By Wendy C. Wilson
Prefer to listen? Click here on Audio below ▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||။||||။||||
There was a period in my career when I became a different leader without knowing it.
I did not realize it was happening. I was still showing up. Still delivering. Still doing everything the job required. But looking back, I can see exactly what changed.
I stopped listening as well. Meetings I used to approach with genuine curiosity became problems to get through. I interrupted more. I gave less space to the people around me because I was so focused on keeping things moving. I told myself I was being efficient. What I was actually doing was contracting.
Pressure does that. It narrows us in ways we cannot always see from the inside.
And that narrowing — quiet, gradual, easy to explain away — is one of the most underestimated leadership risks there is.
The Thing Nobody Tells You About Pressure
Most leadership development focuses on how to perform under pressure. How to stay calm. How to make good decisions. How to project composure when the stakes are high.
What it rarely addresses is how to notice that pressure is already affecting you.
By the time most leaders recognize that stress has changed the way they are showing up, it has been true for a while. The team has already felt it. The decisions have already reflected it. The relationships have already absorbed some cost.
The gap is not capability. It is self-awareness.
Specifically, it is the ability to notice your own early warning signals — the small, personal, repeatable ways that stress begins to show up in your behavior before it becomes a pattern you have to actively undo.
I call these pressure tells.
What a Pressure Tell Is
A pressure tell is not a breakdown. It is not a crisis. It is the quiet first sign that stress has crossed from manageable into something that is beginning to shape the way you lead.
Every leader has them. They are personal, which is what makes them hard to teach in a general framework. But they are also consistent, which is what makes them worth learning.
My tell, as I described above, was that I stopped being curious. I shifted from open questions to quick directives. I moved from listening to managing. It was subtle. It was efficient-looking from the outside. But it was a signal.
For other leaders, the tell might be:
Communication becomes clipped. Emails get shorter. Tone flattens. Nuance disappears. The people around you start choosing their words more carefully, which usually means they have noticed something you have not yet named.
Decision-making speeds up in the wrong direction. Under real pressure, good leaders slow down for complex decisions. Under unmanaged pressure, many leaders do the opposite. They push for resolution before the situation is actually clear, because uncertainty has become intolerable.
Withdrawal replaces engagement. Some leaders under pressure pull back. They stop joining the informal conversations. They close the door more. They are present in meetings but not really there. Their people feel the distance even when they cannot name it.
Perfectionism tightens. For some leaders, stress shows up as an inability to delegate, an insistence on control, a standard that suddenly nothing can meet. What looks like high expectations from the outside is often anxiety looking for something it can manage.
None of these tells are character flaws. They are human responses to sustained pressure. But unchecked, each one creates real costs — for the team, for the culture, and eventually for the leader carrying them.
The Practice of Noticing
Knowing your tell is only useful if you have a practice that allows you to actually notice it in real time, not just in retrospect.
This is harder than it sounds. Pressure is precisely the condition that makes self-reflection feel like a luxury. When everything is urgent, the internal check-in is usually the first thing to go.
But it does not have to be elaborate. The practice I have found most useful is a single question, asked consistently:
What is changing in me right now?
Not what is happening around me. Not what needs to get done. What is changing in me.
Asked once at the start of a meeting, once at the end of a day, once during a moment of genuine stillness — it creates a small but meaningful pause. Enough space to notice whether the contracted version of you is beginning to run the show.
The goal is not to eliminate the pressure. The goal is to stop it from making decisions for you before you know it is in the room.
What This Is Not
Knowing your pressure tell is not about monitoring yourself into paralysis. It is not about adding another layer of self-criticism to an already demanding role.
The leaders who do this well are not spending more energy on themselves. They are spending it more wisely. A two-second internal check-in that catches a reactive pattern early saves hours of repair work on the other side.
It is also not a solo practice. Some of the most effective leaders I know have one trusted person — a peer, a coach, a partner — who has explicit permission to say: I have noticed you are doing the thing. That kind of honest, low-ego accountability is worth more than any amount of self-monitoring.
You do not have to see your tells clearly to start. You just have to start looking.
A Question Worth Sitting With
What is your pressure tell?
Not the dramatic version. The quiet one. The first thing that changes in you when stress has been high for too long.
If you are not sure, ask someone who knows you well and will tell you the truth. Their answer is almost certainly more accurate than your guess.
This is Part 2 of The Resilience Advantage. New installment every Monday.
Wendy C. Wilson is a speaker, author, and former corporate executive who helps leaders, teams, and high-responsibility professionals stay steady, resilient, and effective under pressure. She is the best-selling author of Iron Will: How to Heal Your Invisible Scars, Unlock Confidence, and Achieve the Freedom You’ve Always Wanted. For speaking inquiries or to bring The Resilience Advantage to your organization, visit wendycwilson.com/work-with-me/
THE RESILIENCE ADVANTAGE · PART 2
Subscribe to the blog for weekly reflections · Follow on LinkedIn and Instagram for daily insights on resilience and leadership
