If Your Hysterical, It’s HistoricalA senior executive once reacted sharply in a strategy meeting.
The trigger?
A colleague questioned the timeline.
The reaction felt bigger than the moment.
Tension. Defensiveness. A sudden need to assert control.
Afterward, he said quietly,
“I don’t know why that set me off.”
Here’s why.
Most leaders assume that when challenges repeat, the problem must be external:
the team, the culture, the system, the market, the pace.
But Leadership and Self-Deception offers a harder—and more liberating—truth:
We don’t see reality as it is.
We see it as our internal operating system allows us to see it.
When we are operating from self-deception, we interpret situations through the lens of threat, justification, and protection. We see others as obstacles, problems, or objects. Even well-intended leaders unknowingly reinforce the very dynamics they’re trying to change.
This is not a character flaw.
Valentine’s Day tends to frame the heart as sentimental.
Leadership culture often treats the heart as irrelevant.
Both miss something essential.
Modern neuroscience and psychophysiology point to a powerful truth:
the heart is not just emotional — it’s intelligent.
And without access to the heart’s intelligence, higher-level leadership thinking becomes biologically constrained.
Research from the HeartMath Institute and leading psychophysiology researchers shows that the heart has its own intrinsic nervous system (often called the “heart brain”), with tens of thousands of neurons and a powerful influence on how the brain functions.
The heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart via the vagus nerve and other pathways. This means the state of the heart significantly shapes perception, emotional regulation, and cognitive clarity — especially under pressure.
When leaders are chronically stressed or emotionally constricted:
Most leadership programs aim for resilience — the ability to bounce back after stress.
But Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the thinker who coined the term anti-fragile, showed us something more interesting:
Some systems don’t just survive disruption.
They get better because of it.
A muscle strengthens after being stressed.
The immune system learns through exposure.
Great leaders evolve through challenges rather than being diminished by them.
The question is not:
How do I avoid pressure?
It is: How do I become the kind of leader pressure improves?
In many organizations, strength is misunderstood as:
• pushing through
• suppressing emotion
• doubling down on control
• moving faster when things get hard
That approach can look effective in the short term.
But over time it creates something fragile:
• narrow thinking
• rigid decision making
• exhausted nervous systems
• cultures that fear mistakes
Fragile systems hate surprises.
Anti-fragile systems use them as fuel.
