Michael Hunter - Leading from the Inside Out: The Science of Calm in Chaotic Times

Michael Hunter — Leading from the Inside Out: The Science of Calm in Chaotic Times

What if calm isn’t the absence of chaos — but your competitive advantage?

In this episode of the People/AI Strategy Forum, Sam Reeve sits down with Michael Hunter, author of The Resilient Tech Leader, to explore how leaders can metabolize turbulence instead of being consumed by it.

As AI accelerates change, urgency multiplies, and burnout rises, many leaders feel like everything is a priority — which makes everything impossible. Michael shares a science-backed, field-tested approach to building calm from the inside out so you can make cleaner decisions, execute consistently, and help your team do their best work — even when the fire alarms are blaring.

Drawing from his background in high-pressure tech environments, Michael explains why the most important system you’ll ever upgrade isn’t your tech stack — it’s you.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why multitasking destroys effectiveness (and what to do instead)
• How to triage chaos in 10 minutes
• The hidden cost of context switching
• A practical one-page focus routine to protect your attention
• The power of “tiny experiments” to build resilience
• How to align heart, mind, body, and spirit in leadership
• Why anxiety about the future is often a confidence gap
• The “chain of meaning” exercise to clarify what really matters
• How leaders can design a legacy that outlives their title

Michael reframes resilience as a learnable process — not a personality trait. Through small steps, lightweight rituals, and awareness of your “notice me nudges,” you can build the internal steadiness required to lead in chaotic times.

Key takeaway:

You don’t need perfect calm to lead well.
 You just need the next tiny step.

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Guest: Michael Hunter, Author of The Resilient Tech Leader
Host: Sam Reeve, CEO of CompTeam
Show: People/AI Strategy Forum (powered by CompTeam)

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About the People/AI Strategy Forum
The People/AI Strategy Forum explores how leaders navigate the intersection of people strategy, leadership, and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Sam Reeve, Founder & CEO of CompTeam, the Forum features conversations with executives, practitioners, and experts shaping the future of work.

Learn more about CompTeam and the People/AI Strategy Forum at compteam.net.

Transcript

0:03

What if calm isn't the absence of chaos, but your competitive advantage? The leaders who win now don't dodge turbulence. They metabolize it. So welcome to the People Strategy Forum. I'm Sam Reeve, your host, and CEO of Comp team, where we help organizations design people-centered total rewards that attract and keep top performers. Today's topic is leading from the inside out, the science of calm and chaotic times with Michael Hunter, the author of the Resilient Tech Leader. Michael Equips tech leaders to transform stress into clarity and have that consistent execution. His approach blends practical psychology with lightweight rituals so you can show up steady, make clean decisions, and help your teams do their best work, especially when the fire alarms are blaring. So we'll turn his ideas into field tested moves you can deploy this week. So let's welcome Michael Hunter. Hi Michael. Hi, Sam. Happy to be here. And so, Michael, I know that, you know, we've been talking about your book for some time and, and previously to, to, coaching leaders as you do nowadays. What, what, caused you to take this new path of, of coaching leaders instead of working in the field? I. I would say this is what I've always done. I didn't always know this is what I was doing. So from the very beginning, I was writing coding standards and other documents like that, that to help the teams that I was on and working with to use their time more effectively, get a, produce a higher quality product. somewhere along the way I realized that the parts of what I did that I really enjoyed was not the, Producing code testing product, but more of the, the coaching and mentoring. you could say that I started out my career debugging code and I switched to debugging. People realized that that was inflicting health and what I wanted to do was offer it. So then I switched to debugging, helping people debug themselves. Right, because the most important part of your tech stack and the part that is most effective and. Easiest to upgrade. Isn't your tech stack at all? It's you. Yeah. And it's, it's, I think that, it's so important for leaders out there to hear and, and the. You know, we all are talking about, you know, the new technologies that are coming out and automation, but what's truly making a difference in organizations is, is the, the heart of the organization. It's people and how they deploy and, and, bring great services to customers and, and, so forth. But I, and I know Michael, your, your book starts out and is deeply personal. So can you tell us a little bit about how, you're raised in those experiences that have framed your, your life and, and your passion for helping people? So many things to choose from. one that I highlight in the book, and that was. Resonant throughout is I was born in West Africa because that's where my parents were missionaries. We were coming in working with people who are already the same faith as we were and asking How can we help you? Live your faith even more strongly. as it turned out that faith of my parents didn't really work for me, but that grounding experience of I am here to help you be you better has resonated through throughout. Yeah. So, I mean, that's really, a, like how everybody has something to deliver something that's their strength and really finding what that is and, and drawing it out upon each of them that can really shine the light forward. And, I think that, everybody deserves to, to shine like that. And in these chaotic organizations that we see today, I mean right now with the onset of automation and ai, I mean, things just seem to be moving faster and faster and faster causing burnout. And many leaders say everything is urgent, which makes everything impossible. Right. So if you had 10 minutes to triage a chaotic week, what steps would you take to separate those real fires from those things that are not so urgent? I worked. 25 years ago, I was working with a manager who had 15 number one priorities for his team, and I talked with him and said, you know, when we have 15 number one priorities, we don't know which one to start with. We really need to get that this down to one or two if you want us to really be effective. Well, I got him to get it down to less than 10. When we try to switch between multiple tasks, our time on task degrades really quickly, and Jerry Weinberg. He is the first person who documented this. As far as I know, and this was back in the sixties, I believe that as he was working with computer programmers, if you're working on one thing that a hundred percent of your time goes to that if you're switching between two things, you get about 40% time on task for each project, and the other 20% goes to switching costs. If you're working on three things, time on task drops to something like 15% on each. And if you're trying to switch between four things, you just aren't getting any work done at all on anything. cause all your time is regenerating context as you switch back and forth. So if you don't know which thing is most important, then they're all equally important. So just choose one and then work on that until. You're done. you hit your time box, whatever stopping function you decide to use for that, and then decide what is the next thing to do that, what's the next most important thing to do? If you're not sure how to choose, you can choose at random. Or you can take a few minutes to just breathe deeply, feel whatever parts of yourself or on the ground or other surfaces, feel the weight of your body against those surfaces. Don't think about what to do. Don't think about what your family or anyone else is asking for. Just be, give yourself some space. Oftentimes the right next thing to do will make itself known. And if it doesn't, well you've had a few minutes to calm down. Calm your nervous system. Take some deep breaths, which will re-energize you, and you don't have to do this sitting down. Maybe taking a walk around the block while you breathe and let your mind empty or wander will work better for you in this situation or generally. Then do the next thing. For some people, doing a Pomodoro technique where you work for 25 minutes and then take five minutes to do a reset, works really well. That mostly doesn't work for me. I tend to work until. I run out of working, which, maybe I run out of energy on this thing. I hit a block that I don't know what to do next, or how to phrase a certain sentence, All of these are reasons to stop and what's most important for you is to learn over time in a particular context, what sort of time block is going to work best for you. Is it going by a strict pomodora technique every 25 minutes and then exactly five minutes off and back on it? Is it working until you're done working? Is it something else? So, you know, sometimes we need to just slow down. have that take that deep breath, start thinking and then that it helps us get back online. Sometimes it's counterintuitive. You mentioned that. you know, if we're thinking about so many things and we get distracted and, and we're going, we're doing multitasking and is. Obviously it's not efficient and I can attest to this'cause I, you know, when I'm in my office and somebody knocks on the door, I'm like going, oh no, I have to like, you know, separate and answer a question and then I takes me, I know at least a few minutes to get back on track. So it's, it's, attention is clearly a scarce resource. So, walk us through your one page. A focus routine for the day. I mean, what goes on it? What stays off? And how do you protect attention from like those slack, messages that come through or those routine meetings? What can we do there? I have four or five broad categories of work that I'm doing at any one point in time, and these are things. Book, searching for and talking with potential new clients. Working with existing clients, taking time away for myself, spending time with my dog, one or two others, and so. I make my primary focus each day one of those. So if today I am working, looking, working with potential new clients. Then I now have another set of potential categories. Maybe I am going up and identifying new people to contact. Maybe I'm doing that contacting, maybe I'm doing following up. Maybe I'm having a first meeting with someone I and I keep, and then, so now if I am. Contacting, doing first contact with people, I can do that through email. I can do that through by calling them up. I can do that by going and meeting them. If they're local, I might be drafting emails or LinkedIn messages to use as templates that I then personalize for people. So these are all related to making that initial contact. And I just keep going until I get to something that feels to me like this is a small atomic unit, so maybe I am drafting a, a new email template for this particular kind of person or this particular time of year. And then I do that until it's done. And when I've finished that or I've gotten to a. Stopping point for some other reason, then I ask again, okay, what feels right to do next now? And I try to. Keep within that broad category and within the smaller categories, until everything in that smaller category is done. Then I'll bump out to a bigger category and see if there's something else that feels right to do next. And if I do, I do that. If not, then I bump back out to the next broader category. And so it may be that that one most small category is the only thing that I do all day. Or it may be that I do five minutes on that and then I just get stuck or get frustrated or something else happens that I don't get back to that. So then I bump back out and bump back out, and maybe I bump all the way out and it's like, okay, I'm not doing any work for potential new clients today. What's. What other broad category do I work on? It's always what is the process that's going to work best for you in this context at this moment, and helping you. Build up your process for doing this so that you don't have to think about the process in the moment. You can just, you go to your process, you know what it is, you know how to customize it to that particular moment, and then follow the process so you don't have to think about what to do or how to do it, and you can focus on what's most important to do and then just do that. Yeah, so I, I think that's, you know, we, you know, making that list and, and that, one pager can be very powerful. But one thing that haunts us all is anxiety spikes when the future is a fog, right? So, so how can we ensure that we. That we've, have enough certainty in, in the future to where we can focus on the present. This is everything that my book is about, is building that resilience and confidence so that you can, and do always keep going. We never know what's gonna have come. I live in the Midwest and in much of the year, a tornado could pop up out of nowhere. And even less dire storms where weather can change on a dime, it'll be sunny and then five minutes later we can be complete hailing or six feet of snow. The, a lot of our anxiety of what might come is a lack of confidence or belief that we can handle what it is, and so. A lot of what I do with my book is help you build your process, your understanding of who you are and how you work, so that you can build up that confidence that whatever comes, you can tackle it. So being ready for anything or the what may come, come your way. We really need to have, a healthy lifestyle. We need to be eating right, so forth like this, so that, that spirit, the right mindset and so forth. And so I know that you spend a little bit on, on this, on your, in your book. Can you, can you elaborate a bit on the importance of, of mind and body? We have heart, mind, body, and spirit. Business often tells us we have a mind and it wants us to forget. We have all the others. We're supposed to be objective. We're supposed to work specific hours and specific ways. Some companies don't like you getting up and moving around. They think that you're not working unless you're at your desk actively typing, and none of this is true. We can't just drop our mind and our our, we can't just drop our heart and our. Body and our spirit at the door, along with our coat and bag and lunchbox. It's all always here. And if we try to ignore those other parts of us, they're gonna make themselves known often at inopportune times in embarrassing ways. And even if they don't, we're losing all the guidance and wisdom and intelligence that they bring. Our body gives us data about what's going on. We talk about being heartsick or have a lump in our stomach. These are all examples that everyone has heard and I'm sure has felt. Of how our body is helping us understand something that we might not be noticing that's going on. Our spirit helps us stay in touch with our dreams and aligned with our vision for where we're going, our beliefs of who we are and how we want to show up in the world. Our heart helps us know. What feels right for us and how aligned we are or aren't among many other things. So what I do in the book is go through four specific exercises each four. Getting back in touch and working with our heart, mind, body and spirit, and helping them start to work with each other. We have to feed our body physically with the right nutrition, hydration, exercise, whatever the right thing to do for that is you. We have to do the same for our heart and our spirit and our mind. They all need things physically. They all need things until, mentally they need things spiritually, need things emotionally. What this is for you is gonna be different than it's for me. And what's most important is that you understand what do you need in this moment? What are your signals? Your notice me nudges that you're not getting those, or what you're getting isn't right now, and you need to shift a little bit when you, the more you understand your notice me nudges, then the more you can be aware of that. Oh, I need to go replenish my resources a little bit, or this specific one is getting low. The more you can notice where I'm going, what I'm seeing, the project that I'm working on, that's not actually aligned with who I am or what I need right now. Well, you know, Michael, we're in the age of million dollar pay packages for some of those individuals that are in, you know, in the artificial intelligence world. We've been hearing stories between meta and open ai, fighting for talent and so forth. So, tell us the importance of, the chain of meaning and how people should really think about, the impact of what they're doing and not just getting paid for what they're doing. The chain of meaning is. we start with the question of what we feel is important or what we want to do, and then ask, what's important about that? Why do I care about that? And we get another answer and then ask again. So what's important about that? And then continue on and on It might be a feeling that we're feeling or, anything that we're uncertain about, we can ask the question about what's important about this. when I do this with leaders. We will often start with something like, be respected by my peers or be a servant leader, or get that promotion I'm after. When we ask these questions, we almost every time, five or seven or 20 iterations later, we get to something deep, philosophical, spiritual impact, which is useful for a few reasons. One is. Just knowing what that root why is that root reason that we want this can give us even more energy, even more, oomph to go after and take on that perhaps daunting project. And yes, there's a million shades of red I can choose from, but it's still gonna be red if I follow that chain through. And I realize that red gives me a sense of calm. Then it's not that I want my office to be read, it's that I want to feel calm or it's that as I'm working in my office or as I'm working on this particular task, I want to feel calm. Now I have way more options. It may be that going for a walk or doing some exercise or, yeah. Taking five minutes with my dog or my kid, or my parent is, will calm me down even more than painting my, than being in a red office. This is really important when we're thinking about, careers. if I understand what I really want is to be respected by a certain group of peers to be doing a certain kind of work in a certain way, then I have way more options. Yeah, CTO or Chief Product Officer or Chief HR Officer might be the best way to do it. It might be, I don't even need to be the C-suite at all. Maybe I can get that through volunteering, or maybe I realize I'm already doing that in exactly the role I am. So as a leader goes through and, is experiencing of, of course, all this chaos in their, in their world, and as they're working through their career, there comes a time where they have that mindset as you, as you, you mentioned the, the guidance of where they want to go next. And they start thinking about, their legacy and the rest of their life basically. when you're. in this context, I mean, how should leaders prepare for that, that, that final step in their career to where they can? I get, like I said, leave, I mean, leave a legacy of, of what they're trying to accomplish in, in their career to, to, to ensure it is carried on. What do I want to persist after I'm gone? That we first need to understand what do we care about, which is our base beliefs, our. Primary process, the way that we create change in the world, our perpetual puzzle. What is the question that we can ever answer well enough that we're always searching for more information, more data, more exploration into. So the legacy we leave behind will be a combination of those, and it will also be a reflection of our personality, how we show up in the world. Our way of being, the chain of meaning that we talks about earlier is a great way to understand more of why do I even care? That I leave a legacy, what do I want that legacy to be? It may be important that I leave behind a thriving company that goes on to provide for a. Five or 10 or thousands or millions of employees for centuries to come. It may be that I want to leave behind a million people that I've helped to make better. It may be I want to know that I've done the best thing that I can and it doesn't have anything to do about anyone else. It's not until you understand why you want to leave a legacy and what legacy means for you, that then you can start feeling into what legacy do I want to leave and how do I want to do that? well, thank you Michael. I know your, your book is a, it's, it's a, it's more of a, a playbook of how to have success as a leader and in, in life. I think it's, it's a, a deeply intuitive, and, and, I really thank you for, for kind of taking us through that, that, That journey, with us today. but if there's one thing that you want leaders to really think about or maybe a few things that, that you want them to think about as they, depart our conversation today, what, what are those most important things that you would like to ensure that they take from our conversation? One is that you can do this. Mm-hmm. No matter how. Resilient, burnt out, overwhelmed. You feel you are. You can become com as resilient, adaptable, useful, and joyful as you want to be. I know you can do this. Because I have been where you are and I have gone through this. This book is a codification of the process that I went through refined through working with hundreds of leaders just like you to do this themselves. the second is this. This doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. At the most basic, all that you need to do is do something. Hmm. In the book, I call this a tiny step. Take a tiny step. And then view this as a tiny experiment because experiments don't succeed or fail. They just give us data. So we make that experiment. We take that tiny step, and then we observe the data that gives, that gives us then use that data to decide what is the next tiny step in tiny experiment I'm going to take and then do it again. If you don't know where to go, then take a random step. Just do something. If nothing else, you'll have learned that you didn't learn anything or you don't recognize that you've learned anything except that you don't recognize you've learned anything. Great. Now you know a little more than you did before. Hmm. If all you end up doing, and I'll say all in quotes, because it's never. Trivial or insignificant is have a career full of random steps. the more that you pay attention as you go, then the more you can align the next step that you take and the next experiment you make to. Have more of everything that you're looking for, and so that over time you'll get closer and closer to the legacy that you want to create. So it's the one thing that I learned is, it's really important in our conversation today, is that it's all starts with a deep breath. You know, that deep breath, finding that calm. And you know what, Sam, even if. You can't take a deep breath and you don't feel calm. You can still take a step. Yes. That's where it really stays. Maybe your first step is trying to take a deep breath. That's a great first step. Right? Well, the book is full of wisdom. I mean, there's, the triage of urgency and, you know, and doing that in 10 minutes, running those tiny experiments as you mentioned. Thinking about which of those meetings are important, how to best spend your time ensuring that you're naming your non-negotiables. Clearly to your team so that they know where the guardrails are. all of this is, just a great wisdom to have in, in managing a, chaos in how to bring order. OUTTA disorder. So, so thank you, Michael. thank you sincerely for giving our leaders a good guide forward on how to think about chaos in a humane way, in a people-centered way. a way that we need to focus on, not on just what's going on around us, but our own health, in our mindset and our spirituality. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. You're welcome, Sam. I've been happy to share with you. Yes. So once again, I'm Sam Reeve, and we'll see you next week on the People Strategy Forum. Take care, everyone.