Leadership Skills for the AI Era

As the new year begins, we’re all hearing a lot about transformation sweeping the world of leadership development. It’s hard to keep track! For a quick overview of the latest research, check out my recent article. And if you're looking for something solid to hold onto amid all this change, here's what I keep coming back to: The timeless fundamentals of leadership still hold true. In fact, I believe that they’re the key factor that determines whether a company will evolve for the AI era or get left in the dust.

So what are these essential skills and capabilities? And how can you identify the specific areas where individual employees need more development? These questions drove the development of our New Lens® learning platform. The answers we discovered are important for every HR and L&D professional to know.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

Why Fundamentals Matter Now

After 25 years of coaching executives and designing leadership solutions for Fortune 500 companies, I've watched what holds up when everything else is shifting: the human skills that allow leaders to navigate complexity, inspire teams, and make sound decisions under pressure. These fundamentals matter even more when we're all tired, when change feels relentless, and when it's hard to remember why we got into this work in the first place. Research shows that technology is advancing faster than job roles and skills can keep up, creating what Bersin calls an “AI productivity and skills gap.” The teams and organizations that close this gap are those where managers facilitate experimentation, orchestrate collaboration between humans and AI, and help people redesign work itself.

These capabilities show up across every coaching engagement, custom solution, and development program we design. These aren’t trendy skills that will be obsolete next year. They’re the essential building blocks—proven to get results across industries and economic conditions. And as AI reshapes the workplace, they become even more critical.

Think of it this way: AI is rapidly changing what work gets done and how it gets done. But leadership—the ability to guide people through uncertainty, build trust, and align efforts toward meaningful goals—is more human than ever.

Essential Skills for Leading Through AI Transformation

Here are the fundamental leadership capabilities that organizations need right now. Each reflects what we’re seeing and learning as we work alongside leaders navigating AI transformation—through coaching, scalable development programs, and custom solutions designed for specific organizational challenges. The Josh Bersin Company calls leaders who master these capabilities “supermanagers”—those who blend human-centered leadership with AI adoption to drive transformation. That's exactly what we're seeing work in practice.

Seeing the Big Picture

How it supports AI transformation: As AI automates tactical work, leaders must elevate their thinking. They need to understand how AI fits into the broader organizational strategy—where it creates value, where it introduces risk, and how to position their teams for the changes ahead. Strategic thinkers can distinguish between AI hype and genuine opportunity, making smarter investment decisions.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders who focus more on short-term deliverables and less on long-term needs. They react to AI with hesitation or resistance, rather than thoughtful evaluation. Their teams lack clarity about how their work connects to the big picture and priorities.

Focusing on the Right Work 

How it supports AI transformation: One of the first things I do with coaching clients is helping them understand their “Big 3”—the top three things they can uniquely do that have the greatest impact on the business. We build this framework into all our work—coaching engagements, custom leadership development solutions, and scalable programs like New Lens. This understanding helps leaders determine what they can delegate to AI and what tasks need to remain high-touch.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders who constantly seem to be “putting out fires.” They believe that if they want something done right, they have to do it themselves. They struggle to articulate what work truly requires their unique skills versus what could be handled by others—or by AI.

Communicating with Influence and Impact

How it supports AI transformation: Change requires communication—and AI transformation involves relentless change. Leaders must articulate the “why” behind AI initiatives in ways that resonate emotionally, not just logically. They need to translate technical possibilities into compelling visions that motivate their teams to adapt and learn.

Signs of skill gaps: Teams that seem confused about priorities or resistant to change. Messages that land differently than intended. Leaders who over-rely on email rather than direct two-way conversations. A lack of trust or psychological safety within the team. When I see these patterns, the root cause is almost never that the leader doesn't care—it's that they haven't been taught how to communicate change in a way that lands

Building Visibility and Credibility

How it supports AI transformation: In a world where AI can generate content, analysis, and even code, leaders need to be known for their judgment, their relationships, and their ability to see connections others miss. Building visibility ensures decision-makers recognize the unique value you and your team bring.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders whose contributions go unrecognized despite strong results. Teams that get passed over for high-profile projects. Difficulty gaining support for new initiatives. An assumption that “good work speaks for itself” without any intentional effort to share wins.

Navigating Organizational Dynamics

How it supports AI transformation: During AI implementation, there will be territorial concerns, budget battles, and competing priorities. Leaders who can skillfully navigate these dynamics—building coalitions, managing stakeholders, and finding win-win solutions—will drive successful adoption while others get mired in resistance.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders who are blindsided by organizational decisions. Initiatives that stall despite clear business value. A tendency to avoid conflict or dismiss organizational politics as “games.” Difficulty influencing peers or getting buy-in from other departments.

Building a Powerful Network 

How it supports AI transformation: Nobody navigates transformation alone. Leaders with strong networks have access to diverse perspectives, early information about changes, and support when initiatives hit obstacles. As AI reshapes roles and reporting structures, relationships become even more valuable—they’re the connective tissue that makes organizations function.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders who only network when they need something. Limited relationships outside their immediate team, department, or function. A network of people who look exactly like they do. Difficulty getting meetings with key stakeholders or being left out of important conversations.

Building Leadership Courage and Resilience 

How it supports AI transformation: Transformation is exhausting—and it’s fueling manager burnout. Leaders need the resilience to sustain their energy through waves of change and the courage to make tough calls, advocate for their teams, and speak up when AI initiatives are heading in the wrong direction.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders showing signs of burnout—cynicism, disengagement, declining performance. Avoiding difficult decisions or conversations. An inability to bounce back from setbacks. Teams that mirror their leader’s stress and anxiety.

Developing a High-Performing Team

How it supports AI transformation: AI amplifies team capability—but only if the team is already functioning well. Leaders who can build trust, foster psychological safety, and create clarity around roles and expectations will see AI multiply their team’s impact. Those with dysfunctional teams will find that AI only magnifies existing problems.

Signs of a skill gap: High turnover and difficulty retaining top talent. Team members working in silos rather than collaborating. Meetings that feel like status updates rather than true collaboration. A lack of constructive conflict—either too much discord or artificial harmony.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

How it supports AI transformation: As AI handles more analytical tasks, emotional intelligence becomes the defining human capability. Leaders need to read the room, sense when team members are struggling with change, and respond with empathy while still driving results.

Signs of skill gaps: Leaders who are surprised by team reactions to change. Difficulty managing their own stress in ways that don’t affect the team. Feedback that is either too harsh or avoided entirely.

Reimagine L&D in 2026

The way we think about learning and development is shifting—fast. On Thursday, January 29, I’ll be hosting a live session: “What’s Next for L&D: The Biggest Shifts Shaping 2026.”

I want to share what I'm learning and synthesizing from working with organizations in real-time: what's actually shifting, what's working, and how we're all adapting together. We’ll talk about:

• The biggest drivers of high performance in the current environment

• How AI is (really) reshaping learning strategy

• What all of this means for managers and leaders

• Scalable coaching models that actually work

I'd love to explore these questions together. Join us if you're trying to figure out what's next.

📅 Thursday, January 29, 2026

🕒 12:00 PM CT

🔗 Reserve your spot here: https://luma.com/qkos4s7j

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Don’t wait for performance to drop before taking action. Discover how the New Lens® platform helps organizations support managers with bite-sized, actionable learning—built for today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments.

Emotional Intelligence Is More Essential Than Ever in Today's Workplace

Everywhere I turn, leaders are talking about how AI and rapid transformation are reshaping their organizations. The speed of change is staggering. Yet through all this disruption, one truth is clearer than ever: Emotional intelligence isn’t becoming less relevant—it’s becoming indispensable.

Photo by Christina Morillo

In my work with Fortune 500 leaders and through our New Lens® platform, I’ve seen firsthand how our content and design dramatically increase self-awareness and help leaders understand the impact of their actions on others. The platform offers strategies to navigate change and build resilience so leaders can consistently show up in an optimal way—exactly what's needed in today’s challenging environment.

Why Emotional Intelligence Matters More in 2025

Thirty years ago, Daniel Goleman introduced the framework of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills). Those principles remain the foundation. What's changed is the context in which leaders must apply them.

Hybrid work makes reading body language a matter of interpreting someone’s engagement through a screen. Decision-making happens at unprecedented speed, with incomplete information. Teams are coping with relentless change, fatigue and uncertainty. Leaders can’t rely on old playbooks; they need the capacity to stay grounded themselves while supporting others through ambiguity.

The leaders who thrive today aren't the ones with all the answers. They’re the ones who use emotional intelligence to spark collaboration, integrate diverse perspectives and create psychological safety when everything else feels unstable.

The Hidden Cost of Leading Through Change

But here’s the challenge: Even the most capable leaders are stretched thin. Change fatigue wears down energy levels and erodes emotional intelligence. When you’re exhausted, you’re more likely to miss cues, snap in conversations or slip into command-and-control behaviors that undermine trust.

This is why being intentional about developing emotional intelligence matters. It’s the anchor that helps leaders show up with steadiness when the ground beneath them keeps shifting.

Help Your Team Build Emotional Intelligence

Building emotional intelligence across your organization doesn't require extensive resources or time away from critical work. You can create meaningful development through strategic approaches that fit into existing workflows:

• Implement regular team check-ins that focus on workload and well-being.

• Provide managers with tools for giving growth-focused feedback in real time.

• Create structured reflection opportunities that help leaders understand their impact on team performance.

• Invest in scalable solutions that make emotional intelligence development accessible to all levels.

Moving Forward with Confidence

If you're feeling stretched thin, you're not alone. But by investing in your emotional intelligence, even in small ways, you’ll navigate today's changes with more confidence and build the foundation for whatever comes next.

Ready to explore how New Lens® can help develop leaders at your organization? Learn more about our platform or contact us to start a conversation about your leadership development needs.

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Don’t wait for performance to drop before taking action. Discover how the New Lens® platform helps organizations support managers with bite-sized, actionable learning—built for today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments.

What to Do When You Can’t Get a Response

You have a simple question. Or at least that's what you thought. But, for some reason, the colleague you are asking keeps saying they'll have to get back to you. Or perhaps they do respond to you, but their answer isn't relevant to what you need to know.

Image by Ernesto Eslava from Pixabay

When someone isn’t responsive to your questions, you might feel frustrated or even invisible. Getting the information you need while maintaining a good relationship with the other person takes both strong communication skills and emotional intelligence.

Clarify the Core Message

One reason the other person may not respond is that they may be getting lost in the details. Whether you're asking a question in conversation or via email, remember to present your "headlines” first. In other words, directly ask about what you want to know. Save the backstory and details. The other person will ask for more information if they need it.

Put Yourself in Their Shoes

Perhaps more than ever, many of us spend our days in a state of stress and distraction. When we're busy, our listening skills suffer. So even if you are clearly stating your question, the other person may not be processing what you are really saying. Consider your audience and tailor the approach accordingly.  What tends to work best? How can you make things easier?

Maybe They Just Don't Know

Some people are reluctant to say "I don't know" out of fear of coming across as incompetent or incapable.

Usually, the leaders I coach have already tried different strategies to make sure they are understood. But they often don't pick up that the other person is uncomfortable admitting they don't have an answer — especially if they themselves have no problem saying they don't know something.

Consider whether this might be going on in your situation. What does the evidence tell you about whether the other person actually has an answer to your question? Don't let their title or level distract you.

If you suspect they don't have an answer, you may have to help them figure one out in a way that spares their ego. For example, give them a couple of ideas to consider and get their reaction.

If you'd like to learn more strategies for leading confidently in any situation, check out my WOW! (Women on the Way to peak performance) Program℠. I've delivered WOW! at top corporations, and now it's available as a self-paced program that you can complete on your own, with a colleague or through your own informal learning circle.

How to Move Forward Amid Uncertainty

It all adds up: Election stress, pandemic stress, economic stress. Not to mention the regular stresses of our busy lives.

But no matter where we are emotionally right now, and no matter what lies ahead, we're all working to keep moving forward on the things that are important to us.

Your instinct might be to just keep pushing yourself. But that's not sustainable. Instead, I want to encourage you to take time today to think about where you are and to plot your path forward.

It's easy sometimes to overlook the first part of that process: checking in with yourself. But self-awareness, especially during times of change, is a crucial part of being a leader.

How Are You Right Now?

That's why I want you to pause to consider how you are doing at this moment. Where would you place yourself on a scale of 1 to 10?

A “10” means you consistently feel strong, optimistic or resilient. You developed strategies that have been working well for you this year. A “1” means you may feel depleted, drained or are struggling from week to week. You're at your lowest point of 2020. If neither of those extremes applies to you and how you feel vacillates, you may fall somewhere in the middle.

Remember that this exercise is less about the numerical rating and more about being honest with yourself and noticing what’s going on for you.

Next, think about what has helped you navigate all the uncertainty of 2020 so far. What has kept you going and gotten you through the most difficult times? Here are a few possible answers to help spark your thinking:

• I've felt my best this year when I've protected my time for exercising even when my schedule is hectic.

• I've discovered that writing down my feelings really helps me de-stress.

• Talking with friends, colleagues or mentors who lift my energy has helped me deal with the hardest parts of 2020.

What Do You Really Need?

Finally, pick one of those helpful habits or activities and think about how you can bring it to the forefront. This is important no matter what your emotional state and stress levels are right now. If you're feeling good, understanding why this is so will help you keep building on your momentum. If you're not doing so great, the best way to start turning things around is going back to the tools and strategies that have worked for you before.

Either way, make sure the step you focus on is easy to implement. It should involve an action you can take immediately to give yourself more of what you need. You can even share what you are doing with someone close to you so that they can hold you accountable.

As always, I want to remind you that small steps lead to big results. That's never felt more true. And I'm here to support you as you take those steps. Here are a few more resources that can help:

• Why pausing makes you more productive

• How to use passion to overcome fear

• When you are tired of being strong

• The best leaders ask for help

• All self-paced tools from Newberry Executive Solutions

What’s Your Impact?

Every day we engage with people from all walks of life in our professional and personal lives. Each interaction results in an exchange of energy, information, and ideas—positive and negative. Through the following three questions, I challenge you today to think about the impact you have on others.

What kind of energy are you giving off?

First, are you the kind of person who brings a conversation to a halt with your “healthy dose of realism” that others might call pessimism, or are you someone that people receive positive energy from? As you go through your day, notice how people respond to you by observing their body language, tone and actions. Recognize that some of their reactions may be more about them than you, but others may be directly related to what you are saying and doing. By paying attention more closely, you may notice some important patterns.

How do you impact results?

Next, ask yourself how the company or others benefit from your involvement or participation, whether you’re participating in a meeting or on a conference call. What do you typically contribute? Are you the person that “hangs back” or dives right in with your ideas? How much do you focus on moving things forward versus staying below the radar or just trying to wade through? Even if you’re “showing up” to participate, are you actually adding value?

What do others take from your behavior?

To bring the last point home, I want to share something from a meeting I was facilitating with an executive women’s group last week. We talked about how leaders are always in an “invisible spotlight.” In other words, people are constantly watching them, noticing what they are doing and drawing their own conclusions.

So, whether you realize it or not, you are sending indirect messages with everything you do. What are yours? Is it that you’re overwhelmed and need to be managed carefully or you might make life miserable for everyone? Or are you that unwavering leader that can provide direction and guidance consistently no matter what is going on? Recognize that small actions can add up to big messages when you put them all together.

Remember that you have an impact on everyone you interact with, but you do have a choice about what kind of impact you want have. So be intentional and purposeful about it and make sure that what you do reinforces your leadership brand and aligns with your values.

So, what one small step will you take this week to have the type of impact that’s important to you and your team?

7 Thinking Traps That Undermine Leaders—And How to Escape Them

When the pressure is high and the pace is relentless, your brain will try to work against you. Here’s what to watch for.

I was working with a senior leader recently. Talented, experienced, the kind of person her organization depends on. And she said something that stopped me cold:

“I just don’t think I’m cut out for this role.”

She’d had a rough quarter. A major initiative hadn’t landed the way she’d hoped. Two of her strongest people were being pulled toward other priorities. And she was navigating an executive team that seemed to be communicating less the more pressure mounted.

Anyone who’s been through a stretch like that knows the feeling: Is it me? Am I the problem?

She was not the problem. And she was cut out for her role. But in that moment, she had fallen into one of the most common thinking traps for leaders: letting a hard stretch become a judgment about her identity.

Thinking traps are patterns of distorted thinking that feel true in the moment but lead us away from clear judgment and effective action. They’re not new. Over the years, I’ve seen them surface constantly in my coaching work. But these days they’re feeling more common than ever. Right now, leaders are navigating unprecedented complexity, uncertainty and change. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries faster than most organizations can adapt. Teams are distributed, attention is fractured, and the pace of change has made the job of leading more cognitively demanding than at any other point in my 17-plus years in this work.

Under that kind of pressure, even excellent leaders stop thinking clearly. Trying to protect them from threat, their brains start generating narratives that are unhelpful and just plain wrong.

Why Thinking Traps Hit Leaders Especially Hard Right Now

What makes us vulnerable to thinking traps? You know firsthand that when you’re physically depleted—running on too little sleep, skipping meals, neglecting exercise—your brain feels foggy. That fogginess isn’t just your perception. The exhausted brain shifts into a more reactive mode. The prefrontal cortex, which handles sound judgment, perspective-taking and long-range thinking, gets crowded out by the more threat-sensitive parts of the brain. We stop being strategic. We start being stressed. And the traps follow almost automatically.

The stressed leader reacts instead of responds. Catastrophizes instead of assesses. Assumes the worst about other people’s intentions. Swings between taking on all the blame and deflecting responsibility entirely. Makes decisions they wouldn’t make with a full night’s sleep and a clear head.

The stressed leader operates from urgency—constantly pulled toward what’s loudest and most immediate. The strategic leader protects time for what’s actually important, makes decisions from a position of clarity and builds shared ownership with their team instead of hoarding control or abandoning it.

Thinking traps keep leaders stuck in stress mode. Getting unstuck starts with learning to recognize them.

The 7 Thinking Traps

These seven traps are well-documented in research, and I see versions of all of them regularly in my executive coaching work. Take a moment now to read through them with honest curiosity: Which ones feel familiar? Where do you recognize yourself?

1. Personalizing: Taking the Blame for Things You Don’t Control

What it sounds like: My team is struggling because I haven’t figured out how to lead them through this level of change.

When you personalize, you accept full responsibility for outcomes that are actually the result of several factors—some of which have nothing to do with you.

This trap is especially damaging because it’s common among leaders who care deeply. When things go wrong, they turn inward immediately. They see a client departure—or a disengaged team member, or an initiative that didn’t land—as evidence of their failure.

For some leaders, personalizing might feel like a virtue because they think they’re holding themselves accountable. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, claiming ownership of every variable prevents them from seeing the full picture of what went wrong and finding better solutions going forward.

The reframe:

When something goes wrong, get curious before you get self-critical. Ask yourself: “What evidence supports that this was because of me—and what doesn’t?” You can take genuine responsibility for your contribution without shouldering the weight of everything that was never yours to carry.

2. Externalizing: Handing Your Power to Forces Outside You

What it sounds like: The market shifted. The board kept changing the priorities. The leadership team is dysfunctional, not me.

Externalizing is the mirror image of personalizing, and it’s just as dangerous. It means placing responsibility for your outcomes entirely outside yourself, and in doing so, giving up what you actually control: your own choices and responses.

I’ve watched genuinely skilled leaders stall out because they were so focused on what was being done to them that they never stopped to ask what they could do in response. And I get it—leaders are dealing with a lot right now. AI disruption, competitive pressure, a complicated talent market. Those are real forces. But leaders who get stuck here stop learning, stop adapting and eventually stop leading. They become spectators in their own situation.

The reframe:

What evidence supports that this situation was because of others or external factors—and what doesn’t? Name honestly what is outside your control. Then turn your attention to your own role. You almost certainly have more influence than it feels like right now.

3. Magnifying and Minimizing: Turning Up the Bad, Turning Down the Good

What it sounds like: We lost that account—this whole quarter has been a disaster. Their positive feedback was just them being polite.

When you turn up the volume on the negatives and turn it down on the positives, you get a distorted sense of your performance and your situation.

We work with a lot of high performers, who are particularly vulnerable to this thinking trap. The same high standards that drive them to excellence can make it nearly impossible to let a success land. One difficult client interaction overshadows a dozen strong ones. A single critical comment in a performance review drowns out months of genuine praise.

You can’t deploy your strengths more deliberately if you can’t see them clearly. Overanalyzing your failures while treating your successes as flukes isn’t humility—it’s leading from incomplete data.

The reframe:

Before you analyze what went wrong, identify what went right. Not as a feel-good exercise, but as a data-collection exercise. What specifically worked, and why?

4. Overgeneralizing: Mistaking a Moment for a Trend

What it sounds like: Every time we try something new, it fails. We’ve never been able to retain strong people here.

Overgeneralizing means drawing broad conclusions from limited evidence—and then treating those conclusions as fixed facts about yourself, your team or your organization.

One difficult presentation becomes “I’m a poor presenter.” A failed initiative becomes “We’re not good at executing new ideas.” Once we get set on those conclusions, they close off the possibility of fresh solutions. If you’ve already decided something “never” works, you stop looking for new approaches.

The reframe:

Replace “always,” “never” and “every time” with “this time” or “in this situation.” One data point is information. It’s not a pattern. And it’s certainly not a verdict about who you are or what you’re capable of.

5. Mind Reading: Assuming the Worst Without Asking

What it sounds like: I haven’t heard from her—she must think my proposal is a bad idea. He was quiet in that meeting; I know he’s frustrated with me.

Mind reading means assuming you know what someone else is thinking—and almost always assuming the worst.

As pressure and stress increase, so does the pull of this trap. When people are busy, communication breaks down. Emails don’t get returned promptly. Leaders get left out of meetings. They feel “in the dark,” and they instinctively start looking for patterns that might explain what’s happening. The stressed mind rushes in with a story, and it’s almost always a negative one—more about our own fears and insecurities than the actual situation.

I’ve seen mind reading cost leaders critical relationships, because they pulled back from someone based on a conclusion that had no basis in fact. I’ve also seen it cost organizations real momentum, because a leader assumed a key stakeholder was skeptical without ever testing that assumption.

The reframe:

Make it a practice to ask rather than assume. “I noticed you were quiet in that meeting—what was on your mind?” takes 10 seconds and can save hours of mental energy spent on a story that may not be true.

6. Emotional Reasoning: Treating Feelings as Facts

What it sounds like: I feel overwhelmed, so this must be an impossible situation. I’m anxious about this, which must mean I’m not ready.

Emotional reasoning means treating your emotional state as evidence about external reality, when in fact it’s only evidence about your internal state.

Emotions are real and they matter. But they are not always accurate reporters about what is happening around you. A leader who feels overwhelmed isn’t necessarily in an unmanageable situation. They may be depleted—physically or emotionally—or working without the right support, or simply in a chapter that calls for a different approach.

I see emotional reasoning showing up frequently around AI right now. Leaders who feel behind on understanding how AI is changing their industry often conclude, based on that feeling alone, that they aren’t equipped to lead through change. That feeling is worth paying attention to: It might be telling you to learn more, to ask for help, to slow down. But it’s not proof that you’re in the wrong seat.

The reframe:

Separate the feeling from the conclusion. “I feel overwhelmed” is a signal that something needs to shift. But “this is impossible” is a claim that deserves evidence before you act on it. Feelings are data, not verdicts.

7. Catastrophizing: Jumping Straight to Disaster

What it sounds like: If we don’t nail this next presentation, we could lose everything we’ve built. If I don’t figure out this AI transition, I’m going to lose my job.

Catastrophizing means jumping from a difficult present moment to a worst-case future—and then responding to the imagined disaster as if it’s already happening. When the environment is uncertain, the brain tries to protect itself by reaching for worst-case scenarios: If I imagine the disaster, maybe I can prevent it. But a mind that’s busy managing an imagined catastrophe can’t think clearly about the actual situation in front of it.

This is the energy drain I see most often in my work with senior leaders. I recently worked with a leadership team navigating intense pressure from key stakeholders—the kind of environment where every quarterly review felt high-stakes. They were spending enormous energy on contingency planning for outcomes that were unlikely, while the real issue—a cadence of communication with the stakeholders that was creating more anxiety than it resolved—went unaddressed. They were managing the wrong fire.

The reframe:

Bring yourself back to right now. Not the 17th step, not the worst-case outcome. Just the next concrete action. What is the first thing you need to do? Focus there. You can’t solve a problem you haven’t arrived at yet.

The Practice: From Stressed Leader to Strategic Leader

Thinking traps are not a sign of weakness or inadequacy. They’re a sign of being human—and of being in a demanding role. Every leader I’ve worked with, at every level of every organization, has experienced some version of every trap on this list. I have too.

We can’t stop our brains from generating these patterns. But we can take back our power by learning to recognize them and developing the habits that help us find our way back to clear thinking.

If you recognize yourself in one or more of the traps on this list, take that as a signal—not that something is wrong with you, but that you need a reset. Start with the physical foundations of self-care. You might be tired of reminders to get more sleep, but it really can change so much. So can real meals and regular movement. When you’re running on empty, every trap hits harder and faster. Protect your energy the way you’d protect any other strategic resource.

Then build the noticing habit. This week, pick one trap from the list—the one that seems to always snare you. Then, just once, catch yourself when you’ve fallen in. You don’t have to fix it immediately. Just notice it. Name it. And then ask yourself what you would say to a trusted colleague who was thinking this way.

You probably wouldn’t tell them the one bad quarter defined their career. You probably wouldn’t tell them that a silent inbox meant a lost relationship. Or that the worst-case outcome was inevitable.

You’d help them see the fuller picture. You’d remind them what they’re good at. You’d tell them the truth with kindness.

Give yourself the same clarity and compassion you’d give someone you respect.

Ready to Go Deeper?

When leaders are stuck in stress mode, the cost shows up in retention, decision-making and the performance of entire teams. For more than 17 years, we’ve helped leaders and organizations across industries build the skills to lead strategically through complexity and change. If you’re seeing these patterns in yourself or your leadership team, let’s talk. Reach out at neena@newberrysolutions.com, learn more about coaching and other offerings or explore New Lens®, our award-winning leadership development platform, at www.newlensleadership.com.

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Don’t wait for performance to drop before taking action. Discover how the New Lens® platform helps organizations support managers with bite-sized, actionable learning—built for today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments.