06/07/2026
Before the week starts, try this ten-minute exercise. It will tell you more about your leadership than any performance review.
Take a blank page. Think back over the last two weeks with your team, and list the handful of moments that actually mattered. The hard conversation. The missed number. The tense meeting. The decision under deadline.
Beside each one, write a single word. Pressure, or presence.
Pressure is the moment you raised the stakes, let them feel the fear, or leaned on consequences to get a result. Presence is the moment you got clear, held the standard with respect, and made it safe for people to tell you the truth.
Now look at the pattern, not the individual moments.
A page full of pressure is not a character flaw. It is almost always a signal that you are leading from an empty cup, carrying too much, depleted, and pressure is simply what leaks out of a leader running on fumes. The fix is not to try harder to be patient. It is to take enough off your plate that presence becomes possible again.
For one of those pressure moments, write how you would lead it from a full cup instead. Same standard. Different fuel.
Next week we move from how you lead the people to building the team that can run without you. Role scorecards, clear seats, and the systems that let a founder step back for a week and come back to a business that did not just survive, it kept building.
Have a great week.
