearable. Not just because it went wrong. Because you knew it would go wrong and did it anyway.

I’m of an opposite belief to most….pressure doesn't reveal character, it reveals preparation. Or more accurately, it reveals the gap between what you know and what you've actually practiced.

The All Blacks long had an ability that drove opponents mad. Deep into the final quarter, when everyone's exhausted and mistakes multiply, they somehow found another gear. Not just physically but mentally.

Gregor Paul's research on Steve Hansen's teams found something specific:

Innate. That word's misleading.

It's not innate at all. I believe it's practiced to the point where it looks innate.

Peter Bills studied All Blacks teams across different eras and kept finding the same factors:

Coherent decisions while chaos is happening. That's what I’m talking about; the bit most leaders can't do.

You can make coherent decisions when you've got time and space. But under pressure? You revert to instinct, emotion, whatever feels safest in the moment.

Which is usually wrong and lets you down.

Bill Walsh (San Francisco 49ers head-coach) spent his entire coaching career on this problem. How do you get people to execute what they know under extreme competitive pressure?

He concluded that thinking hard under pressure means you're already behind:

Effortlessly. There’s the paradox right there.

The moments that should require maximum effort actually require minimum thinking.

Tim Ferriss breaks down what creates composure into three capacities:

"I can think" ➡️ Good rules for decision-making, good questions you can ask yourself and others.

"I can wait" ➡️ Ability to plan long-term, play the long game, not misallocate resources.

"I can fast" ➡️ Withstanding difficulties and disaster through trained resilience and high pain tolerance.

But these aren't attitudes you adopt under pressure but capacities you build beforehand.

You can't decide to "think clearly" when chaos hits. You either have pre-loaded decision rules that activate automatically, or you're making it up as you go.

Making it up under pressure is when the collapse happens.

Performance psychology research brings up something uncomfortable: under high stress, your brain literally cannot access the same cognitive resources it uses for complex problem-solving. Blood flow shifts. Cortisol spikes. Your prefrontal cortex, where rational decisions happen, goes partially offline.

So "stay calm and think it through" doesn't work. You can't think it through the same way.

What you can do under pressure: Execute patterns you've already established. Follow rules you've already created. Implement decisions you've already made.

What you can't do: Generate new solutions to problems you're seeing for the first time.

Have you ever seen a team completely abandon their game plan during a crucial match? You can see they know it. Had rehearsed thoroughly. But then pressure arrives and you can see everything dissolve in front of your eyes. It’s actually palpable. Hands up, I’ve been there myself with teams.

The problem as I see it? They'd been trained & coached what to do when things went right. Not what to do when things went sideways.

So the entire preparation could and should got rebuilt around pressure scenarios. Not just "if this happens, do that" theory. Actually creating chaos in training and making them execute through it, then review and reflect and go again.

The first sessions were disasters. People couldn't think and they made terrible decisions. Frustration and annoyance followed. Exactly what was happening in matches.

After a few weeks though the chaos became familiar. Pressure became normal. Their decision-making under stress started matching their decision-making in calm conditions.

Pressure situations became part of their practiced range. They became more comfortable being uncomfortable and knowing that performance is just, well, messy. And you’ve got to be ready and able to address the mess and clean it up.

The Stoics understood this centuries ago. Ryan Holiday points to their definition of strength:

That control isn't willpower in the moment. It's pre-decisions about how you'll respond before the moment arrives.

Marcus Aurelius didn't wait until he was angry to decide how he'd handle anger. He decided in advance. He actually rehearsed it. When anger showed up, he had a pattern to follow instead of a reaction to manage.

The same principle applies for leadership under pressure.

When we look at leaders who execute under pressure versus those who collapse, the difference is they've already made the hard decisions.

Not "I'll figure it out when the time comes." But "When X happens, I will do Y”. No debate, no deliberation, just execution.

It does sound rigid but it actually creates confidence, conviction and, ultimately, freedom.

When pressure hits and your thinking narrows, you're not trying to solve complex problems with diminished cognitive capacity. You're following rules you established when you had full access to your brain.

So what’s next for you to bring this to life?

Try identifying your 2-3 highest-pressure scenarios. The situations where you consistently struggle to execute what you know.

For each one:

🤔 What decision could I make now that would eliminate the need to decide under pressure?

🤔 What pattern could I practice now that would become automatic when stress hits?

🤔 What rule could I establish now that I could simply follow when thinking gets hard?

Then actually practice it. Not just think about it. Create the pressure scenario and execute your pre-loaded response until it stops requiring conscious thought. Embrace the messiness of practice & thank your god that you’re doing this in a safe, forgiving space instead of when it matters most.

Take a working example. A hotel GM handling guest complaints case-by-case. Of course, every difficult guest created decision stress.

But now she has three rules:

🔋 Listen without defending until they finish.

🔋 Acknowledge their experience without arguing about facts.

🔋 Offer two solutions, not one.

Yes, it sounds simple. However, under pressure i.e. angry guest, colleagues watching, time constraints, those simple rules became the structure that prevented collapse when natural instinct was to defend or deflect.

The complaints didn't stop, of course, that’s life in that business! But the collapse under pressure did.

Calm under pressure is almost never about the pressure. It's about what you did before the pressure arrived i.e. practised response rather than in the moment reaction.

You can't manufacture composure in the moment. You can only reveal the preparation you did beforehand.

The All Blacks weren't calm in the final quarter because they were mentally tougher. They're calm because they've practiced those exact moments hundreds of times. The chaos is familiar. The pressure is expected. The decisions are pre-made.

When it arrives, they're not solving new problems. They're executing established & trusted patterns.

For sure it looks like an innate ability from outside. From inside, though, it's just practiced preparation doing what it does.

Another Newsletter you might find useful....

The PrincipalED Leader Gordon Amerson Superintendent, Teacher, Leader, Coach I help Leaders Lead and Growth with Strengths-Based Leadership - #diamondtothedais I help leaders grow their skills, knowledge, and legacy www.principaledleader.com Subscribe​

Thank you for being part of the Leaders Coach community. The work on how to lead better is something you have to do alone. But you don't have to do it on your own. Onward and Upward, Paul Clarke

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