Insights
Thinking differently about leadership under pressure
Leadership, pressure and why I coach
My work is shaped by more than 30 years of leading, learning and supporting people in demanding public-service environments. These short videos introduce why I chose to become a coach and explore what can happen when good leaders come under sustained pressure.
They also reflect the purpose behind SummitMind: helping people lead with greater confidence, perform with resilience and build towards what comes next.
Turning insight into conversation
Speaking at the Police Strategy Forum gave me the opportunity to explore leadership under pressure with people facing these challenges in practice.
My approach is interactive, grounded and thought-provoking—creating enough challenge to generate honest reflection, while providing the safety people need to contribute openly and consider what they might do differently.
Listening to leaders’ lived experience
My Leadership Under Pressure work is exploring how pressure influences the way people lead, communicate and make decisions.
The emerging insights highlight behaviours that often remain unspoken but can significantly affect trust, confidence, performance and organisational culture. This is a developing evidence base, informed by leaders’ real experiences rather than leadership theory alone.
What leaders are telling us
The Leadership Under Pressure Assessment is building a picture of how sustained pressure affects leadership behaviour, decision-making and organisational culture.
The first 29 valid responses alone represented 565 years of combined leadership experience. Although the sample is still developing, several consistent themes are emerging.
Pressure does not necessarily make good leaders ineffective, but it can narrow perspective and amplify unhelpful behaviours. Respondents describe people staying silent, difficult conduct going unchallenged, decisions being made too quickly, feedback becoming imbalanced and responsibility for failure becoming harder to accept. Trust can also be weakened by appointments based on familiarity, reduced empathy and conversations taking place around people rather than with them.
Taken together, the findings suggest that leadership under pressure is not simply about individual resilience. It is also about creating the capacity, confidence and organisational conditions that allow leaders to remain self-aware, listen well, address difficult issues and make considered decisions when the stakes are high.
These are preliminary findings rather than final conclusions. The assessment will remain open as I work towards a broader evidence base and explore how these patterns change over time.
What it is like to work with me
The most meaningful measure of coaching, speaking or leadership development is the difference it makes to the people involved.
Here is one perspective from someone who has experienced my approach firsthand.
‘Over several sessions since the summer, Dave has coached me through the move from a long career in policing and aviation into business, a period where confidence doesn’t always keep pace with experience.
What stands out most is his patience. He let me set the pace throughout. When life got in the way with a family wedding, a holiday and a difficult anniversary, he simply worked around it. He never pushed me anywhere I didn’t want to go, and he was always clear about what his tools are for and when something needs a different kind of support.
He’s genuinely interested in people. He remembers the detail from one session to the next, follows up with ideas and resources, and listens for what sits underneath what you’re saying. Using a combination of approaches, including the Pretender model, a self-value baseline, I AM declarations and reframing work, he helped me trace a long-standing pattern of self-doubt to its roots and turn it into something I can now use. I went into a high-stakes pitch noticeably more settled as a result.
Calm, grounded, practical, and generous with his time. I’d highly recommend Dave to anyone navigating the complexities of life and work.’
David Howell
Founder and Director
Able and Rush (People Solutions) Ltd
More from SummitMind
I regularly share new videos, reflections and practical leadership insights through YouTube and LinkedIn.
Follow or connect with me to explore the latest thinking, contribute your own experience and continue the conversation about how we can create healthier, more confident and higher-performing leadership.
