How Regulated Leaders Make Better Decisions in High-Stress Systems

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How Regulated Leaders Make Better Decisions in High-Stress Systems

Lauren challenges intensity driven authority, making the case for steadiness and trust as the foundation of lasting leadership.

In this final episode of the Leading Under Pressure series, Lauren reframes authority as nervous system stability rather than intensity or control. She explains how regulated leaders build trust through emotional predictability, consistency, and co-regulation instead of urgency and reactivity.

Sustainable authority, she argues, is not about being the strongest personality in the room, but the most steady, creating resilient teams where people can perform, speak honestly, and thrive long term.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: All right, we are back for the last episode of this series, which is Leading Under Pressure. So basically how regulated leaders make better decisions in high stress environments, which is really like a free leader anymore today. But we're going to talk and end the session, talk today about end the session with sustainable authority. It's like, how do you remain in authority, but do so in a way that's sustainable, where people actually respect you and want to show up to work with you day in and day out. Ultimately, when we build authority based on urgency and pressure, it's not going to last. When we are always making haste-based decisions, chronic stress, and we're not moving from a regulated place, it's going to cause disruption. So, in this final episode, we are going to explore what sustainable authority looks like and also what leadership rooted in regulation looks like and consistency and trust building. And we'll talk about how to develop this kind of steady presence instead of force that is going to have a positive influence over time.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, let's jump right in like we always do with the nervous system. So, did you ever, have you ever worked for someone who, like a leader, who you thought was like really, really intelligent? Like it's clear that they are intelligent enough to be in this position and their intellect probably got them to this position, but simultaneously also working with them feels exhausting. Or maybe working with someone who intellect not in the picture and we just think like someone who is like maybe regulated, probably not, but calm. Let's just say they have a calm presence. But although they carry this calmness with them, working for them is kind of confusing. Or you get confused a lot by working for them or when you're working for them. Or one that does a really good job of motivating and driving the team, and we're getting good numbers and metrics and results, but it seems like that's the primary focus. And everyone feels exhausted and on edge all the time, even if numbers are looking nice, looking good. Most of these situations are pretty common, to be honest. I think a lot of people who end up in positions of leadership don't have a lot of leadership training. They might go through a program, they might do some reading, whatever. But when you really ground leadership in nervous system science, neurobiology, and you move from a regulated place first, not intensity, not fear, not pressure then that's where you're really building sustainable authority. Charisma, charm, intellect, It's only gonna get you so far. Like you gotta have some of the other skills. I feel like are harder skills to find, to know, to see, to hire for. You don't really get to see those things until someone is in action. So, let's kind of start with redefining authority. Traditional authority. And this is based on like a lot of things historically, but I'm not gonna go into like sex talk, politics talk, anything like that, but traditional authority models, loudest voice wins. Loudest voice wins. Decisiveness, quick decisiveness, often lands positions of power. When there is intensity, it's seen as like a drivenness or a passionate-ness. And when these people are making decisions with urgency, it seems like they're really committed to the organization and to their role. What we know is that these types of actions like urgency and intensity, they command attention. And the attention that people are getting isn't necessarily positive. They might think it's positive. We might even think it's positive. The overall organization might think it's positive. But it's decisions that are made with regulation first that really build trust, which strengthens authority. Authority positively comes into play when there's emotional predictability. We know what to expect. When we know how people are going to respond and we know that they're going to respond consistently in the same way. When we know that we're not going to be humiliated or they're not going to humiliate people in front of us. That those people will hold boundaries for themselves and others and the team and the organizational whole consistently and they don't flip off their boundaries and change all the time. When that happens, nervous systems settle. When nervous systems settle, they lead better, people perform better, and overall, workplace culture, happiness, skyrockets.I think a lot of time leadership comes from being like the strongest personality in the room. We give the authority to those people. But what it should be about is being the most stable nervous system in the room. Let that one just sink in again. Let's say it again. Authority is not about being the strongest personality in the room. It's about being the most stable nervous system in the room. You can function from high functioning survival for a while, but eventually you crack.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so what's the cost? What's the cost if we are... being led by leadership that is intensity driven. And I think a lot of you are probably going to resonate with this. Like, probably a lot of you feel like you're being led by intensity driven metrics and people. Well, burnout is number one. A lot of research around that one. Intensity driven leaders, they really try to like carry everything on their own. Maybe even difficulty with delegating or even if do delegate, like micromanage their delegation. They react really quickly. They live in this like urgency, almost reactionary place. I think it's often confused. People think that these types of existences are like having high standards. That is a confusion. The confusion is that that's not high standards. That's chronic stress activation. You also get a lot time, like in these types of positions, people, organizations that are run by these types of people, you get a lot of turnover. People leave and they don't even just like leave predictably. They leave unpredictably. They quietly quit. Even if they respect you, even if you're really smart, even if the mission really matters to them. The reality is that people cannot thrive long-term in a reactionary reaction, reactive environment. Like their nervous systems are going to start to, to chip apart, they're gonna become dysregulated, they're gonna start to miss work, they're not gonna enjoy work, they're gonna feel overly exhausted, and their body's just gonna start shutting down, and that's gonna cause them to leave their job. Because at some point, you just can't stop ignoring your body. I would even go as far as to say, like, heroic leadership creates fragile systems. I think a lot of times there's this like, I said I wasn't going to go into sex, but I'm do it anyhow. I'm not afraid of being judged or people not wanting to hear this, but sometimes, not always, I'm being a little bit stereotypical here. This is not always the case. So please say, please know that when I say something like this, that it's based on bits of research and just, like, history, but not every person falls into this category or not every stereotype meets this but I think we see men in leadership where, and this is women too, because women are fighting to be equal to men and this causes the same problem, but you see men or women in leadership and they almost have a sense of, like, arrogance about them, almost like a little bit of an ego. And what some people don't always see, but really good emotionally grounded people can see is that underneath that is a false sense of confidence. It's not actually the heroic leadership that you believe it is, it's arrogance, ego, and false confidence. And that lack of internal stability in them creates external instability and creates fragile systems. So just think about that. Not everyone who seems confident is truly at their core confident. And you know that they are, they aren't based on a lot of things I just described above. Like, do their actions match their words? Because people that are smart can be very verbose and talk a good story, good narrative, but can they actually live it out and be consistent?

Lauren Spigelmyer: Regulation as leadership capital. We want to move away from, I'm going to move us away from like, okay, there's all these problems and these are the, you know, what's kind of going on and here are the outcomes of that to, okay, well, what do we actually do about this. I think a lot of people think that a regulated person, like I wouldn't say calm, because common regulation, not honestly, the same thing, is like softness is weakness. So, a lot of people don't lead from those positions. What it is, what regulated leadership is, is structure delivered without volatility. When you have ego-driven people with false confidence, that lands in volatility eventually, maybe not right away, but eventually does. So, we want kind of, I'm gonna give you three things. Three things, the first one is these people who are moving from regulation first, nervous system regulation, they give predictable responses, they give consistency. If you're in a position where someone is, like, they're experiencing similar situations, but they're producing, like, vastly different reactions, trust is naturally going to erode. But if someone is really consistent in their actions and their actions match their words, that consistency, that predictable response lowers the threat. So that's kind of the first, like, thing to look out for and to cultivate in leadership is predictable responses to the actions match the words. These people are also, we talked about this in lot of previous episodes about like emotional contagion and leadership and leadership and how it like co-regulates down or dysregulates down. Good leaders are an emotional metronome. Leaders will set the tempo for their teams and the teams will impact the tempo of the organization. If they speed up too fast, the tempo around them is going to speed up. The team is going to speed up, the room is going to speed up, the organization is going to speed up. And at times we might need that. But if it's like that all the time, that's headed for burnout. That's headed for turnover. But if you're steady, you're regulated, the room steadies. Even if the room is dysregulated and you're steady, the room starts to regulate. That's just like biologically how we're wired. Like you're looking to your leader because a hundred gatherer times when you were like, look to your head of tribe, that person set the tempo. It's no different today when you're in a leadership pack. Like it's the same thing. Also, we know that regulation spreads faster than stress. The stress is never going to go away. We can mitigate the effects of it. We can maybe reduce some of the stress, but there is always going to be stress in the world, in our lives, in our work. That's just the reality. So instead of trying to focus on something we can't necessarily always control, we should focus on something that we can control, which is your own regulation and the co-regulation. So co-regulation, if you haven't heard this term before and you haven't listened to previous episodes, It's like you as a leader, focus solely on your regulation first, get yourself down-regulated, nervous system down-regulated, neutral. And by doing that before going into meetings, before responding, before going into work, before leading anything, that energetic existence, feeling, showing up positively influences the next person you see, the next people you see, the team meeting, the teams, the organization. You're co-regulating. You are taking your regulated state and you're helping those around you to regulate to where your steadiness is. Honestly and truthfully like one regulated person can down regulate a whole slew of people Like if people are really reactive if one person comes in is just stable and steady and just down regulates the room It pulls everybody back down in a positive way. I really think, like, we did a better job of interviewing people and testing their nervous systems as a part of like leadership strategy. We would have much better outcomes with our leaders or, even if we don't do that, set them up to have a lot of like nervous system based training and they could lead from that space and be a better leader from learning how to do that.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay. So, let's, let's move into sustainable authority long-term. The biggest thing here is like regulation, staying regulated, regulated, like reactively regulating when you're dysregulated or something dysregulates you or triggers you and preventatively regulating. I talk about this in previous episodes too about reactionary and preventative regulation. It requires a lot of practice, especially if you were raised in environment and you grew up in a system where that wasn't the case. And that's honestly the majority of us. So, you're in a reactionary environment or environments. You don't have good models of emotional regulation and nervous system regulation. So today we're talking about breaking patterns. We're talking about adopting these skills really means practice towards for them. So I would think about like, are there any rituals that you can add, like personal individual rituals that you could integrate? Like let's just say meetings, for example, if you have, you know, consistent regular meetings or it's like a high stakes meeting. Like what's something that you can do before that meeting, during that meeting, after that meeting as a leader that both like regulates you and helps to regulate the team? Like is it intentional pausing? Is it slowing down intentionally your words? Is it softening your tone? Is it clarifying values? Is it breath work? Like what is it? What's the ritual you could integrate or rituals, doesn't have to be big, doesn't have be long, can be a couple seconds. Just the biggest thing is that it's consistent. It's what a ritual is, consistent ritualistic practice. Also, co-regulation, like, leaders have to learn and understand co-regulation. have to. Healthy leadership teams depend on it. So, think about how can you... help to like, how can you help to debrief tension? How can you normalize the emotional impacts of some things, policy, changes, whatever it may be. How can you also call each other back to the center or table something or pause something and come back to it if it feels like it's getting too intense? When you can start from the top and share the regulation and positively influence the regulation across the team and the organization, that's going to increase resilience. People are going to able to handle more and the teams will not be so chaotic all the time.

Lauren Spigelmyer: I'm gonna ask you to pause if you're a leader or you wanna be in a leader position and just kind of ask yourself, Do I need to escalate to get compliance? Like, if I'm a person that's been escalating in order to get compliance, do I need to do that? Are people comfortable coming to me and bringing me hard truths? Or does no one bring me hard truths and I just think that there are no problems in the organization. If I dropped my intensity, would the system still run well? Answering questions like this, and you can probe more questions from like AI about this, help us to determine where our authority metrics live? Where are we on the scale of a healthy authority? And rethinking about maybe leadership doesn't have to be so authoritarian, but I can lead with authority. So, when you, I'm to think when the best time to do this would be, I would say like at the beginning of the week when you have some mind space or even midweek or maybe even like a weekend, Saturday morning or Sunday night, I don't know, whatever's best for you. But I would highly encourage you to like really the best in this, for some people, you're to make absolutely not, to sit and write some of these things down, write them out or speak them into a voice memo. If nothing else, just ask yourself the questions and think about them, but best to kind of reflect out, write out. what kind of leader do I want to be remembered as? For me, I definitely want like a soft power. Like, one, um I'm a female, so I don't need this masculine energy all the time. And even though I was raised in an environment where I had to develop masculine energy to survive, I don't need to carry that with me all the time. Despite being a very tall human, I have a very strong softness to me, which sounds like an oxymoron, but there's a pretty strong, even people say, like, in listening to my voice, like your voice is so pleasant to listen to. It's just a softness that lives in my voice. I'll lose that softness when I'm dysregulated and I talk really fast, but I want to be remembered as someone who has this, like, soft strength. I don't want be remembered as someone who's like brilliant, but absolutely exhausting, exhausting, driven, but completely volatile. I want to be someone who's steady. I want to be someone who's anchored. Want to be someone who's trusted. I want to be someone that people can bring the hard truths to and know they're not going to get in trouble for doing that. I want to be called out and be able to hear the calling out and be like, Where can I adjust? And where can you adjust? And where can we both adjust? I want to have this ability, and I feel I do personally, and it's still a skill that we can all cultivate, and still I'm cultivating, like, have this ability to be self-critical, to be self-aware, to make shifts and make changes, to fully listen to people and hear them out without having to defend. That's not to say we don't ever defend, but that defense is not our first response. So once you've answered that question, or guess a series of questions, what's one small shift you could make this week to lead from a place of steadiness, anchoredness, instead of urgency, instead of volatility? And once you have that, maybe just put it somewhere where you're gonna see it so you actually remember to do it or like find a way to somehow hold yourself accountable to that.

Lauren Spigelmyer: All of these things sound really great. You listen to these episodes, well, I hope they sound great. But it is a lot harder to implement the things. Hearing them is one thing, and then applying them is another. It's quite challenging to apply it in the moment when all the chaos of the actual workplace and the workforce is around you. So, Jessica and I built this program called the Staff Sustainability Program, where we work with organizations of all levels. And what we do varies across. How big the organization, what's the budget? And we map things out to get to sustainability with systems faster and in a sustainable way based on where organizations are at right now. So, if you are curious about that and what it would look like to support your organization to do some of these things, because it is, again, very hard to do on your own. You really need ongoing training, coaching programs. That's what Staffs with Advanced Sustainability is. Go to the Five Ives website, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S, go to our services tab and you can learn all about the Staff Sustainability Program. We also have for teachers a burnout prevention behavior support course in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania called Behavior Breakthrough. So, that course is 4.5 graduate level credits. Anyone can take it across the whole country. It runs every semester. We're already in the middle of a spring semester. We'll run one this summer. So, we'd love to have any of you join that course as well. You can access that by going to Five Ives homepage, all the way to the very bottom, there's on-demand resources. It's listed as one of the on-demand resources. Or you can reach out to Jessica and I. We can answer questions about sustainability or the online course or anything in between. My email is Lauren at fiveives.com. Jessica's is Jessica at fiveives.com. Don't forget to put that sticky note or whatever it is, journal entry, whatever reminder it is that you're going to make your shift this week, put it somewhere where you remember to actually do it. And don't forget to share some of these things that you've learned here with others to hold you and them and everyone more accountable. Until next episode, I am Lauren Spigelmyer and thank you for joining me.


Categories: : Emotional Regulation

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