Pressure is an unavoidable part of leadership, but when it becomes the normal way of working it begins to shape behaviour, decision-making and organisational culture in ways many leaders fail to recognise.

In this fourth episode of our Emotional Intelligence series, Rich and Dave explore the hidden cost of working in a culture of sustained pressure. They discuss why many leaders become trapped in cycles of over-functioning, how busyness is often mistaken for creating value, and why developing emotional intelligence is essential for creating high-performing teams that can thrive over the long term.

Rather than relying on urgency and pressure to drive results, they introduce a healthier alternative: creating cultures built on clarity, ownership, accountability and intentional recovery.

If you want sustainable performance, not just short-term output, this episode offers practical guidance for leading differently.

Key Talking Points

• Why sustained pressure changes behaviour and organisational culture.
• Why over-functioning leaders unintentionally become bottlenecks.
• The hidden emotional drivers behind overwork and burnout.
• Why busyness is often mistaken for effectiveness.
• The difference between pressure and accountability.
• Recognising the warning signs of unhealthy leadership cultures.
• How recovery and reflection improve long-term performance.
• Why emotional intelligence enables leaders to manage internal pressure more effectively.

So hello and welcome back to the Connected Leadership podcast by Zentano. This is one of our leadership unscripted episodes where Rich and I explore leadership as it really shows up, especially when it starts to feel stretched and unsustainable. In the last episode, we talked about what happens to leaders under pressure, how the moment things become intense, even experienced leaders can lose their sense of calm and of being grounded. What we want to explore today is what happens when pressure isn't just a moment.

it becomes the way you operate. Because many leaders aren't just dealing with pressure occasionally. They're living it, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. And over time, that starts to change how they lead, how their teams behave, and ultimately, the kind of culture they create inside their business. So today we're asking a bigger question. What happens when high performance is driven by constant pressure? And what are the likely consequences?

So Rich is joining me today and we're gonna start there. We're gonna consider the implications for business when pressure becomes the default way of working. So Rich, welcome to the podcast. What's your view on what I've just said and how that impacts business?

Hi Dave, thank you.

I think the issue here when we talk through what happens inside businesses is this idea of pressure becoming normalized. So we'll talk about this a little bit later when we talk about the impact on culture, but you create the culture you tolerate. So if you normalize pressure and you like...

Okay.

almost by implication or explicitly give the signal to your people that, you know, this pressure is the job and busyness and urgency is the default way that the business has to operate. I think that sets an expectation that this is normal. And in my view, think sustained pressure is not neutral.

Mm-hmm.

to your system, if you like, or to your culture. So if your people and you are under sustained pressure over a period of time, that will by definition shape their behavior and shape the outcomes over time. So you need to think about actually, what's the environment that you're creating and what part does pressure play

in that context. And so there's quite a lot of stuff you can do as a leader in terms of how you shape the cultural expectations around pressure. Because all businesses experience pressure from time to time. We all do. Some businesses, depending on the sort of business you're in, will experience more extreme pressures than others, know, lot of that outside of our control. But a lot of, if you like,

They do, yeah.

the cultural side of pressure can be shaped by the expectations leaders create around it. know, it's a normal idea. Yeah, then... Yes, exactly, exactly right, yeah.

Yeah, the narratives they create, the narratives you create inside your business is really important, isn't it?

Well, let's talk about over-functioning leaders then, people maybe who are in that situation where they are under a lot of pressure. What do you typically see leaders doing when they're operating under that sustained pressure?

Mm-hmm.

So typically what happens to our brains is our brains under pressure typically become more narrow in terms of the way we think. Sometimes, know, hyper-focus can come in. And if you use the analogy of left brain, right brain, we tend to probably be more left brain in our thinking. So typically what I would see inside organizations where pressure becomes

Yeah.

the unhealthy norm is you see leaders taking too much responsibility. Perhaps they want to be the hero and they struggle to delegate. Connected to that idea of being the hero and being the rescuer, perhaps they have the tendency to step in too quickly when they perceive there to be problems. Sometimes leaders can become the bottleneck. So if they struggle to delegate, they struggle to trust.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

and everything has to come through them. They risk becoming the bottleneck. And the other impact is just the constant mental load. So the all-was-on culture takes its toll over time. So, you know, there's this over-reliance on having to perform all the time and to do stuff, to overdrive and to prove and to control. So if you like overdrive, improving,

and controlling this very performative sort of way of behaving and functioning. And I think, you know, that there is a narrative. The narrative is becoming less of a thing now in leadership development. But this idea that over-functioning often looks like strong leadership. think, you know, I think that's really important to challenge that narrative, because ultimately if

Yeah, yeah.

if it drives thinking and behavior in an unhealthy way, it can actually limit performance. And I think sometimes leaders make the mistake of thinking, know, some pressure is good for people and for the system, you know, because it gives input, it gives drive, it gives motivation. But if it's ause on, and you're over driving and there's no let up, it can actually limit performance.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about what drives that then. And I'm particularly interested in the hidden drivers. So why do leaders push so hard? So what's driving that behavior underneath the surface? Because I think it isn't just workload, is it? Let's be honest, it's more than that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we talk a lot about this in our confidence pathway. know, what often lies underneath these sort of driving behaviors, this overdrive in behavior, and it's usually linked to fear of failure and the feeling that you have to prove yourself. So fundamentally, it's almost like a lack of confidence, if you like. And sometimes then identity becomes tied to performance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And the leaders perceived confidence in their own ability becomes tied to this idea they have to perform, they have to be demonstrating their over-functioning. So the confidence in that leader set then becomes quite fragile and it's masked by this idea of, if you like, over relying on your competence and over performing. And also,

I think at root of some of this is the discomfort in letting go. So the worry of loss of control or the inability to trust people and then you become uncomfortable at letting go. So I think things like Burnite when we see the end result of some of this where you get sustained

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

unrelenting pressure over time. This burnout is driven by these emotional patterns. So it's not just the external demand, it's the internal stuff. And I think people often think of pressure as an external thing. And that is true. You know, so that there will be demands that will come in to the business, to your team, to your role. So there will always be, you know, because we're operating inside an environment.

Yeah, yeah.

But there's an internal aspect to pressure as well. So your emotional response to those external demands and how you manage those are key. So we're doing a series here on emotional intelligence. So an emotionally intelligent person will be able to distinguish the internal from the external and understand the impact their emotional response to the external pressure.

is having on themselves and on their team.

Yeah. Okay, well, let's move it on a bit further then. And I know on this podcast, we love to bust a myth or two, don't we Rich? let's do a bit of myth busting. the performance myth, and what I mean by that is more effort equals better results, okay? Which, you know, I'm sure you've heard, I've certainly heard that. So I want to challenge that push through it mindset, okay? So there's a strong belief, I think, in many organizations that the harder you push, the better the results you get. My question to you is how accurate do you think that is?

Yeah. Okay. Right.

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, in the short term, mean, potentially, you know, that could be true. But I caveated what I said there within in the short term. And I think a lot of leaders also at the same time is misunderstanding the long term effect of pressure and sort of pushing through that. I think a lot of leaders mistake busyness for adding value.

Yeah, okay.

Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Okay,

so there's a sense in which busyness or pushing through over performing that's either implicitly or explicitly rewarded. So and I think sometimes leaders make the mistake of wanting to I think they do this unconsciously sometimes you know that they're coming to a meeting very slightly late and apologize for being late and

oh poor me I'm so busy and you know there's a load of pressure on you know the poor me sort of thing you know it's almost like they're looking for validation from their team about how busy they are and actually you need to reverse the lens of that and thinking about what's the value that you're adding you know what's the busyness what impact is the busyness having and there are times where busyness is important

Yeah.

Hmm.

you know, because as I said, know, demands come in and sometimes there are peaks and troughs and works workload. And sometimes we, you know, we do need to push and to work hard. But I think it's still possible to work at pace, but to operate from, you know, what we call in Zentana, the connected center. So this place where you feel you have space and you feel you have calm, it's what the great...

You do, yeah.

elite athletes are able to do. They're able to operate at extreme pace, but they almost have this mental space to operate and they manage their internal stuff really effectively versus the external demands. So short bursts of pressure, that can drive performance, but I think the problem becomes when sustained pressure without recovery, and that's the important thing, without recovery leads to decline.

Yeah.

culturally organizations need to think, particularly if you're in an industry where there is genuine high pressure demands on your business and on your people. It's how do you build in a healthy cycle between the stress and the push versus time to recover which delivers high performance. And I think what happens is stress without the recovery phase

That's what leads to fatigue, reduced effectiveness, and ultimately, ultimately burnout. I think I might have said it before in previous podcasts, but in sports psychology, there is this concept of supercompensation. I don't know if you've come across that term. Yeah, yeah, so I think I've talked about this before. So the idea of supercompensation. So with high performing athletes,

Yeah.

No, yeah, you did mention it before,

There is a need to push, obviously, they need to usually physically and mentally exert themselves to the limits, literally to the limits when you think of some of the extreme sports that are out there. But in their training and in their performance, the really best athletes build in time where profound rest and recovery is built in to the rhythm of the way they work.

Well, yeah, I mean, we're seeing this at the World Cup at the moment, aren't we? you know, lot of the teams, not just England, but a lot of the teams are going through really high pressure matches, really physically and mentally draining. And the next day they don't do anything other than rest and recover because you need to to go again in two, three days time. That's the nature. So I think what we're saying here, Richard, there's a certain point where more effort stops creating more value and it actually does the opposite. It reduces the value that you're operating on.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly, yeah, exactly, Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's move it on again then. Let's talk about pressure compared to accountability. So how do you separate high standards and accountability from unhealthy pressure?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Okay, so I guess what we're going to do is to use some very specific terminology to talk about pressure and to talk about accountability. So, you know, sometimes pressure is good, but in the context in which we're talking about here, I'm thinking of pressure is the emotional load, that's the internal stuff that we place on it, plus

Yeah.

Okay.

The urgency and the stress that comes from the external, that's what I call pressure. So as we talked about, some of the external stuff, a lot sometimes is outside your control or influence, not always. The emotional load, that's something that with emotional intelligence you can manage. So that's pressure. So internally externally, the emotional versus the external. Accountability is different.

Okay, yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

And I think if leaders and managers start to reframe their response to pressure and start to think about accountability rather than pressure. So in other words, you don't think about putting pressure on people to get them to perform better. Think about accountability rather than putting pressure on people. And accountability is about giving clarity. So that would be saying, right, this is the direction we're going. These are the goals, these are the measures.

Yeah.

So there's clarity about what you want to achieve. So there's clarity ownership. So in other words, people know what their, if you like, their thing is, what's their bag, the contribution they're gonna make. So if they know that, they can own it and take responsibility for that. And then alongside that, there's clear expectations that you set in terms of what you expect. These are the quality standards that I expect.

their contribution they're going to make, yeah.

by when. I mean that's linked to clarity in some way and I think that's a better way to manage people than thinking about what pressure do I put them under to get them to perform. Give them clarity, give them a sense of ownership so they know what's theirs and what's yours and what's other people's and set the expectations really clearly and then hopefully that would drive more intrinsic motivation and

Yeah.

you know, people will, if you like, put the pressure on themselves in a healthy way. Yeah. So you can have high accountability without necessarily having the unhealthy high pressure that I've been talking about. Sometimes high pressure comes along, but as a leader and a manager, you focus on the high accountability. And, you know, the unhealthy high pressure is not required for high performance. You get high performance by driving high accountability, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think we've said this on the confidence series we did recently. know, people don't often perform their best under the highest pressure, they? Because it drives all sorts of unhealthy things, fear being one of them. But they do perform best when expectations are crystal clear and they feel they've got the capability to meet those expectations. Yeah, yeah. So I guess what we're talking about now is like, let's do an operational reality check, I guess. Yeah. Is where do you most often see this play out inside real organisations

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

the organisations that you work for, where effort and pressure are mistaken for performance.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think so I would give our listeners a couple of, if you like, red flags to look out for. Let's talk about it in terms of red flag moments. So if you see your leader, your leadership team, you your managers constantly firefighting, you know, that's one red flag.

Okay.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

And again, that almost can become a badge of honour inside organisations, you know, where people are firefighting all the time, they're going into meetings and they're, you know, they're waxing lyrical about the latest crisis and their role in that. know, you know, and there are times to firefight when things go wrong or hands to the pump. But if that's that's constant, that's a red flag. I think if you see teams

Yeah.

Yeah.

waiting for the leader to step in so in other words you know what I was talking about earlier that this idea the leader become the bottleneck or decisions you know come to the leader and there's there's no there's no delegation that you know there's no giving of responsibility I think that's another yes exactly exactly right yeah I think

Well, you talked about the leader being the hero and that's also not healthy either, is it? So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I've got to be careful how I say this because you know people can choose how many hours they want to work so I'm not going to judge whether people want to work long hours or short hours or whatever that might be and some organizations have different expectations around that and different industries have different expectations but I think there is a danger in seeing long hours as a commitment to the business.

Yeah.

Yes, I agree with that, absolutely right.

And I think a better lens to think about that is to think about the value the person's adding as opposed to how many hours that they work. know, so I mean, maybe long hours and long hours culture is a whole nother conversation, but there's nuance to that, to be sure. I think if there's little time for reflection or recovery built into your culture, I think that's important. So recovery and reflection, two important.

Yeah.

Yeah.

things you need to give people the ability to be able to do. So think culturally, are you giving people time to do that? And I think if decision quality declines over time and you see the burnout and the pressure that people are under affects their decision making and the quality of that, that's another red flag, I think. So I think that the key points is

Yeah.

Yeah.

you know, sometimes output can be high in the short term, you know, if you do some of these unhealthy things that I've But if you want sustainability and quality over time, you've got to think about how you address some of this stuff, I think.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So I think moving the conversation into, you talked about the culture we create. And also I'm really interested with cultures about what leaders tolerate. Yeah. So how does what we're talking about here start to shape the culture over time?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So I said earlier in this podcast, culture is created by what leaders tolerate. So in this context of pressure, you know, if you normalize pressure, if you normalize, you know, working long hours, you know, if you normalize, you know, rushing to all the meetings that there are, well, that basically becomes your culture. And all the things I've just described there.

have no concept of recovery or reflection time or planning time or strategy time. So overwork becomes normalized. The lack of challenge or honesty, because we're all so busy and everything goes through the leader of the team where you're so dependent on them. And I think reduced psychological safety, all of these impacts get impacted by an unhealthy high pressure environment. So.

you what you tolerate in those areas that creates your culture, that creates your culture. So I think it's really important for leaders to really think intentionally about culture. You know, what signals in terms of their behavior, their mood, all of those things, all of those things begin to shape the culture.

Yeah.

And it's, it was really interesting listening to you talk there. I was having a bit of a flashback to a fair few years ago when I was working with a client and there was two ladies who were working in exactly that type of environment that you were describing and they were crushed by it. They were absolutely crushed by it. You could see it. And I was talking to them and the way they were articulating themselves and you think they're broken. The organisation has almost broken them through that type of culture. Yeah. So, and I think that's the bit I want to talk about next is that, that the cost of this.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, all right.

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I mean not just personally but organisationally as well. So what do you think are the longer term consequences if we allow this pattern to continue?

So if you think about the obvious things, and we've talked about these, where you get exhaustion, you get constant cognitive overload, you know, because a number of teens that I'm doing work with at the moment...

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sorry, I didn't put that on silent.

Okay.

Can we edit this bit out?

I don't know.

Sorry, carry on.

you're going to have to start that section again.

Okay.

Okay, Rich, so let's move this conversation on to the cost of this. And I don't just mean the personal cost, like I've just described with those two ladies, but the organisational cost as well. So what do you think are the longer term consequences if this pattern continues?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So some of those consequences we've talked about already. So the obvious ones are things like exhaustion. Think about constant cognitive overload. A lot of organizations I work with at the moment, you can see that they're on end-to-end teams calls all through the day. And that's exhausting. That takes its cognitive toll, if you like.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

It does.

And so people tend to lose, lose, they have a loss of perspective and burnout. we've talked on a number of podcasts before about the impact of burnout. So if you think about those things, the personal cost, actually a lot of those have an impact on the bottom line in organization. So if you think about exhaustion and burnout, well,

Yeah.

They do, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

There's obviously potential sick time there. Also potential lower engagement, lower motivation. If people have constant cognitive overload, they're gonna be less creative. Their performance is potentially quite fragile, so they're not gonna perform at their best. And I think potentially if they feel this idea of constant pressure, constant pressure, constant pressure.

and the leaders, the hero, there's gonna be reduced ownership as well. So if you want autonomy in your workforce and people to take responsibility and to be engaged, that's all part of how you create a healthy culture and building healthy accountability, high accountability, and understand how you manage stress and pressure in a healthy way where you're building reflection and recovery time into your culture.

Hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I think what we need to do here is we probably need to reframe what we mean by performance, don't we? And what is this sweet spot that we're looking for? Yeah, so if, back to what you were saying earlier on, if pressure isn't the answer, then what does sustainable high performance actually look like? Let's talk about that sweet spot.

So we talked about setting clear expectations. the accountability bit is important. So have regular meetings with your people, make sure they know what's expected of them, by when and to what quality. Don't turn that into micromanagement, but think about high accountability. I think you need to give people the, if you like, the...

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

the capability to develop their capability to develop their emotional intelligence. So with leaders, think, sometimes I see a lot of leaders where they're lacking the awareness and the ability to self-regulate in those moments. I talked about pressure being external and internal. Train your leaders into how to manage the internal stuff in a healthy way. Think about for your business, what recovery...

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

and space for thinking looks like inside your organization. And that's going to be different for different businesses. mean, you hear stores of companies like Google giving slides for their employees and stuff like that. Yeah, maybe. so what is appropriate in terms of what's healthy recovery time without people swinging the lead?

Yeah.

Sounds great!

Yeah,

But

yeah, yeah.

how can you build that into your culture? And I think the other thing to think about is this idea I talked about, know, busyness becoming the badge of honor inside organizations. So don't just think of performance just in terms of effort. Think about how you can get people to build a healthy relationship with managing their energy. So this is not about being alls on.

and pushing and pushing and pushing but think about energy as a a finite precious resource that everyone has and just like a rechargeable battery rechargeable batteries you know will will get discharged the more pressure they're put under and they need time to be plugged back into the mains to recover and to recharge and that takes and that takes time and with human beings it's the same it's the same so

No, absolutely.

How are you allowing people to manage their energy in a healthy way? So don't think about time management, think about energy management is what I would say.

Yeah,

yeah, I think that's a good point to make. So I think just sort of summarizing what you said there, high performance isn't about how much pressure you can sustain, it's more about how well you can manage your energy, where you are and how you build in recovery over time. Yeah. Okay, so that.

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Probably is it for today, Rich. I just want to sort of pull a few threads together. So what are your three or four absolute key messages you want listeners to take away from what we said today?

be a couple of things be careful that unhealthy pressure doesn't become the norm because there's a risk to that i think there's a risk to misinterpreting over functioning as a strength yeah don't mistake

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

busyness for adding value. So effort without awareness leads to burnout. So building an intentionality into that. And then this last point is leaders shape the culture through what they tolerate. So how are you creating a healthy balance between the right levels of stress and pressure, because sometimes that can be a good thing, balanced with

appropriate recovery reflection time. That leads to high performance and that's where this idea of high accountability as opposed to pressuring people comes in.

Great. So for me, that's a great summary. And I think what we said, what feels like high performance in the short term can create some long-term weaknesses in your business and it won't be sustainable. Simple as that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So thank you for your time, Rich. And thank you for those wise words as always. As we close this episode, here's something for listeners to reflect on. Think about how you or your organization currently define high performance.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

okay thank you

Is it driven by effort and pressure as Richard's described? Or as he's also described, is it about clarity and focus and accountability and the ability to sustain that over time? Because the patterns you reinforce today in how you work.

Mm-hmm.

and what you tolerate and how you respond under pressure will shape the culture and performance of your team over time. So in the next episode, we're going to shift the focus outward and explore how leaders understand and respond to the experience of others looking at things like empathy and organisational awareness in a very practical and grounded way. So Rich, again, thanks for your time. For anybody listening, now you're welcome. If this conversation for the listeners has resonated, you'll find further reflections and structured learning through our Ford's Leadership Academy.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you, Dave. Thank you.

And as Rich mentioned, we have got this forwards with inner confidence pathway now, which I know a lot of people are really interested in. So if that's something you want to talk about, please get in touch with us, find us on LinkedIn, find us through the website. But for today, this has been the Connected Leadership podcast by Zontano. So thank you very much for listening.

Thank you. Thank you.