Even coaches have their moments. I lost it recently, and it reminded me exactly how leadership derail actually works.
Nothing catastrophic happened. Meetings got cancelled. Email stopped cooperating. A delivery I had planned my entire day around got returned. Each one, on its own, would have been fine. Stacked together? Not so much. Hands shaking. Voice raised. An unfortunate call center rep on the receiving end.
Not my proudest moment.
But here’s the thing, this is how it happens for leaders too. Not in the big moments. In the buildup.
It’s Never Really About the Last Thing
Small frustrations, one after another, each one manageable on its own, until the final one lands and you react in a way that’s completely out of proportion to what actually happened.
The cancelled meeting wasn’t the problem. The email glitch wasn’t the problem. The delivery wasn’t the problem. It was the weight of all of them together, with no release valve in between.
This is how leaders end up snapping at a team member over a minor mistake. It’s how an offhand comment in a meeting lands harder than intended. It’s how a reasonable person becomes unreasonable, not because of who they are, but because of what’s been quietly accumulating.
Your team feels this. Even when you think you’ve kept it together, the people around you are tracking your emotional state more closely than you realize.
You Cannot Lead Well From a Depleted State
The problem with the buildup is that it’s gradual. You don’t notice you’re at capacity until you’re already past it.
Most leaders manage the obvious stressors, the high-stakes presentation, the difficult conversation, the board meeting. But the low-grade accumulation? That’s the one that catches you off guard. The back-to-back scheduling chaos. The technology that won’t cooperate. The small thing that falls through right when you need it not to.
These don’t feel like leadership challenges. They feel like life. And that’s exactly why they’re dangerous, because you’re not preparing for them the way you’d prepare for a hard conversation or a critical decision.
By the time you react poorly, the window to choose differently has already closed.
What Actually Helps
Leadership isn’t about never losing it. It’s about catching it faster and minimizing the impact. Here’s what works:
Breathe, with intention. Not a casual deep breath, but a deliberate one. Longer exhales activate the part of your nervous system that slows everything down. They create space between what just happened and how you respond. That space is where your judgment lives. When things start stacking up, the breath is the fastest reset available to you.
Reframe the trigger. When you feel yourself getting reactive, the frustration you’re feeling is rarely just about this moment. Most triggers echo past experiences or accumulated stress that has nothing to do with what’s in front of you right now. A useful reset: remind yourself, this is just this time, it doesn’t always happen. It’s a small shift, but it interrupts the spiral before it takes over.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Building emotional regulation into your leadership isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a habit developed before you need it, not in the middle of a meltdown.
Pay attention to your own warning signs, the physical ones especially. Tension in your shoulders. A shorter fuse in your responses. The sense that everything is slightly more irritating than it should be. These are signals, not character flaws. They’re telling you something needs to shift before it shows up in a way you’ll regret.
The goal isn’t to be unaffected. The goal is to have a shorter gap between when you feel it and when you course-correct.
That’s not a soft skill. That’s one of the most important things a leader can develop.
Want to build stronger emotional regulation strategies for your leadership? Let’s talk.
#Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #ExecutivePresence #SelfAwareness #LeadershipDevelopment