Leading Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Guide Their Teams Through Uncertainty

Your Team Feels What You Feel — Manage Your Emotions First

When uncertainty hits — whether it’s financial strain, a tough market, a product failure, or internal conflict — the very first person everyone watches is you.

Not just what you say, but how you carry yourself. Your team reads your nonverbal cues, your energy, your tone, even your silence.

If you panic, they will panic.

If you stay grounded, they will take a deep breath too.

Great leadership under pressure starts with emotional self-management.

It’s not about pretending everything’s perfect — it’s about acknowledging challenges without feeding fear. It’s about being steady, even when you feel the weight.

Your ability to stay calm, measured, and focused when things are uncertain builds the trust and confidence your team needs to keep moving forward.

Clarity Is More Important Than Certainty

Under pressure, most leaders feel this huge temptation to have all the answers.

But real leadership is not about pretending you know everything. It’s about giving your team clarity even when you can’t give them certainty.

Clarity means defining what you do know, what the priorities are, and what steps everyone should be taking next — even if you can only see one step ahead.

People can handle a lack of guarantees. What they can’t handle is chaos, vagueness, or feeling abandoned without direction.

When you lead during uncertainty, focus on overcommunicating your values, your short-term goals, your commitment to the team, and the plan you’re working on — even if that plan has to change along the way.

Courageous Communication Builds Resilient Teams

Pressure has a way of making leaders retreat into isolation.

It’s tempting to pull back, keep bad news hidden, or protect people from hard conversations. But real leadership under pressure requires transparency and courageous communication.

Your team doesn’t expect you to be superhuman. They expect you to be honest, to listen, and to lead them through the hard times with open hands.

When leaders invite feedback, acknowledge struggles, and create a sense of “we’re in this together”, they build stronger, more resilient teams. Teams that fight for the mission, not just for the paycheck.

The best leaders under pressure are the ones who show up, stay connected, and keep their team focused on the bigger purpose — even when the road gets rough.

Startup Business 101

Startup Business 101 is a company that helps people start and run a successful business.  It consists of a Startup Business 101 Blog, Startup Business 101 Podcast, and a Startup Business 101 YouTube Channel.  StartupBusiness101.com has many resources to help entrepreneur navigate their way to begin their business and resources to help them it succeeds. 

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Transcript

Leading Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Guide Their Teams Through Uncertainty

Introduction

Welcome back to the Startup Business 101 Podcast. I’m your host, John Reyes, and today we’re going to have a real conversation about something every leader eventually faces, but not enough people talk about honestly: what it feels like to lead under pressure.

If you’ve ever had the weight of a company, a team, or even just a big decision resting on your shoulders, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Leadership sounds exciting when things are going well. It’s easy to stand tall when the skies are clear and everything’s moving forward. But real leadership—the kind that shapes lives and legacies—happens when the waters get rough, when the pressure rises, and when the people around you are looking at you, waiting to see how you’ll respond.

And if you’re anything like me, maybe you’ve had moments where the pressure felt heavier than you expected. Moments where you felt alone at the top, unsure of the next move, wondering if you had what it takes to carry not just your own worries, but the hopes and fears of everyone depending on you.

I want you to know you’re not alone in feeling that way. The weight you feel doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you care. It means you’re taking your role seriously. And today, I want to walk with you through how great leaders guide their teams when the path forward isn’t easy or obvious.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about three powerful truths that have made all the difference for me in the hard seasons of leadership. We’ll talk about why managing your own emotions is the first and most important step when pressure hits. We’ll talk about how clarity, not certainty, is what your team needs most from you. And we’ll dive into why courageous communication—not perfection—is what builds the resilient teams that stand the test of time.

My goal for this episode is simple. I want you to leave this conversation not just feeling a little lighter, but standing a little taller. I want you to remember that the pressure you’re feeling is shaping you into the leader you were meant to become.

So wherever you are today—whether you’re leading a small startup, a growing company, or just yourself through an uncertain season—this is for you.

Let’s talk about how to lead well, even when the pressure is on.

Let’s get started.

Your Team Feels What You Feel — Manage Your Emotions First

When I think back to some of the toughest seasons I’ve faced as a leader, what stands out the most isn’t necessarily the size of the problems or the intensity of the pressure—it’s how heavy it felt to know that my team was watching me. Every move I made. Every word I said. Even the things I didn’t say. They were picking up on it all, whether I realized it at the time or not.

There’s a unique kind of pressure that comes with leadership. It’s not just about solving problems or making plans. It’s about carrying the emotional weight of a group of people who are depending on you. Depending on you not only for direction, but for stability, for reassurance, and for hope.

I remember one moment very clearly. Things weren’t going well in the business. Sales were down. Tension was high. We were facing a serious financial shortfall, and I had no easy answers. I walked into the office that morning knowing I didn’t have a magic fix. I could feel the anxiety in the room before I even said a word. People were uneasy, whispering in hallways, glancing up at me as I passed. And in that moment, I realized something powerful: it wasn’t just the situation itself that was making them anxious. It was the unknown. It was wondering how I was going to handle it. Wondering whether they could trust me to lead them through whatever was coming.

It would have been easy to let my own fear show. It would have been easy to walk in frustrated, overwhelmed, short-tempered. And believe me, those emotions were there under the surface. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t feel them. But something inside me understood that if I lost my composure, if I let the pressure leak out through my tone, my words, my body language, it would not only confirm their worst fears—it would multiply them.

Leadership under pressure starts long before the team meeting. It starts with me, behind closed doors, choosing how I’m going to carry myself. Choosing how I’m going to process my own emotions before I ever bring them into the room.

It’s not about faking it. It’s not about slapping a smile on your face and pretending everything is fine when it’s not. People can smell fake a mile away. It’s about being honest without being hopeless. It’s about acknowledging that, yes, we’re facing challenges, but we are not defeated. It’s about owning the reality without feeding the fear.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your team during uncertain times is your steadiness. It doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. It doesn’t mean you have to have everything figured out. It means you are anchored. It means you can stand in the middle of the storm without letting the storm inside you.

When I’ve led well under pressure, it wasn’t because I eliminated all doubt or worry. It was because I managed my emotions enough to keep the bigger picture in view. It was because I showed my team through my actions that we could stay calm, think clearly, and take wise steps forward—even when the path wasn’t fully visible yet.

I started to realize that leadership isn’t just about giving people tasks or setting goals. It’s about creating an atmosphere. And that atmosphere often starts with the emotional climate the leader sets. If I walk into the room frantic, I create a frantic room. If I walk into the room grounded, I create a grounded room. That doesn’t mean everyone will instantly feel better. But it gives them permission to steady themselves. It gives them a model to follow. It gives them hope that we can handle this, whatever “this” happens to be.

Over time, I’ve learned some practical ways to manage that weight. Sometimes it means taking five quiet minutes in the car before walking into the building, centering myself, reminding myself who I am and what kind of leader I want to be. Sometimes it means having a trusted advisor I can talk to privately so I’m not carrying it all alone. Sometimes it means just breathing through the fear instead of letting it drive my decisions.

There is a quiet strength in emotional self-management. And it’s not something people always notice when things are going well. But they will absolutely feel it when things go wrong. The people we lead are incredibly intuitive. They pick up on our confidence or our chaos. They mirror our energy. They don’t need us to be superheroes. They just need us to be solid.

I think about it like this: when a ship hits rough waters, everyone looks to the captain. They’re not expecting the captain to calm the seas. They’re expecting the captain to steer the ship with steady hands. That’s what leadership under pressure is about. It’s about choosing steadiness over panic. It’s about choosing to be the person your team can look to and say, “Okay, if they’re still standing, if they’re still moving forward, then maybe I can too.”

If you find yourself leading through a season of uncertainty right now, I want you to know: you are not alone. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have every answer ready. You just need to lead yourself first. Lead your own emotions. Lead your own mindset. And from that place, you will be able to lead others.

This kind of leadership—the kind that steadies the room, the kind that builds trust even when times are hard—is not flashy. It doesn’t always get immediate applause. But it creates something priceless. It builds loyalty. It builds respect. It builds a team that can weather storms because they know their leader will not abandon ship when the waters get rough.

And the beautiful thing is, the steadiness you practice today will not just get you through this moment. It will shape you into the kind of leader who can face even greater challenges ahead with courage and grace.

That’s the kind of leader I want to be. And I believe it’s the kind of leader you are becoming too.

Clarity Is More Important Than Certainty

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in leadership—especially when leading through uncertainty—is that people don’t need me to have all the answers.

What they need is clarity.

In the early days of building my businesses, I thought that being a good leader meant being the one who always had a solution ready, who always knew the next step with absolute certainty. I thought if I could be the rock, the one who had it all figured out, then my team would feel safe. And to be honest, I put a lot of pressure on myself to live up to that expectation—an expectation that no one else actually placed on me, but one that I carried in my own mind.

The problem with that way of thinking is that life—and business—doesn’t always cooperate with our plans. Markets shift. Customers behave unpredictably. Supply chains break down. Opportunities vanish. And no matter how talented or prepared you are, uncertainty will come knocking at your door. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

I found myself, at times, paralyzed by the idea that if I didn’t have the full picture, I couldn’t move. That if I wasn’t absolutely sure of the outcome, I couldn’t lead. But leadership, I realized, is not about certainty. It’s about clarity. It’s about helping people see the next right step, even when the full path isn’t visible yet.

There’s something deeply reassuring about a leader who can say, “Here’s what we know. Here’s what we’re working on. Here’s what we’re aiming for. And here’s how we’re going to take the next step.”

Even if they admit, “We don’t have every answer yet, but we’re committed to figuring it out,” that level of honesty and direction builds far more trust than pretending everything is under control when it’s clearly not.

I remember a time when one of our projects hit a major setback. The timeline had been thrown off. Our biggest client was getting nervous. My team was frustrated and anxious, looking at me for answers I didn’t fully have yet. And in that moment, I had a choice. I could either fake certainty—pretend we had it all mapped out and risk losing credibility when things changed—or I could provide clarity about where we stood, what our immediate focus needed to be, and what we were committed to doing together.

I chose clarity. I gathered the team and laid it out. I said, “Here’s the reality. We’ve hit a delay. Here’s what caused it. Here’s what we’ve already done to address it. Here’s what’s still unknown. And here’s the part we can control right now: delivering excellence on the pieces we can move forward while we sort out the rest.”

I didn’t sugarcoat it. I didn’t make promises I couldn’t guarantee. But I gave them something to hold onto. I gave them a focus. A plan. A sense that we were not powerless.

And something amazing happened. Instead of spiraling into fear or frustration, the team rallied. They stepped up. They trusted the process—not because I had it all figured out, but because I gave them enough clarity to move confidently, even if it was just one step at a time.

I realized then that people don’t expect perfection from their leaders. They expect presence. They expect direction. They expect someone who can steady the ship and say, “We may not know exactly where the storm ends, but we know how to stay afloat today. And that’s enough for now.”

Clarity looks like simple, repeated communication. It looks like setting expectations, even temporary ones. It looks like defining small wins along the way to keep momentum alive. It looks like reminding your team of the bigger mission—why you started in the first place—and anchoring them back to that vision when the immediate future feels fuzzy.

Every time I leaned into clarity instead of pretending certainty, I found that people felt safer, not shakier. They appreciated the honesty. They appreciated being kept in the loop. They appreciated knowing that even if we didn’t have a map for the whole journey, we had a compass. And we were still moving.

And here’s the thing: clarity doesn’t just help your team. It helps you as a leader. It gives you a framework for making decisions under pressure. It keeps you focused on action instead of paralyzed by fear. It keeps you humble enough to adapt when new information comes, but strong enough to keep moving even before you have all the pieces.

Leadership under pressure is not about having perfect foresight. It’s about taking imperfect action with honesty, courage, and communication. It’s about creating an environment where people feel empowered, not paralyzed. Where they know what they can control, and they trust that their leader will guide them with transparency and purpose.

So if you find yourself facing uncertainty today, and you’re tempted to wait until you have it all figured out before you speak, I want to encourage you: you don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to give clarity about what’s true right now, what’s possible right now, and what matters most right now.

Because clarity—even imperfect clarity—is a far greater gift to your team than false certainty will ever be.

And when you lead with clarity, even in the fog of uncertainty, you build the kind of trust that lasts far beyond the crisis in front of you. You build a team that knows how to move together even when the destination isn’t fully in view.

That is the kind of leadership people remember. That is the kind of leadership that changes lives.

Courageous Communication Builds Resilient Teams

When I look back on the times I’ve led well—and the times I’ve struggled—the common thread that made all the difference wasn’t the plans I made or even the decisions I chose. It was the conversations I was willing to have.

It’s easy, especially when the pressure is high, to want to retreat into yourself. I know because I’ve done it. When things start to go sideways, when the future looks unclear, the natural instinct for a lot of leaders is to pull back, to go quiet, to try and shoulder it all alone until they have something better to say. It feels safer to wait. It feels wiser, maybe, to “protect” the team from bad news or uncertainty.

But I learned the hard way that when you go silent as a leader, your team doesn’t feel protected. They feel abandoned.

People fill in silence with their worst fears. When you do not speak, their minds start creating stories: maybe things are worse than we thought. Maybe leadership doesn’t have a plan. Maybe we’re not important enough to be told the truth. And once those stories start, it’s hard to pull them back.

That’s why courageous communication is not optional during times of pressure. It’s absolutely essential.

I had a season once where things in the business were tight—tighter than I ever wanted to admit. I wrestled with how much to tell the team. I didn’t want to scare them. I didn’t want to make it sound like we were about to fold. But deep down, I knew we couldn’t keep operating like nothing was wrong. I knew they could feel the tension already. My silence wasn’t protecting them. It was creating distance, doubt, and anxiety.

So I made a decision. I sat the team down, and I told them the truth. I told them where we were, why we were there, and what we needed to do to move forward. I didn’t sugarcoat it, but I didn’t dump despair on them either. I shared the challenge, but I also shared the plan. I asked for their ideas. I asked for their partnership. I let them know that while I didn’t have all the answers yet, I wasn’t going anywhere—and neither was the mission we were all working for.

That conversation changed everything.

Instead of feeling fearful or bitter, the team leaned in. They owned the problem with me. They started offering solutions, not complaints. They stepped up in ways I hadn’t even asked for. They became part of the fight to turn things around, not just passive observers waiting to see what would happen next.

It taught me something I’ll never forget:

People would rather hear the hard truth than be left alone with their imagination.

They would rather be brought into the struggle than be kept outside of it. They would rather hear, “I need your help,” than hear nothing at all.

Courageous communication builds resilient teams. Teams that are willing to endure hardship. Teams that are willing to get creative. Teams that are willing to stay loyal because they know they are trusted with the truth.

And courageous communication isn’t just about delivering bad news when necessary. It’s about building a culture of honesty all the time. It’s about creating spaces where feedback flows both ways. It’s about celebrating wins openly, acknowledging losses humbly, and always keeping the lines of communication open and human.

Over time, I realized that communication wasn’t just about managing information. It was about building relationships. It was about creating an environment where people knew they mattered—where they knew they were not just cogs in a machine but vital parts of a shared vision.

The leaders who have inspired me the most are not the ones who pretended everything was perfect. They are the ones who looked me in the eye and said, “It’s hard right now. But we’re going to get through this. Together.”

That kind of leadership is rare. And it is powerful.

I want to be that kind of leader. I want to lead teams that know they can trust me to tell them the truth. Teams that know they are not disposable, not left in the dark, but included in the journey—even when that journey is messy or uncertain.

If you are facing a hard season right now, and you are wondering whether you should say something to your team, let me encourage you: speak up. Be wise. Be thoughtful. But be real. Invite them into the process. Invite them to be part of the solution.

You might be surprised by the strength and creativity that rises to the surface when people are trusted, respected, and given the chance to show up fully.

Because when you communicate with courage, you don’t just survive the hard seasons—you build something stronger than you had before. You build loyalty. You build resilience. You build a team that isn’t just following you because things are easy, but standing with you because they believe in the vision you’ve called them into.

That is the kind of leadership that endures.

Conclusion

As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to leave you with something that I hope stays with you, long after this episode ends.

Leadership is never easy. Especially when the ground underneath you starts to shake, when the future feels uncertain, when the pressure weighs heavier than you ever thought it could. It’s in those moments—not in the easy times—that the true heart of a leader is revealed.

You don’t have to be perfect to lead well under pressure. You don’t have to know all the answers, and you certainly don’t have to pretend you’re invincible. But you do have to show up. You do have to steady yourself first, even when fear is whispering in your ear. You do have to choose calm when panic would be easier.

Your team feels what you feel. They are watching how you handle the storm. And every day you lead yourself with courage, with steadiness, with grace—you’re teaching them that they can do the same.

You also don’t need to wait for complete certainty before you lead forward. Clarity, not certainty, is what your people need. They need to hear your voice. They need to know what you know. They need to understand what you’re asking of them today, even if the whole map isn’t filled in yet. Trust is built in those simple moments of honest, clear communication.

And finally, you have to be willing to communicate with courage. Not just when it’s easy, but especially when it’s hard. When you open up honest conversations, when you invite your team into the journey, when you stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the tough times—you are not only leading them through a crisis, you are forging a team that can withstand the storms to come.

You are building something that lasts.

Not just a business. Not just a product.

But a culture. A bond. A legacy.

If you are in a hard season right now, if you are carrying the weight of decisions you never thought you would have to make, I want you to hear me clearly: You are not failing. You are being refined. You are becoming the kind of leader who doesn’t just survive pressure—you are becoming the kind of leader who thrives in it. The kind of leader who others will look back on and say, “Because of them, I didn’t give up.”

So keep going. Lead yourself first. Give clarity even when certainty feels far away. Communicate with honesty and with hope.

And never forget—leadership isn’t about having an easy road. It’s about having the courage to walk it anyway, and to bring others with you.

And before you go, if today’s episode spoke to you—if it gave you something to think about, or just reminded you that you’re not alone in this journey—

I would love to invite you to do a couple of quick things that really help us reach more people who need this message.

First, make sure you’re subscribed to the Startup Business 101 Podcast so you never miss a new episode. We’re just getting started, and I have so many more conversations coming your way to help you grow as a business owner and as a leader.

Second, if you could take a minute to leave a rating and a review, it would mean the world to me. Your feedback not only encourages me, it helps other entrepreneurs—people just like you—find this podcast and get the support they need.

And finally, if you’re looking for a community of like-minded builders and dreamers, I’d love for you to join our free Startup Business 101 Facebook Group. It’s a place where we share ideas, challenges, wins, and honest encouragement for the journey. You don’t have to do this alone—and you were never meant to.

All the links you need are right in the show notes.

Thanks again for spending part of your day with me.

Keep leading with courage. Keep showing up.

And I’ll see you next time right here on Startup Business 101.

 Startup Business 101

Startup Business 101 is a company that helps people start and run a successful business.  It consists of a Startup Business 101 Blog, Startup Business 101 Podcast, and a Startup Business 101 YouTube Channel.  StartupBusiness101.com has many resources to help entrepreneur navigate their way to begin their business and resources to help them it succeeds. 

If you want to start a company or have questions on what it takes to make your small business successful, check out our resources.

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