Leadership advice for CEOs: seven habits that hold under pressure

Most leadership advice is written for calm conditions. CEOs rarely get calm conditions. What matters is what still works when the numbers are down, the board is restless and your best people are tired.

These are the habits we see in leaders who hold up, drawn from professional sport, school leadership and running businesses.

1. Decide what matters this quarter, and say it out loud

Under pressure, everything feels urgent. Strong CEOs narrow it down to three or four priorities and repeat them until people are bored of hearing them. If your senior team can’t name the priorities without looking them up, they are not priorities yet.

2. Protect your thinking time

The job of a CEO is judgement, and judgement needs space. Block time each week with no meetings and no inbox. Leaders who never stop to think end up making the same decision three times.

3. Make your composure visible

Your team reads your state before it reads your words. If you are visibly stressed, people stop bringing you problems early. Composure isn’t pretending everything is fine. It is staying steady enough that others can think clearly around you.

Your team takes its lead from your calm, or from your stress. Either way, it takes its lead from you.

4. Build trust before you need it

Trust is built in ordinary weeks and spent in hard ones. Keep small promises. Admit your own mistakes first. Back people publicly and challenge them privately. When the difficult conversation comes, you will have something to draw on.

5. Hold people to account without fear

Accountability fails in two ways: leaders avoid it to keep the peace, or apply it so harshly that people hide problems. Be clear about the standard, follow up consistently, and separate the behaviour from the person.

6. Get honest feedback from somewhere

The more senior you become, the less truth reaches you. Find at least one place where you hear it, whether that is a trusted peer, a mentor or a confidential coaching relationship. Leaders who only hear good news are usually the last to know.

7. Lead at a pace you can sustain

Elite athletes plan recovery as seriously as training. Most CEOs plan neither. Sleep, exercise and time away are not luxuries. They are what keeps your judgement sharp for years rather than months.

Putting it into practice

None of these habits is complicated. The hard part is doing them consistently when the pressure is on. That is where structure helps: regular reflection, honest challenge and a community of leaders who understand the weight.

That is the thinking behind FORGE’s 12-month leadership programmes, built in six-week cycles on alignment, resilience and trust. If you would like to talk it through, get in touch.