Leading Under Pressure
Build your leadership toolkit for times of turbulence
Every now and then, an incident occurs that makes the world hold its breath, unable to do anything except watch as it unfolds. Behind most critical situations and their outcomes are individuals and teams, stories of human error and leadership failure, but also stories of success. By examining why these situations arise and how they are managed, powerful leadership lessons that are applicable to business and everyday life can be drawn.
IMD’s Leading Under Pressure program equips you with the leadership skills you need to navigate pivotal moments of turmoil, complexity, and crisis. You will learn how the human brain reacts to uncertainty and stress, and how to detect warning signals early on.
Through captivating case studies, you will gain insights into the role of emotions in critical scenarios and develop techniques for effective decision-making under pressure. You will also examine your leadership approach and learn how to build resilient teams capable of high performance in challenging situations.
Led by two of IMD’s expert faculty members with extensive experience in hostage negotiations and conflict management, this program offers a truly immersive experience rooted in inspiring real-life stories and actionable insights for emerging stronger from adversity.
Self-paced preparation, starting six weeks before the program
- Write and reflect on your own stories of leadership success and failure during critical situations.
- Dive into recent case studies documenting situations of high pressure, human error, and leadership failure.
- Reflect on your purpose, role, and practices as a leader in times of complexity and turmoil.
- Craft the key questions that will guide your inquiry and exploration during the program.
On campus, 3 days
Mapping
- Learn lessons from high pressure situations through case studies, personal experiences, interactive dialogues, work in coaching groups, and testimonials by guest speakers.
- Identify different sources of crisis within the context of your leadership practices, team, and organization: human error, organizational sources, structural, and systemic factors.
- Pinpoint zones of stress for you and your team.
- Map your ecosystem of stakeholders with a view to forming a resilient fabric of relationships.
Connecting
- Identify the connection between human error and organizational failure in the role played by leadership.
- Understand how stress, uncertainty and turmoil impact your emotions and your responses and decision making as a leader.
- Be aware of your internal and external sources of resilience and pathways back to high energy levels.
- Reflect on how you can build strong and interdependent networks of teams in your organization.
- Connect your learnings experientially through a VR simulation.
Exploring
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- Examine leadership approaches to eradicate the roots of failure at the individual and collective level: Mindset, connection, dialogue, psychological trust, relational capital.
- Discover how to decode signals of stress and risk to prevent crisis.
- Gain practical tools to build more resilient organizations capable of withstanding volatility.
- Understand how interdependent teams can achieve high performance.
- Delve into actions that enable you, your team, and organization to respond effectively in turmoil, prevent human error, and enable business continuity.
- Learn how to design micro-experiments to open up new possibilities.
Self-paced integration over six weeks post program
- Integrate insights from the program into your work and life through practices and micro-experiments, some of which you will design with a peer.
- Benefit from a one-hour coaching session to discuss your progress, new insights, and your vision of your role as a leader capable of steering your team and organization towards new possibilities.
Length: 3 days on campus
