Staying Grounded in the Messy Middle: How to Lead Yourself When Pressure Is High

I have long believed that the best way I can help good people lead others more effectively is to share my own learning. I’m an imperfect fellow traveler, striving to make an impact while navigating the complex realities of working with and through others. From this experience, I’ve realized that traditional leadership playbooks no longer meet today’s needs.

This belief sits at the heart of All the Difference: Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspective, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value, a forthcoming book I co-authored with trusted colleagues, Stu Kliman and Lieutenant General (retired) Leslie C. Smith, whom I’ll be leading a session with at the 2026 Simmons Leadership Conference. They share my conviction that a new approach to leadership is needed, one that takes seen and unseen difference seriously, and helps us when things get tense, political, or unclear. 

We wrote this book knowing full well that walking this talk is not easy. Each of us is actively practicing these ideas in our own leadership roles and relationships. We stumble. We recalibrate. We return. That lived experience shaped the book, and it’s what’s shaping me right now. Lately, I’ve been living our work in real time. Here are a few things I’m learning, and a sneak peek at some of the concepts my co-authors and I explore in the book.

Leadership Gets Real When the Pressure Mounts

Here’s what I’m relearning, again and again: Leadership stops being theory the moment things get ambiguous, emotionally charged, or high stakes. The real test is not whether you know the actions to take, it’s whether you can apply them when your instincts are loud, your dignity feels tested, and the path forward is anything but clear.

Most leadership breakdowns don’t happen because people lack values or intelligence. They happen because pressure changes how we show up. What follows is a set of practices I’m actively using right now, in a season where the answers are incomplete and the human dynamics are very real. My hope is that they help you navigate your own messy middle with more clarity and fewer regrets.

Manage Yourself First

When things get hard, my first responsibility as a leader is internal. Before I manage conversations, decisions, or outcomes, I need to manage myself. I think of this as staying on Landmine Watch.

For me, Landmine Watch begins with conscious awareness in a few familiar moments: when I feel certain that I see the full picture and my point of view is right; when I notice my own behavior drifting away from the values I say matter to me; when I feel emotional reactivity bubbling up in me, or see it rising in someone else and want to react in kind; and finally, when I catch myself explaining why whatever I thought, said, or did was justified.

Those moments are not failures. They are signals. I am not immune. No human is. The work is not to eliminate these tendencies, but to notice them sooner, to pause before acting, to reflect rather than react, and as we learn, to do better the next time. Landmine Watch does not make leadership comfortable. It makes it congruent.

Lead From Your Best Self

When pressure mounts and information is incomplete, my instincts look like anyone else’s. I want answers. I want fairness. I want to protect what I’ve built. Leading from your best self doesn’t mean suppressing those instincts. It means noticing them early enough that they don’t take over.

On Landmine Watch, I pay close attention to the surge of “I’m right” energy. That is often the first sign that learning is about to shut down. This is the work of self-awareness and self-regulation, catching urgency before it turns into force and remembering that leadership begins inside, long before it shows up in words or actions. If you don’t manage yourself in these moments, you will eventually manage the fallout.

Return to Respect When It Matters Most

Respect is easy when things are going well. It is hardest, and most consequential, when frustration creeps in and trust feels strained. On Landmine Watch, this is where I notice the temptation to keep score, to harden, or to respond to someone else’s reactivity instead of staying grounded in my commitments to myself.

Returning to respect does not mean pretending things are fine or swallowing what matters to you. It means pausing long enough to choose how you want to engage. Respect is not passive. It is an active leadership choice, especially when emotions are running high.

Practice Honesty That Builds Trust

Honesty is one of the most misunderstood leadership skills. There is a version of honesty that vents, and there is a version that builds trust. Landmine Watch helps me distinguish between the two.

Am I telling the truth to discharge emotion, or to create clarity? Am I naming what’s hard in a way that invites alignment, or in a way that leaves people defensive or diminished? Right now, I am practicing honesty that is direct, grounded, and accountable, asking for rationale instead of assuming intent, naming impact without collapsing into grievance, and speaking clearly without letting emotion hijack the message. Lately, I have shared more frequently my emotional hijacks to my trusted inner circle; they support me when the going gets tough and my feelings overwhelm me. This helps me return to my best self and return to productivity.

Well-practiced honesty strengthens trust. Poorly practiced honesty erodes it, even when the facts are right.

Seek the Full Story: Resist the Urge to Fill in the Blanks

In moments of uncertainty, the temptation is to fill in the blanks. We create narratives that feel protective, but often make collaboration harder. This is another place I slow myself down.

When I feel compelled to justify my certainty, I know I am standing close to a landmine. Seeing the full story does not mean ignoring signals or suspending judgment. It means holding curiosity alongside conviction, even when patience feels thin. Leaders who confuse certainty with strength often miss what actually matters.

Build Togetherness Without Erasing Yourself

There is a version of togetherness that asks certain people to smooth things over, absorb discomfort, and stay quiet for the good of the group. Real togetherness allows people to contribute fully without disappearing. It requires alignment between stated values and lived behavior, especially under pressure. Leaders lose credibility not when they struggle, but when their actions drift away from who they claim to be. Landmine Watch keeps that drift visible.

Commit to Action So Integrity Holds

Leadership does not end with insight. It ends with action, often small, often imperfect, but deliberate. Deciding how you will show up in the next hour, the next meeting, the next day, staying engaged rather than checking out, and choosing consistency over convenience.

Right now, my commitment is simple and demanding: to lead in a way I will be proud of later, regardless of how things resolve, and to practice what I teach, imperfectly but honestly. That standard travels. That standard makes all the difference.

Leadership Lives in the Messy Middle

Leadership is not proven when things are clean and affirming. It is revealed in the messy middle, when you notice the landmines of certainty, inconsistency, reactivity and self-justification, and choose a better path anyway, one that strengthens trust, bridges perspective, and enables real value creation.

Leading well is a moment to moment practice, one you return to again and again, especially when it would be easier not to. I’ll be writing more about staying on Landmine Watch, because I believe deeply in practicing what I teach, not perfectly, but consciously, so I can be as helpful as possible to those who choose to learn from me.

To explore these ideas further, I invite you to pre-order your copy of All the Difference, coming out in July.