The psychology behind “pressure pitfalls” and why it matters for leaders
- There are no purely good or bad bosses — just bad behaviors forged under pressure.
- As the distance between you and those who work for you increases, so does the pressure.
- If we don’t carefully mitigate the insidious effects of power and pressure on our behavior, our results will flatline.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” I have the utmost respect for the sixteenth president of the United States, but I beg to differ. Power blinds us to the impact of our actions, but it’s not power that corrupts a person’s character. It’s pressure.
Left unchecked, pressure makes monsters of us all.
How many times, in a time crunch or in overdrive to deliver, have you been brusque, dismissive, or even outright explosive? None of us is immune. Under enough pressure and without the right systems in place to manage it, anyone’s inner monsters come out to play. Remember, there are no purely good or bad bosses — just bad behaviors forged under pressure.
Power distorts how our traits are seen and experienced by others, but pressure transmutes these traits. Our best qualities grow ugly fangs that we sink into anyone in our way. When pressure exceeds our capacity to manage it, our guardrails disappear. Our directness isn’t just read as insensitivity — we actually become insensitive. When we are squeezed by pressure, our confidence takes a genuine turn into arrogance as we lose patience and humility. We just don’t see these slip-ups because, as you now know, power blinds us to them. We almost never see repercussions of our blown pressure gauge until it’s too late.
In an analysis of twelve-thousand-plus pages of data I have accumulated across thousands of interviews, the number one stated weakness of bosses is a tendency to be hard on others. In other words, bosses come across as bullies and jerks who tank people’s morale and performance. The fine print on those behaviors includes inappropriate drama, being overly assertive, demanding, dictatorial, insecure, too focused on themselves and quick to react, just to name a few. These behaviors arise as a direct result of unmanaged pressure. It’s really that simple — and that complex.
As you rise in position and the distance between you and those who work for you increases, so does the pressure. Regardless of whether you stand on the world stage, run a company of ten, or have stepped up to chair the school committee for the holiday concert, pressure comes at you from all angles. Common limitations like a lack of time or resources require you to think strategically while the clock is ticking and myriad personalities are campaigning for their best interests. Moreover, next-level roles require making crucial, leadership-level decisions that can have far-reaching consequences. You’re called upon to strategize the big picture while juggling the personalities and performance issues of your team and operational administration, not to mention keeping a cool head under the blistering effects of the white-hot spotlight.
When pressure rises, our ability to think clearly and modulate our behavior tanks. Unless we increase our ability to manage it, pressure can easily trigger reactivity. I’m late . . . I’m in trouble . . . I’m unliked . . . all these internal narratives in response to external forces bring out the worst in us.
Under enough pressure and without the right emotional strategies, even a normally thoughtful, kind person will slip up and engage in regrettable behavior. I’ll confess I’m not proud of a certain appendage I’ve waved or the verbal vomit I’ve spewed when I’m running late to a meeting and a car cuts me off on my way there. Get me on a good day, when I’m well rested and not under pressure, though, and I will pull over to help a stranded driver.
Bosses don’t become jerks overnight because they were awarded a fancy title. No one wants to become a toxic manager. The slip into “bad boss” behavior occurs when the dueling headwinds of power and pressure collide. Power blinds us to our behaviors, while pressure corrupts our ability to navigate what I call the Pressure Pitfalls, i.e. the mistakes we become vulnerable to when pressures run high.
As the person in charge, all eyes are on us, and that triggers something deep in our encoded DNA. That “something” is almost always a deep-seated fear — fear of being not liked, of being wrong or not perfect, of being found out as an imposter, of being laughed at, criticized, or rendered irrelevant. As I’ve said, no one is all good or all bad, but pressure and the psychological mechanisms it triggers certainly have a hefty impact on whether our inner Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde comes out to play.
Mr. Hyde, by the way, doesn’t always show up as an evil monster. Plenty of versions of this alter ego emerge when our strategies are not adjusted to meet elevated pressures. My client Jorge, for instance, turns into a grade-A avoider. He’ll let important decisions pile up, calls go unanswered, and emails be ignored, all while telling himself he just needs to get a leg up on his work before getting back to everyone (which of course he never does). Ines turns into a character we’ve dubbed “Bad Cop,” who dons a proverbial uniform and polices every detail with a brusque chilliness that makes her team wither.
If you’re thinking, “But I do my best work under pressure,” I hear you, and there is absolutely merit to that. Pressure, by definition, is the force that moves something out of inertia into motion. A deadline to deliver can sharpen our thinking and drive performance. Countless clients have told me they are more productive when under stress; many find high-stakes moments exhilarating. What I’m referring to here, however, isn’t one deadline or even a few high-level expectations. This is not just episodic pressure; it’s sustained and vast amounts of pressure, from all directions, with no letup ever because there are always eyes on you. It is the unmanaged pile of expectations and demands that come at us all day, every day and open up deep pitfalls into which we can easily tumble and become trapped.
Bosses don’t become jerks overnight because they were awarded a fancy title. No one wants to become a toxic manager.
Regardless of the size and scope of the pressures on us or the shape our inner monsters take, if we don’t carefully mitigate the insidious effects of power and pressure on our behavior, our results will flatline. The damage starts with us. Besides the proven damage to our well-being, productivity, and job satisfaction, unmanaged pressure blurs our ability to think strategically — a serious problem when strategic thinking is the cornerstone of your job as a manager.
How well you do or don’t manage pressure impacts more than just your ability to sleep well at night. Again and again, I have seen how the actions of one toxic manager can hobble the efforts of an army of peers and direct reports. Being forced to tolerate negative behavior puts others in a constant state of threat. As the guiding hand of your team, any chink in your armor protecting against pressure directly undermines the productivity, loyalty, and performance of your team, which in turn hinders results. Remember, it’s not all about you anymore. Managing the pressure inherent to your elevated role is now part of your elevated role.
