Leadership Clarity Under Pressure: Presence, Identity, and the Stories We Carry

Watching leaders at Davos earlier this year, one moment stayed with me.
Not because of what was said, but because of how it was said.

Amid uncertainty and pressure, Mark Carney spoke with a rare quality: presence. Not urgency. Not defensiveness. Natural authority, not force. It made me reflect on something I’ve been observing more broadly in leadership: under pressure, our ability to remain present is often the first thing to disappear.

Most leadership conversations, and much of our internal dialogue, focus on external pressure: market uncertainty, geopolitical shifts, stakeholder expectations, performance demands. Yet that external pressure often lands on top of something else: internal pressure. And when it does, it frequently proves to be the stronger of the two.

Many leaders carry quiet narratives such as there isn’t enough or I’m not enough. When external pressure meets internal scarcity, it may look like we are simply working harder. More subtly, however, we begin to relate differently to ourselves.

This is why Mark Carney’s reference to Václav Havel’s greengrocer matters far beyond politics. The greengrocer places the sign in the window not because he believes it, but because, under pressure, complying feels safer than staying aligned. Strategic compliance is not necessarily a lack of courage; it is a (temporary) disconnection from what we stand for, what matters most, and who we are when we don’t feel pressured. Under pressure, we tend to mute our values.

Leadership clarity under pressure, is not about having stronger values. It means remaining present with ourselves while pressure is rising. Scarcity makes us push harder. We over-function, narrow our focus, and default to short-term thinking — even when we know better. When presence drops, performance suffers, because clarity has lost its anchor.

So the real question is: “How do leaders stay present when it matters most?”

A different lens changes everything. When we move from a scarcity narrative to one of abundance, nothing outside necessarily changes. The complexity is still there, the pressure is still there. What changes is our internal reference point. Abundance, in this sense is remembering that we still have choice, that we are not reduced to this moment, and that we can respond with presence rather than fear. Thanks to this different lens, leaders see differently, lead differently, and make different, better decisions

Leadership is not tested in calm moments. It is revealed when pressure rises. Not by how loud we speak, but by whether we remain present with ourselves.

Warmly,

Christel