TL;DR: Pressure skews our thinking and pulls us back into old habits, but naming what's happening changes how we lead our way through it. This piece walks through how to manage pressure in the moment, plus a five-point checklist for when you're out of time to do it perfectly.
Internal pressure is expectations you put on yourself. I want my team to adopt my proposal. External pressure is expectations put on you. The CTO told me everyone needs to adopt the mandate.
Whether internal or external, pressure can lead to stress. Some stress is helpful, it helps us focus. Too much stress and our perspective starts to distort. Skew. Warp. We are not thinking clearly.
When communicating without any pressure, we can clearly articulate our thoughts and feelings with ease. We can persuade and influence others with reason. But when communicating under pressure, most of us fall back on three ineffective pressure tactics to get what we want:
Over-explain. Fill the room with context, caveats, backstory nobody asked for.
Dole out information sparingly. Wait until you're sure, so the room fills the silence with its own interpretation.
Perform confidence. Sound certain when you're not and figure it out later. Sway people with charisma and charm rather than reason.
I want to acknowledge a fourth one: open disagreement. That's when there is pressure to align, and everybody still has very different perspectives. And I have seen my fair share of open disagreements at work.
Imagine you are in a meeting at your startup, team, or cross-functional meeting, and you notice your peers are speaking more rapidly, they are cutting each other off, some have gone quiet. Here is how to communicate under pressure….
Manage the Pressure
Know your pressure tactic. Your pressure tactic might have gotten you somewhere before with the same or previous team. That's exactly why it's hard to let go of. Notice it. Say to yourself, I am communicating under pressure. You may even ask your team to hold you accountable if you tend to slide back into old tactics. Awareness building is the first step to any learn journey.
Name the external pressure out loud. Say out loud what you think the team is experiencing. Time and/or resource constraints. Unstated or unrealistic expectations. By naming the external pressure out loud and asking if everybody agrees, you can find agreement on at least one thing.
Get curious. Help your team shift from a reactive mindset to a curious one. Take a breath and find your ground. When you are in a curious mindset, you're seeing the issue from multiple perspectives instead of just trying to get your way. Show your team that you are curious by paraphrasing what you're hearing and asking thoughtful questions. Seek to understand rather than control. Understanding is not agreeing.
Pause or Stay. If emotions are high, ask to pause and come back. "Maybe right now isn't the time to discuss this. I'm feeling stressed, and tomorrow I can be prepared to wrap my brain around this." Notice a clear next step is given.
Or, let the tension live transparently in the room. "This issue makes me feel a lot of stress. I'm cool with keeping the conversation going, but I might not be as cognitively flexible as I usually am. Is that okay with you?"
What If All Else Fails
What if you try all of this and pressure still dominates every decision-making conversation you're having at work?
Here's a five-point checklist for exactly that moment. Imagine a conference room and everyone can feel the pressure increasing. This is the third meeting on this issue, and everybody agrees a decision needs to be made so things move forward. One person wants to move fast and iterate in public: ship, learn, adjust. The other wants more validation before committing resources.
Acknowledge the pressure. "Does everyone agree that a lot is weighing on this?"
Affirm the shared goal alongside the differing perspectives. "We both want this to work. You're seeing it through speed, I'm seeing it through certainty."
Summarize the risks and tradeoffs. "If we move fast, we might burn resources on the wrong bet. If we wait for validation, we protect our runway, but we might lose the window."
Align on accountability. "This decision sits with whoever owns it. If they take that accountability, are we both willing to go with their call?"
Ask for next steps. "What do we need to do in the next 48 hours to move forward, whichever way this goes?"
Work is easiest when there's no internal or external pressure. We can take our time, resources are plentiful, and success feels guaranteed. That's not the real world. In our perceived reality, there's pressure to do as much with as little and get better results than anyone else.
So, don't go looking for pressure. Just be ready for it when it comes and be ready to communicate under pressure.
If you want help your leadership, your team, or your organization, to manage pressure to innovate, deploy, and manage more effectively, reach out. I do 1:1 executive coaching and facilitate workshops so talented people have the communication skills needed to do good work. Contact me at [email protected] and visit leadinstride.com to learn more.
