Early in my time as Chief, a serious problem surfaced inside our organization. I didn't create it. But it was mine to lead through.
I made a choice early: tell the people who needed to know before it came out on its own. No surprises. Nothing that looked hidden. I believed then, and I still believe, that’s what integrity looks like when you’re leading through a crisis.
It didn't land that way. The more I tried to show transparency, the more it felt like the people I answer to were wondering whether I was covering our tracks. I could feel their trust and confidence in me slipping, and there wasn't much I could do about it except keep doing the right thing and let time sort it out.
Back in September I wrote about the gap between intent and impact. This time I was on the other side of it.
Here's what made it harder. My team was watching me the whole time. They didn't need my frustration. They needed to see that it was going to be okay. So I walked the hallways and sat in briefings looking a lot calmer than I felt.
And I didn't always pull it off. I caught myself getting shorter in conversations. Less patient. More focused on getting through the day than on the people in front of me.
That stretch taught me something no promotion had prepared me for. Under pressure, people don't watch what you decide. They watch how you carry it.
When things are uncertain, everyone in an organization gets more sensitive. They notice whether your tone changes. Whether you're still approachable. Whether you go quiet. On a normal day most of that goes unnoticed. Under pressure, almost nothing does.
Your team borrows its calm from you. How much you have to lend depends on what you built before the pressure showed up.
That isn't a soft idea. Organizational researcher Sigal Barsade studied what she called the ripple effect, a process researchers call emotional contagion, and found that one person's mood can spread through a group and change how well it cooperates and how much it argues. When that person is the leader, it travels further. A frustrated supervisor can affect a shift. A visibly shaken executive can affect the whole organization.
If you lead anything, you've had your version of this. A problem that surfaced on your watch. A call to be upfront that didn't land the way you hoped. A team getting blamed for something the system set them up to fail at. And everyone looking at you to see whether it's going to be okay.
Composure doesn't mean you don't feel it. I felt all of it. Composure means knowing your reactions carry further than anyone else's in the building, and managing them like they do.
Pressure rarely shows up in one big outburst. It leaks. Here’s how stress affects your team when it leaks, what it looked like in me, and what I watch for now:
Shorter conversations.
Less patience.
Everything turns transactional. Task in, task out.
Harder to find.
None of these feel like a problem in the moment. Each one feels like efficiency. To the people watching, they read as distance. And in an uncertain period, distance turns into doubt fast.
The good news is that composure can be built. Three things got me through that period, imperfectly:
Build a pause. Before you respond, ask whether the situation needs this or your frustration does. Under pressure, the answer usually isn't more decisiveness. It's slowing down at exactly the moment everything in you wants to move fast.
Stay visible when you don't have answers. I kept showing up to briefings, kept stopping people in the hallway, kept my one-on-ones. I didn't share what wasn't mine to share. But silence during uncertain periods doesn't read as professionalism. It reads as distance, and people fill the gap with their own story.
Have one honest outlet. Leaders who absorb pressure with nowhere to process it eventually pass it to the people around them. Not on purpose. Just inevitably. For me, that outlet was my coach. For you, it might be a mentor, a peer outside your organization, or someone at home you trust. Just don't let your team become the outlet.
Time did sort it out. The facts came out, the system got the resources it should have had all along, and the trust came back. But what my team remembers from that stretch isn't how it ended. It's how I showed up while it was still uncertain.
Crisis doesn't create character. It reveals what's already there.
This week, pick the leak you're most prone to. Then ask one person on your team whether they've seen it in you lately. Listen without explaining.
What's the first sign you notice when pressure starts leaking into how you lead?
