Five Keys to Stay Calm When the Stakes Are the Highest

Sports are the closest thing to a high-stakes environment people can watch, observe, and postulate about.

Tomorrow, the biggest stakes for so many College Football teams will be the culmination of their regular season football game.

For my Buckeyes, it's a chance to return to their winning ways against that detested TTUN, vaulting them into a rematch with the Quackers of Oregon for the conference title and the top College Football Seed.

It's a high-stakes environment. The results will affect and impact lives forever. All are executed by 18-22-year-old men and their leaders and support staff.

We can sit and watch it play out in real-time. We can speculate where players and coaches are and were proactive. We can also speculate which leaders captured the hearts and minds of players, equipping and empowering them to perform in a hostile environment. The players and coaches who express the most humility in making adjustments at the moment will most likely be successful in their pursuit.

It is similar to the world's military forces, the breeding ground for experts like my podcast guest this week, Dean Stott.

During our conversation, Dean shared five exceptional mindsets, qualities, and actionable steps to stay calm and in control when the stakes are the highest when life is in the balance.

A little context: Dean is an independent security consultant who has effectively helped government officials and private citizens seek safe harbor from some of the most dangerous and dire circumstances in the last 15 years.

The Five

Be Proactive

The unofficial theme of my conversation with Dean was to be proactive. He shared a funny line pulling from Hollywood: there are Bullets, Biceps, and Bombs, which is 25% of what we do.

I was impressed that he qualified it as 25%. The next time you watch Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham do their thing, know it's at least 25% accurate.

Then there is the 50% that means the most: being proactive, having a game plan, a plan of attack, and cultivating the necessary relationships to accomplish the mission. The last piece is the most important.

Being proactive is building the trusting and complementary relationships needed to succeed.

Leadership results are a direct reflection of relationships. Trusting, symbiotic, and complementary relationships yield successful results, and it takes proactivity.

Spending the time to nurture and know who to call, when to call, and how to be a resource to others.

When he was in Lybia and Tunisia, Dean built solid relationships with locals who were as invested in his success as he was in theirs to provide for their families.

Hearts and Minds

Oh, how quickly we get so focused on the result, the capstone of the mission, that we need to remember what and who the mission is for.

When we focus on relationships (Be Proactive), we emphasize the hearts and minds of others.

Everyone who is being led and served has a heart and mind. They have fears, desires, concerns, and aspirations. We can't accomplish a mission without complete disregard for feelings. When a leader does, it is leadership malpractice.

The football coach who captures and attends to the hearts and minds of his staff and players connects everyone to the bigger picture and what it means.

The coach who does this has a team that outperforms their individual talent level. This is no different in any corporate office.

At one time, reaching the hearts and minds of those we lead seemed soft and was not the way to lead. I surely wouldn't call Dean soft. Instead, I would have him lead the charge for my safekeeping.

Empower and Equip

In his book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell establishes the Law of the Lad.

It states the leader is the lid of the organization. The organization can only rise to the level of the leader.

A leader who lifts their lid seeks to empower and equip those they lead, choosing to be a conduit to others' success rather than the limit of their abilities.

Dean shared he would rather teach others how to safely care for themselves - what to look out for - rather than always be on call to keep others safe.

One of the most defining qualities of any leader is being able to lift others up and let them stand on your shoulders rather than trying to use others to lift yourself higher.

A football coach who trusts his players and other coaches maximizes team talent.

A leader who recognizes and utilizes each employee's unique skill set makes their and everyone else's work easier.

Expressed Humility

A lid-lifting leader is a leader who actively expresses humility. They recognize they need others rather than the other way around and are willing to express that need.

Humility is one of the leadership qualities I see many leaders having a hard time expressing. It's one thing to embrace humility and know it's important; it's another to express it when the bullets start flying, when the media rips you for a one-point loss, or when a customer shares a complaint about your service or product.

Being humble means taking the heat when it's turned on and converting it to productive action. It means keeping your cool when you want to flex your bicep and throw The People’s Elbow. It's playing the long game when the clock is ticking to zero!

Expressing humility becomes a nature and a way of life rather than a situational circumstance. Humility permeates every action, conversation, and interaction.

The HOT Debrief

The hot debrief is the last key to staying calm when the stakes are the highest.

As it sounds, this is asking What worked, what didn't, and what we should do based on those answers right after the last bomb exploded.

Before moving on to the next customer service call, the next meeting, or the next half-hour, take a moment to assess while it's still fresh.

Like the US Army’s After Action Review, this process helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

This is essential for leaders because it takes the other four keys: being proactive, winning hearts and minds, empowering and equipping, and expressing humility to the test.

Choosing to learn from every interaction—positive and negative—is the way for leaders to accelerate their ability. Learning and growing don’t happen by chance but by choice.

Learning is being proactive, connecting to hearts and minds, empowering and equipping, and expressing humility.

IT’S FRIDAY

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A ticket to Impact Driven Leader Summit 2025 (May 7 & 8, 2025) - Digital Access to IDL Summit 2024 - Awaken the Leader Course.

Get all of this plus each of the books from speakers at IDL 2024 for one fantastic price.

This offer expires Monday night and will be the lowest price for IDL Summit 2025.

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Did you catch this podcast? If not, listen to it here.