Leaders have always lived with stress—it comes with the territory. But today’s strain feels especially acute. Many executives describe pressure mounting on multiple fronts, from economic uncertainty to technological disruption to geopolitical volatility.

We’ve studied these sources of stress over the past six years, and the trend is unmistakable: According to Brunswick Group’s Leadership Stress Index, which tracks the pressures facing leaders, stress levels are even higher now than they were at the peak of the pandemic.

In our September 2025 survey of 400 C-suite leaders in large corporations in the United States, the UK, Germany, and Japan, more than half the respondents said they were very stressed. Nearly two-thirds reported that their stress level had risen over the past year, and a majority anticipated that it would increase further in the coming year.

While short bursts of stress can sharpen your focus, sustained, elevated levels of it undermine decision quality and erode well-being. Over time, stress narrows your perspective, causes reactive thinking, and increases the likelihood of costly misjudgment.

In our work with leaders—one of us as a partner at a global strategic consulting firm and a practicing integrative therapist, and the other as the former director of the Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School—we’ve helped executives across sectors and geographies navigate stress on the job. We’ve seen firsthand how differently individuals behave when the heat is on and how a greater awareness of their own default responses can improve their performance and help them be more resilient and effective.

Although no two leaders have the same biopsychological response to stress, consistent patterns do emerge. We’ve developed a framework that organizes them into six main response types. In creating it, we drew on the work of Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman, who observed that when people are in a high-stakes situation, they quickly decide whether it presents more of a threat or an opportunity. We combined their insights with James Gross’s research on emotion regulation, which distinguishes between leaders who regulate their emotions dynamically and continually reappraise their reactions, and others who hold their emotions in tight check until after a crisis. Synthesizing those concepts with our own experience, our framework positions stress responses along two spectrums: whether leaders react with composure or by leaping into dynamic action, and whether they approach a crisis as an opportunity or a threat. Where you fall along those spectrums determines which of the six response types is your default pattern.

Our goal here was not to create a scientific taxonomy but to help leaders understand how they operate under duress and make better decisions when it matters most. In this article we’ll take a closer look at the six patterns—how they show up in moments of strain, what strengths they offer, and where each can go wrong under sustained pressure.

The Lighthouse

Lighthouse leaders project calm when others are rattled. In a crisis they maintain a measured pace, regulating their breathing, lowering their voices, and staying focused on the horizon—not just on the crisis immediately in front of them. Stress triggers their orientation toward stability over speed, and their first rapid appraisal of a new situation is more likely to recognize opportunities than threats. Instead of matching urgency with urgency, they tend to hold their ground and steadily guide others through ambiguity.

In high-pressure situations this style of leadership creates conditions that promote psychological safety, where people feel free to speak up, admit mistakes, and express uncertainty without fear of humiliation or punishment. Studies of high-reliability organizations—from air-traffic control to hospital emergency units—show that calm leadership keeps teams focused and prevents what psychologists call the “emotional contagion of fear.”

Several years ago we worked alongside the leadership of a consumer goods company when a politically charged boycott erupted over its stance on a divisive issue and was amplified by a social media campaign. The CEO responded like a lighthouse, acknowledging the potential damage—the share price had taken a hit—but reinforcing that the company had taken that stance because of its underlying values. Behind the scenes the board expected the CEO to make a rapid reversal, but she resisted. Some criticized her calm response as sounding tone-deaf, but it reassured most stakeholders, and the storm passed.

As this story shows, lighthouse leaders face hidden risks. This CEO’s composure appeared to some to be aloofness. And teams sometimes interpret lighthouse leaders’ silence on seemingly critical issues as indecision. In prolonged periods of stress, their drive for stability can harden into inertia; they may fail to face up to bad news, lack the appropriate urgency, or quietly take on too much themselves. One senior executive at a global retailer captured this tension perfectly: “I thought my job was to be the calm center. But my team later told me it felt like I wasn’t letting them in.”