Decision Making Under Pressure: What Changes When the Stakes Are High
Clear thinking in high pressure moments
TL;DR
High pressure moments do not just test decisions. They expose how decisions are made.
When the stakes rise, cognitive bandwidth narrows, emotional responses intensify, and confidence becomes the deciding factor. Decision making under pressure is not about intelligence or personality. It is a habit shaped long before the moment arrives.
Leaders who perform best in high stakes environments understand how pressure changes thinking, and they train for it accordingly.
When pressure changes the decision environment
Decision making, and leadership, is easy when things are going well. Most leaders are comfortable making decisions in those times. The challenge comes when the pressure is high and the consequences have real impact.
Most leaders are trained to decide when they have time, data, and reversibility. Very few are trained to decide when none of those are available.
Decision making becomes difficult when things are not going well, when pressure hits and team performance drops. The route through can feel unclear or unknown. This is the moment others look to a leader for guidance and clarity. Yet all too often, this is when the cracks start to show, uncertainty grows, and decision inertia kicks in.
Decision making as a leadership responsibility
Decision making is a leadership skill. It can be practised and improved.
When you start the journey into leadership, there is often an assumption you will be a great leader because you were great at the job you were doing. But leadership is a different skill set. It is not a given.
Once you are responsible for other people’s performance, welfare, and motivation, you are also the person the team looks to for difficult calls. If you have never needed to make impactful decisions in high pressure situations, why would it be a given that you will feel comfortable, or be good at it?
What hesitation looks like in high pressure moments
In that first critical high pressure moment, a decision is needed. It also carries risk and potential negative impact. It is no wonder that the small voice of self-doubt gets louder and decision inertia kicks in. We freeze.
If the criticality passes without a decision being made, and there is no debrief, there is a danger of learning to avoid critical decisions altogether.
Decision making is a habit, not a trait
I am a firm believer that decision making is a habit. The more we do it, the more comfortable we become. The more we avoid it, the less confident we are when it really matters.
One thing that always stuck with me as I moved through my leadership journey was a line on the promotion application form for sergeant. My first rung of the leadership ladder. It was a typical police application form. Overly complicated and overly long. But it included the positive indicators an applicant needed to demonstrate to be successful. At the bottom of the list was a line that read: Has the ability to make difficult unpopular decisions.
For whatever reason, that line stayed with me. As a leader, having the ability and confidence to make tough, sometimes unpopular calls is a critical skill.
If you shy away from unpopular decisions in low impact situations, it is highly unlikely you will have developed the skill set needed for high pressure situations. When you avoid those decisions, you are no longer effective.
Building confidence in your decision making during non-critical moments is crucial to performing well when pressure is high and time is limited.
What gets in the way of clear decisions in high pressure situations
When you start to unpick the barriers to decision making, you see there are plenty of factors that feed decision inertia:
Time pressure: too much is as bad as not enough
Imposter syndrome
Information overload
Insufficient information
Complexity
Option uncertainty
Accountability
Lack of trust in others (team or leadership)
Failure anxiety
Consequences of failure
This is not an exhaustive list. It simply shows that there are often more reasons to avoid a decision than there are to make one.
The weight of consequences
For me, the most common and strongest barrier, especially in high pressure environments, is the consequences of failure. The “what happens if this goes wrong” or more likely, “what happens to me if this goes wrong”.
Now add an organisation’s culture around failure and you have the potential for real problems.
If your organisation has no appetite for failure, you can end up with a fear of making decisions. In many organisations, when things go well, we get a quick pat on the back and are told to crack on. Next task, next client, next decision. But when things go wrong, they are poured over forensically. Sometimes with the mindset that someone has to be made an example of.
This type of culture inhibits decision making. People stop stretching. It is rarely the level of risk that prevents decisions being made. Risk can often be mitigated, reduced, or transferred. It is the consequences of failure that trap us.
Lessons from high risk negotiation
When delivering kidnap negotiation training, we would have a Senior Investigating Officer from the kidnap and extortion world speak to the delegates. They would explain what their expectations were of the negotiator team.
The SIO we worked with was incredibly experienced. In all the times they came to speak to negotiators, I never once heard them say, “I expect you to play it safe.” Their message was the opposite. It was always the same:
“I expect you to push the envelope. I expect you to get the family to do things they don’t want to do. I expect you to get the hostage takers to do things they don’t want to do. I expect you to get me control of this kidnap.”
That “push the envelope” mindset, in one of the most high pressure environments you can imagine, takes the brakes off. It gives confidence to explore options, even when decisions are time critical, irreversible, and based on incomplete or unreliable information.
The consequences of failure could be catastrophic. But inaction is not an option, and playing it safe does not cut it. There was always a need to decide the direction you would take the negotiation.
When inaction is not an option
In high pressure moments, making no decision is not an option. Procrastinating is not an option. Your team is looking for guidance.
Your decision will not always be popular, and people will second guess it. Often, they will be quietly glad it is you making the call, not them. If it works, they knew it was right. If it does not work, they knew it would never work.
The joys of leadership.
It’s different pressure in business
I know some people will think the pressure of hostage negotiation is very different. I often hear: “Yeah but it’s a very different pressure. No one is going to die if I don’t make a decision.”
My view is simple. Pressure is relative to where you work. If life-and-death situations are your job, you are under no less pressure than anyone else is in theirs. It feels the same when you are in it.
And while no one may die if you do not make a decision, businesses die every day.
Can AI really help with high pressure decisions?
With the increased use of AI in the workplace, many people will seek guidance from their preferred AI companion. I am not an AI hater. In fact, I quite like it.
AI will likely give you options, perhaps even ranked. But when it comes to decision making in high pressure situations where uncertainty is prevalent, it will not help with the emotions attached to the decision.
It will not address the biggest hurdle, the very human element of consequences of failure and the impact on you. If you are not comfortable making decisions, AI will not get you over that line.
AI is excellent at distilling information and creating clarity. But it is clinical. And decision making, especially in a high pressure and uncertain situation, is often driven by emotions. That is something AI does not have.
See: the Somatic Marker Hypothesis (Damasio & Bechara, 1994).
There is a real need to develop confidence in yourself, and an understanding of how you react in high stress situations. Remember: AI supports thinking. It does not give you the courage to make the decision.
Decisions do not land in silence
It is not just about the decision. Another critical factor is your ability to communicate decisions in a way that lands well with the team.
In high pressure situations, communication is often the first thing to suffer. We slip back to our default style.
I see this when training hostage negotiators. During the first week, students are given specific skills and tools around communication. They practise daily and develop those skills throughout the week in live scenarios. For the most part, they demonstrate them well.
In week two, pressure increases significantly. You see students forget what they learned in week one and default to their natural style.
Detectives default to asking lots of questions. Patrol officers default to problem solving. Public order officers default to being instructional and direct. And traffic patrol officers default to being patronising. Only joking. They don’t really.
Why exposure builds confidence in high pressure moments
The second week is about giving students the confidence to apply the skills in high pressure environments. That is the key.
Stress Exposure Training is the correct term. Exposing people to stressful scenarios while they demonstrate the skill set they have learned makes it more likely they will recall those skills in a real world situation.
Final thought: confidence is built before the stakes are high
If you have never had to make decisions in real time in real world high pressure situations, why would you be good at it? Preparation and practice are key.
A friend from the UK military once said to me: “We train for excellence so under pressure we are at least good.” That is a superb mindset. Even the world’s best recognise they are likely to experience a dip in performance.
Probably the most important step is to understand yourself. People who have worked with me will be familiar with the exercise of Holding a Mirror Up. To lead effectively in high pressure environments, you must first hold a mirror up to yourself and understand who you are.
Understand your beliefs and values. Understand what drives and motivates you. Understand your fears. Know what you are good at and what you are not so good at.
To be effective in high pressure situations takes time and practice. The work and confidence are built in low impact situations. Review and unpick your decisions in those moments. Do not just pat yourself on the back and think “crack on”.
Take time to understand what you did and why it worked, or did not work. What options did you discount and why? Seek feedback, not just from friends, but from the people who might tell you things that make you uncomfortable. Feedback is a gift.
As a leader, you do not need to have all the answers. You need a team that has the answers and the confidence to have a voice, so that you can make the final decision.
