For some, the nightmare is not just a prediction, it’s already here. People are already losing their jobs to new technologies. Not only were they displaced by AI, their own knowledge and expertise is being mined to train the very systems built to replace them. Yes, training the AI algorithms is the best job they could find after being made redundant.

It’s no wonder there’s a palpable overwhelm, and for some, a complete shutting down. Have you noticed it too?

I wrote about the natural nervous system flooding people are feeling in response to our times in The Self-Reliance Trap. And how easily overwhelm can curdle into paralysis when we try to carry it all alone. Literally, “like trying to stop an avalanche with an umbrella.”

That Substack was a year ago. And the problems are getting more worrying and complex… and accelerating.

Today’s piece is about another response I see just as often. Outrage and righteousness.

I absolutely feel it myself sometimes, when I pause enough and let myself connect with the scale of what we are facing and the news. And I notice it in others as soon as a conversation goes past the surface.

My concern is that neither getting overwhelmed nor outraged will help us solve anything! Unless we learn to flip them around.

Let’s see why.

Succumbing to overwhelm, or flipping to righteousness, have a way of defaulting into hopelessness. A hopelessness that deepens the longer we remain inactive and don’t answer to the problem directly. Worse, it can tip us into inadvertently tolerating conditions and decisions that are harmful to us.

A year ago when I wrote that piece, it was already difficult enough. Now, we’re not just carrying the problems we already had. AI is adding a new layer of complexity and urgency on top of them, climate and social chief among them, so the urgency compounds.

There’s a collective overwhelm, what I believe amounts to collective dysregulation.

I wrote another piece on that: How to Lead through Collective Dysregulation.

Checking out is not the answer!

Just when we need the best leadership, we face the conditions that steal it. The need to developing our leadership and make it iron-clad resilient to external pressures has never been greater.

We swing between so many moods… righteousness and righteous courage, outrage and powerlessness (with the ensuing hopelessness and overwhelm).

Righteous outrage comes when we finally see clearly. The consequences, the initial decisions and causes, the effects on people and planet. You feel outrage or rage when you let yourself feel how much something matters, the violations, the losses, the infringements on people’s rights, needs, and futures. But unless we know how to handle that feeling, it’s easy to flip into a quiet, private overwhelm and a sense of powerlessness, a belief that nothing we do actually matters or moves anything.

That swing between righteousness and powerlessness is a trap. It pushes us to believe we lack power and agency. “There is nothing I can do.” Or “anything I can do won’t matter.”

I want to challenge those beliefs, because so long as we are alive, we have agency to create a different world, through our actions and through how we show up. And the more of us who dare to do that, the more our agency will translate to improving the things that outrage us in the first place.

Outrage Is Deceptive

I have noticed that when I let myself be outraged, I bypass the deep sadness and pain underneath it all, and it makes me more likely to blame and criticise.

Nothing has changed and nothing will change unless I take actions aligned with solving the probelem. Other that I feel worse and likely made the person I shared my outrage and complaining with feel worse.

Is there an alternative?

Instead of the complaining and letting myself be burned up by steeping in the outrage, I can let the deep sadness, even the anger, or the sense of being appalled, inform me about what values of mine are being infringed, what needs and rights are being trampled over.

This takes deep inner listening. And then, I can use that extremely valuable information to decide on the most effective course of action, something I can do that is actionable and doable.

If more of us did this consistently, we’d start creating a very different world. And in the process we’d be turning the overwhelm, the paralysis, the anger and complaining into effective action to move us forward in the direction we see possible. That striving is key to calm and contentment.

Not the passive kind that condones, but an active type that accepts and has the power to transform.

We tend to think we don’t have power. That’s the biggest of traps.

Nelson Mandela did the opposite in his 27 years in jail. He was stripped of any power and dignity by the jail system with a sentence of political sabotage against a system of oppression. Talk about powerlessness.

But Mandela realised that power and dignity were internal to him, and continued to do peace-making, ground-breaking work from jail. Imprisonment didn’t stop him. In what seemed like an extremely limited sphere of influence, he managed to weaken Apartheid through his decision to not cave into the righteousness and powerlessness trap.

It’s normal and sometimes inevitable to believe ourselves powerless. What’s important is that we catch ourselves falling into the kind of thinking that lands us into powerlessness and hopelessness, and that we have ways to get ourselves out. Back into action and fighting for what matters to us.

So long as we are alive, we have power and agency. Let’s use them wisely.

Inaction is also a choice. The choice to do nothing.

All the emotions we are feeling these days have genuine reasons for existing.

I see emotions as signs, signalling that which is misaligned with our deepest values and ideals. We need to listen to our emotions, not repress them. And then, be able to regulate ourselves back to balance, not get stuck in emotion, and the paralysis or reactivity that often accompany strong emotion.

It’s a matter of emotional agility.

We instinctively have a sense for what is aligned with our values. We value life, and respect for every human being’s dignity. We value autonomy and liberty. We value transparency and authenticity.

How to Reclaim Our Agency

First of all, realise that we can never lose our agency. We just lose touch with it when we believe ourselves powerless and we start feeling hopeless.

What’s the way back to agency?

Don’t bypass nor suppress your emotions.

The grief at the losses (current and future) are real. Let yourself actually feel, and hear the information those feelings point to: what matters to you, the deep why underlying how you feel.

Catch your beliefs as they arise and question whether they are true.

“I’m powerless in the face of…” when inquired into, we realise I have the power to do something. Name that thing, and find the next step for action.

Catch yourself when you are complaining in outrage.

Instead, switch the complaining to brainstorming what effective action could actually be taken.

Analyse what structural power you have to change those things that bother you, and whether you are using it well.

If you as a leader in an organisation, lean into ethical, powerful leadership.

Get yourself support so you don’t go into collapse—which is the most logical human response to our times!

Find yourself an experienced executive coach. I personally see the effects of that support in the leaders at the very top of organisations who are making a real difference. To chat about my coaching and the problems you are facing, here’s my calendar link.

Free discovery coaching call with Nati

I truly believe we can do it together.

Good luck in finding strategies to not succumb into the outrage-powerlessness trap. And do share in comments! We can all learn from each other.

About me

I’m Nati, executive coach specialising in neuroscience. I work with leaders who are striving to make a real difference on issues like the climate, sustainable energy and new technologies, and are seeking the greatest impact.

Ways to work with me

• Individualised leadership coaching partnerships to address your most pressing issues and grow your leadership for maximum impact.

• The Empathic Leader course: for leaders ready to do the inner work it takes, and grow their emotional intelligence and relational capacities.

• LEAP Mastery Circle: Take a LEAP in your leadership and grow into a more empathetic, authentic leader, with confident executive presence that does not waver under pressure. £95/month, 2 months off for a yearly subscription

  The Empathic Leader’s Way is a reader-supported publication. Your paid subscription includes access to the LEAP community of leaders learning and growing together with my support. Self-guided tools, community discussion, live sessions with me, group coaching, and more.

Over years of working alongside senior leaders, I’ve noticed that very different conversations often begin in remarkably similar places.

Everyone is pulling in a different direction.

Teams retreat into their silos and don’t collaborate.

The energy has disappeared from the team.

A high performer is struggling.

You have to let someone go, and don’t know how, or you don’t agree with the decision.

The surface “problems” are different, but beneath them sits a shared pervasive assumption:

Leadership begins by finding what’s wrong and figuring out how to fix it.

We find the problem, then we solve it.

We don’t choose this starting point consciously. It’s simply where our minds take us. The trouble is that when you always begin with what’s wrong, you can end up reinforcing the very conditions you’re trying to change.

No wonder that leadership, most days, feels like a struggle. The inner narrative is that conditions are hard. People make things hard. Things are hard.

But does it have to be?

What if we’ve been leading backwards?

The proposal I bring in today is leading from a more positive lens, as a default and our guide. Focus on building the conditions that enhance people feeling good about themselves and about the work they do.

I propose treating joy not as the reward for surviving the hard part, but as the compass that tells you whether you’re leading in the right direction in the first place. I have solid neurobiological reasons to flip the narrative and our approach.

In this frame, joy is not a far away potential or something unnecessary. It becomes the measure of how on track you are. What if you make joy the compass that tells you whether the environment you are creating is actually working for the people inside it and the changes you aim to create?

Maria Montessori, nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on Peace Education, built her entire method on one principle: get the environment aligned to a person’s developmental needs, and growth unfolds on its own. It doesn’t need to be forced, and the journey is a delightful one. When needs are met, people thrive and become joyous.

She pointed to joy as the proof of a well prepared environment, where a child becomes truly absorbed in self-directed work that fulfils them, inside conditions built for them. What emerges is not strain but a quiet, focused joy that drives further interest and curiosity and directs the person to further development. That joy was her signal the environment was aligned to the needs, not a bonus once development had happened, but the evidence it was happening well.

Let’s apply this universal principle about development to leadership and guiding adults.

A similar principle shows up anywhere people are trying to do meaningful work. When the environment supports what humans actually need to thrive, effort becomes more sustainable, collaboration becomes more natural, and progress stops feeling like something that has to be constantly pushed.

So the question becomes simple:

What if the best leadership could be achieved the same way? Afte all, human needs are universal.

Leadership stops being a constant correction of what is wrong, and becomes a deliberate practice of shaping the conditions in which people can thrive—and in doing so, allowing better performance and better results to emerge as a consequence, not a struggle.

Why do we focus on what we don’t have and what doesn’t work?

For so many of us, leading with problems feels like the obvious default. But why?

At a foundational level, our bodies are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure and pain act as an inner compass, guiding us toward what feels rewarding and away from what feels threatening or noxious. It is no coincidence that people often speak of “toxic environments” or “toxic people” and the need to get out. Like a toxic substance, they immediately detect what is life-threatening.

Pleasure and pain are actually really great signals on a coarse, first pass through our making sense of the world and making decisions. It’s a quick network, before you even know it, you’ve spotted the issues and potential threats.

Scientists call them appetitive and aversive drives. They operate automatically for our survival, long before conscious thought has a chance to intervene(Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999).

Now, this default compass isn’t evenly balanced. We wouldn’t have survived if it were.

Psychologists call this negativity bias: the phenomenon whereby negative events are more salient, potent, and dominant than positive ones.

In simple terms, perceived negative events have a stronger impact on cognition, emotion, and memory than positive ones of equal intensity (Baumeister et al., 2001). We all know this… we bypass the roses and we focus on the thorns. We remember them more, too, and it informs how we perceive in the future and how we make decisions.

More recent reviews in neuroscience suggest this is not just a mental tendency; it reflects how the brain prioritises information at a neural level, particularly systems involved in detecting and responding to potential threat (Norris, 2021). Wonderful machinery to keep us alive.

In one experiment, participants were shown photographs that had been carefully matched for emotional intensity: some beautiful, others disgusting. While they simply judged each image as good or bad, researchers measured brain activity. Despite all images being designed to carry equal emotional weight, the disgusting images consistently triggered a much stronger neural response than the beautiful ones (Ito et al., 1998).

This changes how we should interpret our own minds, and how to approach leadership.

Make Joy Your Compass

If the brain is built to notice problems first, then its first judgment is definitely not the whole story. It’s what’s salient, potentially threatening to what you value, deeply influenced by survival automatic drives. Take first impressions and interpretations as the beginning of the conversation, not the conclusion.

It is not wise to ignore problems or pretend everything is fine. But if you want better results, and not getting in your own way, you need to correct for a bias that evolved to keep us alive, not necessarily to help us thrive.

The discipline of leading through a more positive lens begins by questioning that initial verdict.

Is the threat really as large as it feels?

What is already working?

What strengths have we overlooked?

What progress has gone unnoticed because our attention was captured by what was missing?

When we deliberately widen our perspective, we see new ways to create the conditions for people to thrive, not just survive. This brings leadership to a whole new elevated level. With practice, we notice strengths before deficiencies, possibilities alongside constraints, and progress as readily as problems. There is more balance in our views and approach.

And people love working in places where they feel safe and valued, and seen as a whole human being, capable of great things, and inevitably imperfectly human, but nonetheless accepted, valued, considered.

Joy stops being something we hope will appear once the hard work is done. It becomes a compass for leadership itself guiding us toward the environments where people do their best work, feel valued, and flourish.

Our goals become far more achievable when people feel supported, valued, and able to thrive in their work. Not despite the ambition, but because of it.

Positive emotion does real work. It broadens what people notice in the moment and builds the psychological, social, and cognitive resources they draw on later, especially under pressure (Fredrickson, 2001). It builds resilience over time and a sturdy capacity to choose how you see events, people, and how you respond to them.

We all know what happens when we lead, or live, from fear. Making joy and pleasure the guide is the antidote. This is why joy can function as a compass in leadership: not something to chase, but a signal of whether what you’re building is actually working, for you and for the people around you.

Leading with Solutions, Not Problems

So where does that leave us?

You are already part of the environment you are trying to shape. The state you bring into a room is not separate from the room. Your energy becomes part of the ambiance people are in and it shapes how people feel. This resonates with a lot of people (apparently ir predates Maya Angelou):

Memories don’t store events as neutral recordings. Traces of your experiences are encoded tagged with emotional salience. The brain tags experiences based on how they felt, and those emotional signals shape what gets strengthened, retained, and recalled. Emotionally intense events, for instance, are encoded more strongly, with more detail (McGaugh, 2004).

The negativity bias comes in again; the memory process is not evenly weighted. Threat-related experiences are given priority in encoding and retrieval, meaning the brain is more likely to store, amplify, and revisit what went wrong than what went well.

For most of us, we ruminate over something, like a relationship gone awry until we make new sense of why and what actually happened.

Positive emotion works in the opposite direction. It doesn’t just feel better in the moment; it broadens attention and builds the internal resources that shape what gets encoded in the first place: what we notice, what we learn, and ultimately what we remember.

Much of brain function is subconscious and awareness happens after the fact. But if you train yourself to broaden your view to strengths and what’s working, you have much more choice over the world you create around you.

How you show up in a room is never neutral. It subtly influences what gets written into the emotional memory of the people around you, and over time, what kind of environment they believe they are part of. Your presence and your mindset build the culture in very powerful ways.

That makes the highest-leverage shift internal. Noticing your own negativity and reactivity is the first step to having more choice over how you show up. Catching the story forming around what just happened, and choosing, in that moment, whether you are leading from what you are worrying about or from what you are trying to build.

In each moment, we have choices that most people don’t even recognise. Choice over whether you focus on what failed, what wasn’t achieved, what you don’t have… or what is possible, what you would like to see, and what already worked or was achieved.

The change of orientation changes everything, both inside you and outside you.

Now, this is not fake positivity. You face the same reality, but how we orient ourself within it will completely change what happens next and how people respond to you.

Everything else follows from there: a clearer shared purpose, values that are actually lived rather than stated, decisions that account for people rather than override them, and a deeper capacity for empathy that looks for what people need rather than what they lack.

That is what leading from a more positive lens looks like in practice.

Where to Start

A few simple ways to begin leading through joy:

If any of this is live for you right now, this is exactly the kind of thing I work through in 1:1 coaching: book a time to talk it through.

Book a coaching discovery call

Read more

I should have told you I am cognitively impaired from an accident I had 2 months ago (story in a minute). As you read on, consider that this piece will be written in many short interludes, as mental clarity and capacity dictates.

This new mental state and physical limitation has made me ponder a lot of things that we need to keep front and centre in leadership:

• The hidden disabilities people live with, and how easily we treat each other without tact. In reality, most of our worlds are hidden and often don’t get revealed unless it feels really safe. How inhumanly we inadvertently treat each other!

• How absolutely disastrous it is to not notice or, worse, ignore our body’s signals

• How it’s become normal, even expected, to push ourselves beyond our limits day in and day out. And then we wonder why our health or wellbeing are not top shape, or why we got burn-out. No, it’s not the external situation, it’s that you ignored the many earlier signals.

• The absolute necessity of cultivating interoception and proprioception, those perceptive capabilities besides the senses that allow us to sense and notice our body’s internal state and posture, and guide wise preparation for action and decision making.

• And these apply not just for great leadership, but cultivating a great life, well worth living, with great relationships, with ourselves and with others.

Today, I want to tell you my story from the lens of hidden disabilities. Hopefully we can all gain more awareness of each other, and choose understanding, curiosity and making space for how imperfectly human we all are, and how dynamically circumstances change.

If you want me to touch on any of the other points, do leave a comment and let’s start a conversation. Happy to go into detail in future pieces.

The moment everything changed in a split second

Our plane from London Gatwick to Cancún, México, was about 30 mins delayed. We were sitting eagerly as the plane started moving.

We were still on the runway, submerged in that moment of increasing acceleration when everything around you is noise and speed and you’re just waiting for the wheels to lift.

Before I knew what was happening, a great pain, so intense I hardly knew where it was coming from —all in the top of my body hurt at once.

It felt like those old cartoons where little birds and stars circle someone’s head when they’ve been whacked.

I lost consciousness for a moment. The first thing I remember is the pain and people’s commotion.

I heard people unclipping their seatbelts, crowding over me, asking “are you OK, are you OK?” They brought me back.

I couldn’t see initially, my left eye hurt a lot. So did my head and neck. Throbbing and pain in my face, neck and collarbone. All I wanted to do was hold my left eye closed. I didn’t know where to put my other hand, everywhere was calling to be tended to.

And the strongest urge was to make sense of what had happened. Whack, then intense feeling, the jitteriness of shock coursing through my body.

A suitcase had hit me with great force, aided by the speed the plane was gaining.

Then the voice of the suitcase owner: “They made me put it there, I didn’t want to but they made me.” What? What does that even mean? I thought. I had no context for that information and no capacity to process it.

All I wanted, with tears already flowing, was to be left alone with myself, to let it all out, to cry the way your body demands you cry when something enormous has just happened to it and the emotions and sensations are so many and so big. I was jittery, I was emotive.

But instead of tending inward, I was pulled out of myself and away from doing what I wanted to do. I felt split.

The plane crew arrived. I realised there was no movement, the plane had been stopped.

— Are you OK?

Silence.

— Are you OK?

— No, I muttered. (Clearly not, I was slow and confused.)

And also, yes. “I am not dead,” I thought. I seem to be in one piece. There’s no apparent blood.

Am I OK? What’s OK? A dullness in my awareness. Deep confusion. An inner void, with the pain intensity.

I forced myself to pull together, pay attention to what was going on outside. With my instantly disappeared cognitive resources, making sense of anything was a great effort. I was into myself, out of it and trying really hard to be coherent.

They kept talking to me.

— Madam, are you travelling with someone?

— No.

I saw the crew exchange a concerned look I didn’t have the clarity to interpret. It scared me.

The questions kept coming:

— Are you dizzy, can you see, are you nauseous?

I was doing my best to answer them honestly, checking inwards as I went, not yet knowing exactly what I was feeling.

While what I actually wanted to say was just “Stop, stop all of this, let me lie down and sleep.”

And then the most disorienting question of all:

— Do you need to go to a hospital?

How on earth would I know? My mind went blank. I had to make this call, right now, on the runway, with my brain still somewhere outside my body. Everyone waiting. Everyone looking.

I asked them all to stop talking for a moment, please.

I stood up, tried to walk in a straight line. Pass.

I tested my eyesight again. Pass.

I sensed whether I was nauseous and remembered I almost never get nauseous. Not quite nauseaus, just yucky.

Most importantly, I listened inwards as carefully as I could.

What kind of “OK” and “not OK” am I? Am I OK to fly for nine hours, alone? Am I OK to go to this conference and present in a few days?

A small quiet voice said: “You’re OK, not in a dangerous situation. Rest up.”

I have a pledge to listen to myself, so I said I thought I was well enough to travel, aware that “thinking” was a stretch.

Of course, as soon as we were up in the air, I started doubting myself, as symptoms continued to change. It was a truly stressful flight, as I tried to relax, but in the alertness of a great shock and impending doom.

The crew moved me to first class, which helped a lot, as I could lie down and properly rest my head. On that nine-hour flight I got more ice than I knew what to do with, moving it from my quickly swelling face to my collarbone and neck and back again as the pain shifted.

The crew wouldn’t let me fall asleep, “just in case,” they said. I requested a doctor on landing. I could tell I was still OK and very much not OK, worse. Deeply confused.

Stuck in an invisible world

A lot of what people are carrying is not apparent from the outside. If you look at me, 2 months on, I appear entirely normal. But if you notice more closely, you will see differences, difficulties, things that seem just a little odd.

If you are curious as to how it feels to live with a concussion, below is some of it. The words we use for familiar sensations simply don’t match what I feel, but I’ll do my best.

The irony is not lost on me. I spend my professional life helping people find language for their inner worlds, coaching them to name their experiences with precision and granularity. Yet I am currently in a state I struggle to name my own.

What it’s like to heal from a concussion

I am asked:

Do you have a headache? Dizziness? Light sensitivity? Noise sensitivity? Memory gaps? Fatigue? Cognitive slowing? Emotional dysregulation?

Yes. All of that. And also none of it exactly. It takes a little digging to get to the detail of my inner experience.

Let me try to describe it for you.

Since the blow, most days a little voice follows me around saying: “Just lie your head down right here and rest it for a moment.” Often at the most inconvenient times, mid-conversation.

Headaches? Yes, but not quite. My head aches and feels unpleasant all of the time, but not in the way I would normally call “a headache”. There is throbbing, pressure building in particular spots when I’ve overdone it. At times it feels as though my skull is filled with fluid pushing outward. Intense enough to make me anxious that my brain might explode or malfunction.

Mental fog? I went through menopause unmedicated, and this is orders of magnitude greater. I wouldn’t even call it fog. Trying to think feels more like wading body-deep through thick mud. Even that isn’t quite right. Like trying to load a page on bad wifi, it just hangs.

Dizzy? Yes, in its own way. Disoriented, more like. Less about balance and more about finding it really challenging to navigate transitions, movement and depth. I get that deeply disorientated feeling, like a pervasive sort of dizziness. A sensation I don’t have words for.

Dissociation? I check out often, not on purpose. The lights go off. I am there, but nobody’s home. I can pull myself back, but the effort is gargantuan and often only partly successful.

Memory? Very faulty. Lots of gaps.

Thinking? Slowed in a way I had no idea before.

Simply put, I cannot process. Words, thoughts, conversations, busy environments, bright lights—everything arrives faster and harder than my brain can cope with. Words disappear mid-sentence. I begin a thought and lose the end of it. Sounds feel aggressive, bright light like an attack.

It is exhausting, and a bit destabilising. The result is a kind of paralysis or trance. I call it being submerged in La-la land.

Decision making? The most demanding of all. So taking care of myself with doctors etc. is pretty challenging. It took me weeks to navigate the system and find a neurologist, over many broken attempts. The calls, decisions, computer time and logistics were all unexpectedly taxing.

Things that once cost nothing now cost a lot. And when the cognitive bill comes due, it comes all at once. In a few moments, bam! Battery drained.

It feels like a cognitive battery gone faulty. I recharge it with rest, meditation, lying down. Doing things that don’t require much attention or thinking, interspersed with more intellectual things like a coaching call. But it drains almost immediately when I start thinking, talking or listening.

Working feels like juggling balls. I need to time my on times very carefully with lots of rest before hand and afterwards.

All of these symptoms can flare instantly. Every time I push myself, I pay for it.

Tasks I never thought about like reading an email, following a conversation, or writing a paragraph are taxing.

In fact, most mornings, I’m exhausted before I have done anything. The aching head and the “just lie down for a bit” feeling. Add the whiplash aches and pains.

I can imagine someone having to “go to work” in my state, the effort it takes to simply get yourself there, let alone show up with any presence. I got myself to a local conference last week and by the time I was there, dizzy from the short train ride, I lied down in the back for the first hour.

Daily life feels surprisingly difficult. I am constantly disoriented. Very odd things are common, like missing a table when reaching to lean my elbow on it. It is not unusual to not be able to recall my own address or my children’s birthdays and have to wade through the mental slosh for a bit to retrieve them.

Twenty or thirty minutes at a computer thinking and the pressure starts building, warning me, soon to become unbearable. Then comes the stupor, the checking out.

My brain feels two seconds behind everyone else’s. Like being underwater.

Walking sometimes gives me a brief window of clarity, something I pine for as a runner. Other times I overdo it and it depletes the battery further, making my head pound and feel as though it is floating in viscous fluid.

Anything requiring sustained cognition remains largely out of reach. At times, even crossing the street felt disorienting; I worried I hadn’t fully processed whether it was safe.

I can perform being “normal,” like when I have a client’s coaching call or a training to deliver. But the performance costs me dearly.

The hardest part is that I usually discover I have overdone it only after the fact.

I look fine. But nothing about this is fine.

And the irony of a neuroscientist with a concussion is not lost on me either. This June I had planned to return to research on the amygdala and its regulatory pathways with the prefrontal cortex—the very architecture of how we process, think, regulate and respond.

And here I am, unable to process.

It is humbling to be human.

Times like these I am so grateful for community, and for life, every morning.

Can we make space to be there with each other in this interwoven web of life we all share?

Hidden disabilities

We often don’t know what it feels like to be somebody until we walk in their shoes, until we have their experience or close to it.

While empathy can indeed be achieved through imagination —a worthwhile exercise— something changes in us when we are dropped into a situation and feel what it’s like in our own body.

For me right now, a slower pace of conversation, a pause with a smile giving me time to answer, or a client bearing through a short mental lapse feel like a rope that saves me from drowning in the ocean of catatonia.

A concussion is invisible, as so many other conditions are. I look fine. I sound mostly fine. And yet something enormous is happening inside that nobody can see, a lack of capacity I carry daily.

I think of the people who live with a hidden disability or lack of capacity permanently. And yet they show up to a world that does not see what they are carrying.

We have become accustomed to being passing ships in the dark. We do not see each other. We miss each other.

Can we make more space to see people’s real circumstances, and to be more human with each other?

I found my precise sentiments in this poem, which I hope you will enjoy with me and take to heart.

Judge Softly

Pray, don’t find fault with the man that limps,
Or stumbles along the road.
Unless you have worn the moccasins he wears,
Or stumbled beneath the same load.

There may be tears in his soles that hurt
Though hidden away from view.
The burden he bears placed on your back
May cause you to stumble and fall, too.

Don’t sneer at the man who is down today
Unless you have felt the same blow
That caused his fall or felt the shame
That only the fallen know.

You may be strong, but still the blows
That were his, unknown to you in the same way,
May cause you to stagger and fall, too.

Don’t be too harsh with the man that sins.
Or pelt him with words, or stone, or disdain.
Unless you are sure you have no sins of your own,
And it’s only wisdom and love that your heart contains.

For you know if the tempter’s voice
Should whisper as soft to you,
As it did to him when he went astray,
It might cause you to falter, too.

Just walk a mile in his moccasins
Before you abuse, criticize and accuse.
If just for one hour, you could find a way
To see through his eyes, instead of your own muse.

I believe you’d be surprised to see
That you’ve been blind and narrow-minded, even unkind.
There are people on reservations and in the ghettos
Who have so little hope, and too much worry on their minds.

Brother, there but for the grace of God go you and I.
Just for a moment, slip into his mind and traditions
And see the world through his spirit and eyes
Before you cast a stone or falsely judge his conditions.

Remember to walk a mile in his moccasins
And remember the lessons of humanity taught to you by your elders.
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave
In other people’s lives, our kindnesses and generosity.

Take the time to walk a mile in his moccasins.

~ by Mary T. Lathrap, 1895

When I was pregnant with my first child I put on a ridiculous amount of weight. From a very petite 52kg I carried a large baby and gained in the order of 17kg (I have never been so hungry in my life). I remember the last weeks’ foot pain from the extra weight and swollen feet (summer baby) and thinking how awful it must feel to be older or heavier. I truly developed a new understanding and empathy for people with daily foot pain and people who regularly carry extra weight around. It was truly a challenge to walk and endure the pain.

And now in my current state, flashes of people with hidden disabilities, of which our workplaces and communities are filled with, are coming to mind.

I also feel for older people. Have we made a whole generation, those responsible for all we have, cognitively handicapped in this tech era?

I am now more aware.

It is appallingly hard to navigate modern day life with reduced cognitive capacity. Imagine what it’s like for your elders. And help them!

And I think of women on their periods who just pretend they are fine, while they are enduring feeling like a knife is stabbing their womb, and they push through anyway— instead of taking a sick day, or not working a day and working more the next week.

Let’s be there to see each other first. Then to support each other.

Supporting people is not advice

We often confuse what people in need would find useful. And we bombard them with our advice, from our sweet intention to help. But this may not be the help they need and your advise may actually get in the way.

You may be thinking what many have asked me: “You should sue BA.”

How does that help me now, other than making me really overwhelmed and less able to function?

If you paused for a second to listen and see me, that would be obvious. But people insist.

I get their point and insistence. Of course, the suitcase was not secured, the overhead lockers were not checked before take-off. I was watching, waiting to get my laptop out to work on my conference presentation. I watched just as carefully on the flight home (as a reality check for me), and again, there were not checked. This “should not have happened”, and there is a responsibility here that needs addressing.

I know that. But I need to focus on surviving and healing. The financial loss is very real —a small business stopped dead cold, just as it was gaining traction, savings I was lucky enough to have quietly draining with the different therapies.

So when people tell me to sue, I tell them that I don’t have the mind for it right now. Literally, I don’t. I don’t need more cognitive load.

So, for now, it is more supportive to park the option for the future, and to know who might be lining up to actually help me through the work it would take, and trust that BA will eventually come back and support me through this (indulge my naïveté until I heal).

This is not the first time life has asked me to take legal action from a place of injury. That first time, I lost my chance, so I get why people insist now. My second birth involved gross medical misconduct, surgery nine months later, and a recovery that took 2 years. I did not have the capacity to take legal action at all, my marriage on the line from the hardship. I merely survived, and I focused on being the best mother I could be while I healed slowly.

I believe it’s a collective issue to bear in mind that the very injury someone has gets in the way of them acting and healing. And they need support from those close to them.

I know that when a friend of family member tell me they will help me with this or that, my entire being relaxes in the being held.

Remember this, too, the next time someone is not doing what seems obvious to you they should do. They may simply not be able to. They may need support with the process before they can even get there.

And your advise may not be helpful. They will ask for it when they need it.

I need a gentler 3 months

Times like these is when you realise how lonely we can feel in our modern world, and how much it helps to have people support you and be there for you, a community. Emotionally and also practically, in tiny things like speaking more slowly, or repeating themselves without annoyance.

I believe in a globally connected world, where we are all a united, interconnected human family.

In the absolute trust that we are in this life, planet and universal journey together, one and the same, that we are all interconnected, I indulge in a request to you, dear reader, that will help me both relax and take the time needed to heal.

Today, I am requesting patience from you.

I have a couple of lovely pieces outlined or half drafted for you, so I can promise more content is coming to help you along your journey. Just how soon they will come is a little uncertain. “Soon” is my intention. While I honour my physical boundaries.

And if you have the urge to help, here is how:

Way to help 1

Would you be willing, if perhaps not happy, that for the next 3 months I do the following:

• Aim to post every 2 weeks?

• Give me a little leeway if I don’t manage or if I post on odd days or times?

Way to help 2

You are welcome to come to my 20 minute sessions live that I hold 2 times a month. It is a way to get me live and that is easier for me. You can ask me any questions you have, or just come for connection. This is open for paid members, which you can trial free for one month to get the link. I will resume them in July.

Way to help 3

And if you have concrete legal expertise or suggestions, do DM me, but remember my capacity is diminished. Concreteness helps.

Way to help 4

I am happy and grateful, everyday, just as I live this new life.

I don’t need anyone to feel bad for me. I do indeed welcome understanding, and support of the kind I want.

Times like these what helps most is people being responsible for their own meaning making and emotions. If you’ve gone through a big loss or injury, you know exactly what I mean.

Thanks for reading and supporting my work. It means a lot to me.

And apologies if I was disorganised, repeated myself or rambled!

About me

I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with an MSc in Neuroscience from UCL. I am a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity. I work with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business who want to build the inner capacity to increase their outer impact and learn to lead with empathy, authenticity and presence, especially when it’s hard.

The Empathic Leader’s Way is a reader-supported publication. Your paid subscription includes access to the LEAP community of leaders learning and growing together with my support. Self-guided tools, community discussion, live sessions with me, group coaching, and more.

For months, he had watched a colleague edge into his area of responsibility, take credit for things he and his team had built, and move upward while leaving the mess for others. He had tried to address it with the person directly. When this didn’t work, he escalated it to top leadership.

He was sure he has spoken clearly, even though his style was on the gentle side, being nice to everyone and avoiding unnecessary conflicts. He believed he had addressed it without making a fuss, but without letting it go either.

But it hadn’t worked.

People became defensive, or brushed past what he was saying, or carried on as though nothing had been raised.

He was exhausted, resentful. And, perhaps most damagingly, he was beginning to lose confidence in himself. With each conversation that went nowhere, he became less able to trust that he could protect what he had worked so hard to build.

Was he overreacting? Was he handling it badly? Should he have said the thing more directly?

It was hard to know what was actually happening and why his attempts were not shifting people.

This is the point where people often assume the problem is lack of courage or directness. But it rarely is so simple. More often, something else is going on that most people have not developed the awareness of.

It’s simple, and really hard to do.

The moment we try to speak honestly, the language we use quietly shifts from descriptions of event and our experience to delivering judgements.

Most leaders do gather enough courage to address issues and speak up. However, the words they use are either too sugar-coated for anyone to truly know what the issue is and how to fix it, or they come out as verdicts.

When people hold things in, mulling them over and building a case, by the time they finally speak, it comes out already charged.

How will any colleague respond to these phrases? Any person, really…

“You always take credit.”

“You push boundaries.”

“You agree and then do whatever you want.”

These conclusions may contain nuggets of truth. And most people think they are expressing a pure observable truth. But they are not! Their message gets lost in the reactivity reflected in their language.

The moment we speak from evaluative language, the door closes.

Why honest attempts misfire

There is a very curious neuroscience result that helps us understand what happens when people receive our interpretations. When someone feels judged or attacked, their system responds as if they have been hurt. Eisenberger and colleagues showed that social rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.

So when you come at someone with a verdict, their brain responds accordingly. They defend, attack back, freeze, or appease— all normal nervous system responses to perceived threat. Whatever form it takes, they can no longer really hear you. This is what I believe my client was facing.

Most people push through that moment, believing more explanation will help. But the other person’s system is already in protection mode. And their brain state is not receptive to more of your words just in this moment.

I do believe that people can be resilient, but most people have not developed the capacity to hear evaluations and interpretations and not feel attacked.

Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly (2012) about the armour we put on when we don't feel safe enough to be vulnerable. When someone speaks from judgement rather than their own lived experience, the other person puts on the armour. You are no longer interacting with a person. You are interacting with their armour.

You can read more on this in When Your Armour Starts to Feel Heavy

What my client couldn’t yet see was that his attempts weren’t failing because he was wrong or too soft. They were misfiring because the message was arriving in a form that invited defence rather than understanding.

Playing your own instrument

People often ask me for scripts in my classes. They want specific sentences to use in specific circumstances.

But saying the hard thing with empathy is not about using the perfect phrasing. It happens when you speak what is actually true for you with responsibility, before it has been turned into a conclusion about someone else.

Let’s do a thought experiment. I will give you two sentences and notice how they land in your body. How do they go in?

“You always take credit.”

What about…

“Last week, the presentation we built together went to the senior team, and my name wasn’t on it. It’s happened before…”

It’s still a hard message, but do you feel differently hearing one versus the other?

Saying the hard thing is not as much about expressing your thoughts and feelings, as it is about having your message land.

As my client, if your message is not taken in, you will not feel heard. You want the other person to actually receive it, and for something to move.

It is definitely possible without giving up your honesty. But it takes skill.

My client was losing confidence because he kept swallowing what was true for him. He simply didn’t know how to speak up in a way that aligned with who he was and how he wanted to treat people and lead business. He sensed that speaking the raw truth would cause more harm than good (as it often does). So he was in a bind. But each time he didn’t say it clearly, a little more of his footing gave way. He lost himself inside in an emotional spiral and the situation outside only worsened.

What follows is for paid subscribers: a five-step sequence that makes the difficult thing arrive and have the effect you hope for.

Read more

This gathering felt profoundly different from any other conference I have attended. Unsurprisingly, as Hometree is one of those unique organisations committed to pioneering change and actively engaging people in discussing hard questions, seeking dissenting opinions.

Hometree structured the day with many conversations so that together we could explore The Politics and Power Dynamic of Nature Restoration at Scale. Think deeply and disrupt our presuppositions, moving us to more effective ways to do the conservation work.

It was a treat to be in a room full of people who have been committed to restoring landscapes in their own ways, lawyers, farmers, scientists, minister Christopher O’Sullivan, funders and many others. The conversations were inspiring, at times alarming, facing the realities of how hard it is to change large systems and the difficulties people find in making beautiful missions a reality.

All were grappling with one of the hardest questions in any change work:

How do you actually move people so that the restoration work can be carried out at the scale needed?

In all the panels and conversations, I noticed an underlying thread that felt very familiar in my work: influence.

How do we effectively influence people to change their behaviour?

It’s an urgent desire these days.

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If you work in impact, you know this question intimately. It may be the question that keeps you up at night.

Having a great vision is not enough, you need others to get on board and to actually make it a reality.

In the end, it is individuals, real people with real lives, needs and stakes that do or don’t do tangible acts. Behaviours need changing, new actions taken. And for this, mindsets changed.

This pattern is the same all across industries, anytime we wish for behavioural change from people.

Purpose driven, impact seeking leaders are ethics driven too. They are not interested in approaches that have to do with manipulation. However, the impulse more people have when they have someone in front of them they want a different behaviour and/or mindset does not gain them the influence they long for.

The impulse most people have is to convince.

If only they understood the data, or realised the impacts, or thought in this way or that way, or realised they are wrong to think…

We care so much about what we’re trying to build. And so, when someone pushes back, the impulse is natural: make the case better. More evidence. A sharper argument. Clearer data.

And the harder you try making your case, or proving their case does not stand, you watch them close up further. They get more entrenched in their position.

Paradoxical, perhaps, when the evidence is in your favour and you are doing a great job of showing that.

I have done this more times than I care to admit. (I suspect you have too.)

It feels so logical. We realise they’re not convinced, so surely the problem is the argument. So we refine it. We bring more. We push harder. And the harder we push, the more they dig in.

Something else is happening.

Why do people resist convincing?

And what does that have to do with influence?

It’s actually pretty simple. And I was so happy to hear it at the Changing Landscapes conference from people who had been in the work for decades.

When people don’t feel their reality has been genuinely acknowledged, received, they close up. I think we all do this. Why open up something dear to us, when what we are met with is criticism, judgment, moralising?

And it goes deeper than that. People havetheir history, their fears, what they stand to lose, what they stand for, and all gets hidden and protected when you meet them with a judgmental attitude. In fact, with anything other than pure openness and acceptance for their circumstance and their prerogative.

You can imagine that your well-meaning “convincing” tactics create defensiveness. In the face of such precious vulnerability, the brain reads them as threat. And with this, a very important set of neurological cascades start. I have written extensively about the mechanism.

Here, i want to highlight that the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for openness, for nuanced thinking, for actually taking in new information and being flexible to finding new solutions becomes less available (Arnsten, 2012). And these are the things you were hoping people would engage in. Our brilliant case lands in a nervous system already in defence, and often ready to counter attack.

And it is not because people are stubborn or closed up by mindset. It is because your words and body language tipped them in that direction.

This is a humbling reality to human interactions that’s hard to accept and take in. It puts those trying to inspire behavioural change at the core of why people don’t change. It is a 2 sided problem. It’s not just people, it\s how we go about trying to create that change that might be creating more resistance to the very change.

And it leaves us puzzled, with our good intentions and reams of evidence flat on the floor, creating space between us.

Until people feel seen, and truly accepted, like there is a space for them in your world, they will resist being influenced by your data and well crafted arguments that seem so logical to you that the solution you propose is a no brainer.

At the Changing Landscapes conference, Philip Boucher-Hayes, journalist and presenter at RTÉ, described spending months preparing an eight-minute radio piece. He was not really gathering facts as his meticulous past self would have. Decades of interactions have taught him the only thing that works, the human way to be in conversation.

He is now more interested in understanding a community’s seventy-year memory, and for that he listens silently for as many hours as it takes… before saying a single word.

He discovered that in the 1940s and 50s, the Arterial Drainage Act dynamited their riverbeds, straightened the channels and drained the land. And it made it more productive. Which allows for children to be sent to college for the first time. This story wasn’t just history for the people living in the place. It was a part of themselves htat lived in their bodies. Philip discovered the sense of what their land meant to them, directly, what it gave them, what it cost to build something from it. No wonder there was resistance to new changes.

To walk in with an argument or an agenda would have been to walk straight past everything that actually mattered to this farmer. And in doing so, he would have lost the farmer.

So Phillip walked with them first. For a long time, as long as it took. Present, eager to hear and learn something.

At the end, as he was leaving, the man stopped him:

“I think this is the most important conversation I’ve had.”

Think about that: Nothing had been argued, nothing had been resolved.

But a genuine connection had been built, and with it, trust and a more open mind.

Someone had been genuinely curious about their life and what it cost them. Not strategically, but actually. We are wired to sense when human connection is genuine, and when people’s intentions are genuine.

And that open, genuine interest changed everything about what became possible after that exchange.

People are changed inside by moments like these, where there is genuine human connection. I believe that most of us are at a huge deficit of it, in our siloed society that pits us against each other, neglecting to recognise that we are all in this together, intricately interwoven in the natural and human ecosystems we are embedded in and part of.

You cannot convince anyone, ever

People’s histories and lived experiences are precious to them, and they should be. It made them who they are, with the learnings and inferences they made. Pretending we can change that with our arguments is naive, and skipping seeing and holding people and what matters to them, and getting to deeply understand them, is anti-empathetic. And highly ineffective.

I always come back to this: people convince themselves. It really is the only way.

Notwithstanding, influence can be secured through manipulative methods like pretense, outright lies, or the deliberate distortion of facts. Putting aside the ethical issues with this, we all know the behavioural change we need cannot be created this way, and will come from people being deeply on board, convinced of the new way of thinking and thus internally motivated to make the changes in their actions that are sought.

We cannot do this for them, and when we try, we usually make it harder for them to adopt the thinking and behaviours we want.

What we can do is be genuinely interested in who this person is, what matters to them, what they carry, and why they act the way they do. When you touch what matters to people, and stop judging them, they open naturally. They ask you questions. They become curious as to why you think a different way is better. They find their own reasons within the new paradigm you propose. And when they see how their whole inner puzzle can be adapted, preserving their integrity, and still working towards what they need and what matters to them, they start acting in new ways.

Don’t be surprised to find the most staunch supporters this way.

Back at the conference, Ray Ó’Foghlú, Head of Development at Hometree, said it plainly: “There’s a difference between being right and being effective. You can be right all day long. But just being right changes nothing. Find the relationships.”

As Marshall Rosenberg warns us of the right & wrong game. “It’s a game where everybody loses.”

Judge people and you lost them, you lost your chance at getting your aims with this person. Connections are severed, when alliances could have been built.

Let me leave you today with how the conference ended, with Manchán Magan’s voice. Manchán sat on Hometree’s board and was a very supportive voice from its inception. He is one of the most beloved voices in Ireland, a writer, broadcaster and tireless champion of the Irish language and landscapes, whose gift was helping people find a deeper connection to the land beneath their feet.

We delighted in a video of Manchán discovering a tiny ancient oak wood he hadn’t known existed, tucked by a lakeside in Connemara. Standing among those gnarled, moss-covered trees, he invited us to imagine what this land could become again, for the hundred generations to come.

Matt Smith, Hometree’s founder, ended the conference with a story of hope. When Mitch, co-founder of Hometree, heard Manchán had died, he traveled to his estate to gather 4,000 acorns. And he lovingly grew them through the winter.

Now, the lovingly grown acorns had become baby oak trees, a tangible contribution to the rebuilding of Irish landscapes. Every attendee was gifted one, leaving the conference holding a sapling.

I watched people carry them away carefully, smiling. Holding the hope in their hearts tangibly in their hands. You can see one in this photo:

That is what it looks like when people touch what matters to them. And when we go about the impact work together, not against each other. Truly together.

We open places inside that are precious and vulnerable, and otherwise would remain locked and protected.

This is the work. Avoid the argument, and lead with the relationship. Hold the data lightly, and prioritise the genuine curiosity about this particular person, in front of you, right now. Have the willingness to walk alongside them as long as it takes until the barriers begin to naturally dissolve from the connection. Well before you speak. The speaking comes naturally after the connection.

And the beautiful thing is that when we lead this way, we change too.

We stop performing certainty we don’t always feel. We get to be genuinely curious, genuinely present and influence a human being because they trusted us and believed in our vision together with us. We get to be moved, learn and shape ourselves into better human beings.

Ask yourself:

Do I let myself be moved?

Where in your work are you still leading with the argument, when the person in front of you hasn’t yet felt seen?

I’d love to hear in comments.

If you want to build your capacity to listen and have more real, non-adversarial conversations that enable influence, I am now opening up some slots for leadership coaching.

Find out more about my coaching

This newsletter is a good place to start building the skills it takes: Listen like you Mean it.

About me

I'm Nati Beltrán, executive coach and Nonviolent Communication trainer with an MSc in Neuroscience from UCL. I work with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business who want to build the inner capacity for outer impact — so they can lead with empathy, authenticity and presence, especially when it's hard. I'm a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity.natibeltran.com/what for my offers.

I felt the blow before I understood anything— that sharp, physical sensation like a knife stabbing my chest. And then the heat rising.

The person twisting things was, in theory, on the same team as me, working toward the same purpose. And yet what was happening felt like deliberate manipulation, a reframing of events that positioned me against the room, and them alongside it.

Before I had made any conscious decision at all as to what to do next, words came out of my mouth that I had not chosen, and would not have chosen had I been given even a few seconds more.

I went into defence. Which of course only made this person attack harder.

The dozens of people —who knew me and trusted me up until that point— felt like pure strangers with their accusing looks and disbelief. It was one of those moments that feel surreal, that make you want to pinch your arm to see whether you are dreaming or it is actually happening!

No, this was no dream. This person actually was in full attack mode, overstepping any line to do with respect, integrity or dignity. I was in utter shock.

And it all happened so quickly. I wonder if something like this has happened to you or you have seen it happen to someone near you?

I wish I could tell you I handled it well.

But I did not. I defended, I froze. I countered. I smirked in desperation trying to hold on to any semblance of hope that people would actually see through the fog. But no one came to the rescue, no one seemed to see what was happening.

I had spent years studying and working on myself, and was already teaching Nonviolent Communication. In fact, it was the very reason I held the leadership position I did in this organisation.

But in that moment, none of it was available to me. What was available was pure reactivity —fast, certain, and driven entirely by the fact that my nervous system had registered threat and responded accordingly, well before my thinking brain had a chance to weigh in or make a conscious response.

In retrospect this instance was a blessing, and it sent me on a beautiful journey of self-discovery and equipping myself with the understanding of how humans work under pressure and waht we can do to not just avert these really confusing, intense situations, but to be able to handle them effectively and with power.

I spent years studying the neuroscience of Nervous System regulation and it is now at the backbone of all my work. I can tell you that when a similarly stressful situation presented itself years later, the outcome and how I navigated it were drastically different.

The neurobiology of why we lose ourselves

You have probably heard of the amygdala. There are two of them, small almond-shaped structures at the base of the brain, and their job is to constantly scan for threat. The amygdala is sensitive to faces, tone of voice, changes in movement, smells, and anything that signals potential danger.

Keep in mind that for humans, things like exclusion or betrayal are considered threats to survival, and it is wired into brain architecture for us to detect them quickly.

The physiological responses the amygdala triggers are fast, and largely unconscious. You notice something in your body after the stress response has been launched, when hormones are rushign through your body already, all happening well before your conscious awareness catches up.

Like the knife on the chest moment. It feels instantaneous. But it is not, the amygdala has made an assessment already, just below your awareness.

What’s interesting and what we’d do well to keep in mind is that when the amygdala has a push-pull relationship with key areas in prefrontal cortex (PFC)— the frontal, more recently evolved part of the brain responsible for everything we associate with higher thinking and self-control. Essentially, when amygdala fires, it decreases activity in PFC, and lowers its functions.

So, the brain functions you need for excellent leadership are compromised when your brain has detected a potential threat. Things like flexible thinking, creative problem-solving, empathy, self-control, the ability to direct your attention, to reflect, to choose your response rather than simply produce one. This is the neurological reality that leaders would do well to become acquainted with, both for themselves and for their teams.

When there is threat detected or interpreted, that person is in a neurological state that precludes them from thinking clearly, openly, flexibly, or controlling themselves and what they say as well as they normally can.

And here is novel finding unknown to most people, and the key insight for leaders (Arsnten, 2012):

Even the particular way someone frames something in a room full of people can spin people if it feels threatening to them. Perhaps this is why most people avoid conflict.

So, people (or you) are not overreacting! Humans have a sensitive amygdala which is doing what it was designed to do: scan and protect us.

What this means that in any difficult conversation —any moment where something matters, where relationship is at stake, where you feel even slightly unseen or misrepresented— the very capacities you most need go offline.

You are not weak when this happens. No, nothing is “wrong with you.” You are not poorly trained or lacking in awareness. You are human, and this is how humans are built.

The question is not whether this happens. It happens to all of us, without exception. The question is whether you can learn to catch it earlier, and what to do when you can’t. How do you regain balance?

Build your root system

Think of a tree in a storm.

A tree with shallow roots looks perfectly stable in ordinary conditions; it is only when the wind really picks up that you see how little is holding it. It bends sharply, loses branches, sometimes comes down entirely. Most trees have root system extending far wider than their canopy, which enables them to bend in storms, sometimes dramatically— without breaking.

The roots hold, and the deeper and broader they are, the more the tree can withstand without losing itself, without being swept from its own centre. That’s what I’d like us all to be able to do. Bend in the outer winds, but not break.

Have the resilience to come back to our original shape without being damanged (the definition of resilience!).

Regulation is our root system. It is not the absence of being moved. It is the capacity to be moved strongly, legitimately, fully in proportion to what is actually happening, and still not be swept away from who you are and how you want to lead.

A regulated leader is not one who doesn’t feel the knife. (Indeed, you must be thinking some people don’t seem to feel, and to be disconnected!). A regulated, effective leader is one who feels things, but is able to stay present with what is happening, and to choose what comes next.

I know this is possible, because I lived both versions of it. Years apart, in situations that were remarkably similar, I responded in ways that were entirely different. And the difference was not intelligence, or preparation, or even intention.

It was that I had practiced and extended and strengthened my root system.

And I have seen countless leaders be able to do the same.

If this work resonates and you want to build these skills in a small, supported cohort, have a look at The Empathic Leader course, starting May 22nd.

What follows is for paid subscribers": what both versions looked like, and the practices that made the difference.

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I was having a difficult conversation with my eighteen-year-old.

More like attempting to have one. I had barely started when he stopped me.

“We both know it’s never going to work with judgment.”

I was literally floored. How did he know that?

In all these years of practicing Nonviolent Communication, I have never stated anything like this at home, in my deliberate intention to not “teach” but to “live” the principles, and the hope that those around me would either resonate or not with a more empathetic approach.

I went quiet. He was right.

He caught me.

As careful as I was trying to be with the words, I did not manage to stave off my judgment and fixed ideas.

I had walked into that conversation with the verdict already written, and I could feel it now. The slight tension in how I had opened, the particular quality of my “I just want to understand” that didn’t quite sound like understanding at all. My clear rigid adherence to what I thought was “right” and “wrong” and what he should do (instead of what he was choosing to do).

He had clocked it before I had finished my second sentence.

Note for leaders: Parenting is not a tangent from leadership, it is the most fertile practice ground! And teenagers are just great for saying things as they are. My clients often share just how they “can’t do it” with their family—I am living proof.

I felt a twinge of embarrassment. I teach this stuff, the non-judgmental attitude. The open and caring orientation. The intention to connect before even starting a conversation.

I have taught empathic listening for years, in organisations and coaching rooms and on stages, and in that moment, with my own son, my attempts to have that open, connected conversation failed completely.

As I often write: I couldn’t do it when it mattered most.

There was simply so much for me to deal with inside, that it was seeping out without my being able to control it, despite all the preparation for this very conversation I had had.

What stays with me is not the embarrassment, though there was plenty of that.

What stays with me is how certain I had been, going in, that I was listening. That I could keep my presuppositions and beliefs at bay while I opened up to his. I genuinely believed I was approaching him openly. But I simply could not control myself, and my judgment was immediately sensed, captured.

I also often say that the people around us, especially our most loved ones have antennas for judgment.

Incredibly humbling.

This is the thing about listening: we think we are doing it far better than we actually are.

In the last piece Your Body has its Own Language, Are you Listening?, I told you about metacognition, and how our beliefs about our performance are often massively overblown. This is the perfect example of that! My prediction of how well I listened, even my present moment sense of how I was listening were way off from the reality he was experiencing.

His feedback brought me to my senses.

I see a lot of people learning the skills of listening better, and I can tell you hands down that this is often the case. We do so many things instead of listening openly. And we often think we are listening.

But people feel the difference of true listening, half listening, or not being listened to at all. And whether they tell you or not —as my son did— they feel your judgment, your lapses in attention, your openness or rigidity.

And it breaks the connection massively.

The default we are working against

The brain has a default setting, which was only discovered a few decades ago (formalised by Marcus Raichle in 2001). When we are not actively focused on something outside ourselves, our mental resources go inwards and we start processing our own reactions, rehearsing responses, evaluating, planning and day dreaming.

If you have ever tried to truly (and only) listen, you know just how hard this is. Our mind starts comparing what we are hearing against what we already believe. You start preparing your answer. Your mind wanders.

Raichle et al. (2001) theorised a the default mode brain network responsible for this mental activity when we are not engaged with the external world. There is evidence that this is not exactly how the brain works, and it seems to work more by engaging many, distributed networks.

But nevertheless, what is clear is that a resting brain is an active brain. The brain’s resting state, which is fundamentally self-referential. It brings everything back to you, to your interpretation, to your agenda, however genuinely benign that agenda might be.

I believe this comes into play when we try to listen. As soon as you become quiet, things begin to happen.

What we call listening is, much of the time, a very active form of waiting— and paying much less attention than you think you are (or than you would like):

Waiting for a gap to speak

Waiting to see if they’ll say the thing you feared or hoped for

Waiting to understand just enough to then fix it

Waiting while preparing our retort

Ask yourself the next time someone shares something with you:

Am I truly listening?

What else am I doing while I am silent?

So, are we doomed?

Definitely not.

Genuine presence is the active interruption of that default.

But to be able to be truly present takes real effort. You cannot achieve it through just goodwill, or just intention. It is a deliberate choice made again and again in each moment, often against what the nervous system is loudly requesting or directing you to do.

In my courses I have seen time and again that when we deliberately practice being present and dropping all that mental activity, we slowly become masters of our attention. Then we can truly be there for someone who is sharing and hoping we will actually receive them.

If you want a taster of how to do this and how it works in a real scenario, join me for the free taster to The Empathic Leader course on May 8th. Listening Beyond Words. Register here.

What changes when we truly listen

The leaders I work with often tell me that listening is the skill they most underestimate, and the one that changes their relationships most dramatically once they begin to practise it deliberately and actually be able to do it.

This is not because they were previously indifferent; they always really cared. It’s because intention and practice are different things entirely as we saw above with me and my son. In fact, even having the skills does not guarantee they will be accessible in a moment of intensity where stakes feel high.

So what does it actually look like, to be there for another person really listening?

And how do we actually —successfully— do it?

What true listening feels like

The content that follows is for paid subscribers —practices that change what it feels like to be listened to so that people feel truly heard, safe and that they matter.

Thanks for supporting this work. Paid subscribers have access to the LEAP community of leaders, learning and growing together, with live coaching and a library of resources. More information about the LEAP community here.

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How to stop leading from the neck up and start reading the signals that actually run your leadership

There is a moment in coaching that I have come to recognise, and it never stops being striking to me.

The leader sitting across from me (or on the screen) describing a crisis with complete clarity. The facts are right, the logic is sound, the analysis is sharp. And yet something is off, not in what they are saying, they are usually logical, rational.

Something off in them. It’s a subtle sense I get. A kind of flatness behind the precision, a gap between the words and the person speaking them.

It happened recently, working with a CEO who was really struggling with the direction of his business. Conditions had become much more difficult, work was harder to come by, contracted work was being cancelled. We explored what felt like a genuine crisis and big lump of uncertainty; the money threat was real.

As a coach, I have a more distanced view of a situation, but I didn’t want to use that distance to analyse him from the outside.

I wanted to open something from the inside.

So we slowed down. We stopped talking about “the situation” and started exploring what it felt like inside of him. And not just this situation but others too, ones that had felt similar, as well as successful moments that had felt entirely different, even opposite. I guided him through an embodied exploration of each, paying attention to what cha ge in his body as he moved between them

.

I wanted for him to become aware of his own wisdom and knowing, and his body was the pathway.

What happened next was, even to me, short of miraculous.

He got deeply in touch with his vision, with how that vision informed his mission, and with something he hadn’t been able to see from inside the crisis: that there were several ways to move toward what mattered most to him, not just the one he had been pursuing, not just the one that was now blocked by external, unpredictable circumstances.

His body knew.

It had known all along. He just wasn’t aware.

Once we opened up the exploratory space, once he gave himself time to actually feel rather than just to think, his body wisdom spoke clearly, and with a specificity that his rational analysis had simply not been able to reach. Then he articulated that wisdom and the solutions that emerged from this deep connection with himself.

The leader in that room was not lacking intelligence or commitment. He was deciding in the dark about things his body already knew.

Many leaders bypass their own bodies. And in doing so, do themselves a huge disservice.

Embodying your whole experience always brings novel information, not always accessible to the rational mind.

Why knowing yourself inside matters

Neuroscientists these days speak of embodied cognition: the understanding, confirmed across decades of research, that the body and brain are not separate entities but one continuous system. The nervous system interconnects and orchestrates the entire body.

To do this, it relies heavily on what we call interoception, your ability to sense and read your own internal states, your feelings, your physical sensations, the quiet signals your body sends before your thinking mind has caught up. These signals shape your perceptions, your assessments, your decisions, your memories— whether you are aware of them or not.

These bodily signals are the nervous system's primary means of monitoring and regulating our internal condition — and they shape every assessment and decision we make (Craig, 2002). Interoceptive ability has been correlated with self-regulation and better decision-making under pressure.

Your body is not something that merely carries your head around. It is a reliable and very useful source of data.

Metacognition research adds something humbling. Stephen Fleming and colleagues (2024) have shown that after we make a decision, our confidence that we were right tends to be inflated— we feel more certain than the evidence warrants. So we are not only deciding with less information than is available to us; we are overestimating how correctly we used it. The gap between felt certainty and actual accuracy is real, but it is closeable— but only through deliberate practice of reading ourselves more clearly, before and during the moments that matter.

And there is a third reason, which the rest of this series will make vivid: self-awareness is the foundation of everything else. Self-awareness is needed to regulate yourself under pressure. To be able to be genuinely present with another person. To know and express your own hopes and boundaries. Exceptional leadership, and a good quality of life, begins with knowing ourselves.

Most of us are deciding with less light and clarity than we could, believing we have more than we do. Like a leader working hard in a dimly lit room, not knowing there is a shade over a window they have never thought to open.

Ask yourself honestly and openly:

If you are like most leaders, the answer is “rarely”. You have learned to override your inner data, to lead from the neck up, to push through. And for a while, this works beautifully, until it stops working at all.

This this what we practice in The Empathic Leader course. Next cohort starts May 22nd. Taster on how to stay present while listening on May 8th (free). Register to get your link. For leaders ready to step to the next level.

Let’s lay out what tools that can help you learn your inner language. These are the things I actually use myself and with clients, to build this capacity over time, not to understand it intellectually but to embed it into your daily leadership.

Learning to read your body

The content that follows is for paid subscribers.

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Gallup just released its annual State of the Global Workplace report 2026. They have been tracking the global employee experience across 140 countries for over 15 years, with 263,000 employees surveyed in 2025 alone.

And the numbers are not good.

Only 20% of employees globally are engaged at work.

If you have 5 people, chances are that only 1 of them is actually fully invested, driving things forward. The other 4 are somewhere between indifferent and hindering.

64% of employees were shown to not be engaged, i.e. to be present but just going through the motions, putting in time but not energy, care or creativity.

16% are actively disengaged, that is, not just checked out, but resentful, and actively undermining the people around them who still care.

20% active engagement is the lowest figure since 2020, and it has dropped for two consecutive years.

No region of the world improved in employee engagement.

The cost of this disengagement to the global economy last year was estimated to approximately $10 trillion in lost productivity. That is 9% of global GDP.

Now, I don’t usually get fixated on metrics such as “productivity” or GDP, but I think we should care a lot about people being engaged, actively participating in creating a better world and being proud of their work.

If you are in a purpose-driven sector, you know that your people are already bought into the mission. The mission is usually what got them there.

But, this is not nearly enough for them to feel motivated to give their best.

Why don’t people engage more?

Years ago I did some research in an purpose-driven organisation for my Masters in Integrative Learning and Leadership.

I interviewed employees across a purpose-driven organisation. I was trying to understand how they felt about their work and about leadership, and what issues they were struggling with. What emerged from analysing the data was surprising in its simplicity.

What actually drove their engagement, their sense of meaning, their willingness to give their best were 2 core desires:

1. Employees longed to feel they matter personally. They wanted to know without a shadow of a doubt that they were seen and that they were cared for as human beings.

2. They also wanted to feel that their work mattered and that it contributed to the larger mission, to something larger than themselves.

We cannot obviate people’s core, basic needs, which directly correlate to their wellbeing, satisfaction and in the end, their desire to contribute.

Employees do not need to be managed. They definitely don’t need to be incentivised, nor optimised.

What they really need is to feel seen. Valued. Genuinely so.

They need to know that their contribution counts for something, that the work they do every day actually matters to someone and to something larger, that it moves things forward towards the mission.

When both of these are present, motivation follows naturally— from the inside. People want to stay. They are open, engaged, willing. They thrive.

The objectives, the targets, the collaboration — all of that becomes possible. They become the consequence to people flourishing in a space that is conducive to their wellbeing and meeting their core needs.

Now… it’s surprisingly hard in leadership to lead in a way that people actually trust these 2 deep longings are met.

When this environment is absent, no strategy in the world compensates for it.

Gallup has now confirmed this at global scale, across 140 countries and 263,000 respondents.

Once put that way, it feels obvious, doesn’t it? We have known this for a long time. And yet here we are.

I was at a conference this weekend where researchers in neuroscience and psychology confirmed what Gallup found:

This is good news for those of you leading in the sustainability, conservation, social impact and conscious business sectors. Your people already have something most organisations have to manufacture:

The mission itself is a source of meaning.

That is a genuine advantage for purpose-driven organisations and leaders.

And yet, even in purpose-driven organisations, engagement is suffering.

This data shows that the collapse in engagement is not coming from the inside out (which is the usual way). Even when people like their work and the mission, engagement might be low.

Surprisingly, perhaps, a big source of the drop in engagement is coming from the top down. With how people are managed and led.

How so?

Between 2022 and 2025, manager engagement dropped from 31% to 22%, the steepest fall of any group Gallup tracks. Managers themselves have lost their engagement.

And as manager engagement falls, so does everyone else’s.

Gallup’s own CEO, Jon Clifton, said it plainly:

Even the most sophisticated AI cannot overcome an indifferent team leader.

There is something uncomfortable in all of this. If people become engaged when they feel seen, valued, and connected to something larger— then the question becomes: what does it actually take to create that, day to day?

Gallup’s report clearly hints at part of that being your own engagement as a leader, and how that ripples — for better or worse — through everyone around you.

Harvard Business Review published a piece last week that gets to the heart of this.

Creating those conditions doesn’t happen by accident. It takes skill. And like any skill, it has to be learned.

So which skills are missing in leadership?

We have been focusing for a long time on strategic and technical skills.

But what research like Gallup’s is showing is that it is the human skills that are most needed and lacking to support today’s employees and to face today’s problems. The capacity to…

• make the person in front of you feel genuinely seen.

• to stay present when a conversation gets charged.

• to give feedback that lands as care rather than judgment.

• to receive people’s feedback, even upsets, with grace and actually take it in without defensiveness.

• to have the conversation that needs to happen rather than the one that feels safe.

• to stay grounded in yourself when the pressure builds and everything in you wants to react.

• to face conflict and disagreement, and embrace it as a useful chance to learn something new, to get closer, to transform and restore relationships.

• to keep alive your passion and continue to show up with eagerness and excitement.

These are the skills that determine whether people feel they matter and that their workplace is supportive of what they need.

These are the skills that are most often dismissed as "soft." Which is, frankly, laughable. Because they are the hardest, most sophisticated functions a human brain does, and become really hard to maintain under pressure.

These are the capacities that we should be focusing on. To stay calm and cool, truly composed and empathetic, even in difficult moments.

As Ruth Gotian put it so brilliantly in the Harvard Business Review article I mentioned above:

Don't outsource humanity. Lead with it.

The leaders I work with are not indifferent. Far from it. They are among the most purpose-driven, caring, committed people I know. They are running environmental charities, directing social enterprises, leading conservation organisations, building companies they believe in.

But at present the world and their own organisations are putting undue pressures on them.

And they often feel underprepared to confidently and skilfully manage the human side of their business. They are experts at what they do, but find it hard to get through to people.

They need ways to interact that show people they believe in them, they trust them and they care for them. In ways that their employees and colleagues feel that in their bodies, just how much they care, how much they want to share their power and expertise towards their mission.

If you want a structured journey of development with other leaders, check out my Empathic Leader course, a 4 month immersive journey of transformation working on just these skills.

What leaders are carrying

We now have concrete data to direct leaders to how to train themselves to lead their people better and in a way that doesn’t cost them their health of emotional wellbeing.

I have been doing this work for a long time. The problems people bring me have not changed very much.

These are the things that leaders who come my way tell me:

“I don’t know how to give feedback without people shutting down.”

“I avoid the difficult conversation until it becomes a crisis.”

“When conflict arises I retract. And then things fester.”

“I care deeply but then I snap, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

“I want to lead the way I believe in but under pressure I default to everything I said I would never do.”

“If I could just stay calm I would be so much more effective.”

“I’ve been told I’m too direct. And at other times not direct enough. When I am truly honest it tends to backfire.”

“I can feel myself losing people and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Clearly, these are not people who don’t care. These are people who really care; they were just never given a map.

What changes when the people-emotional skills grow

Fleur, a grad of The Empathic Leader course, works in the environment sector. She realised something key to her efficacy:

“Creating connection first is crucial. Without it, the rest of the work can be fruitless.”

She is not describing a technique. She is describing what happens when the human skills are accessible to you and prioritised— and what is lost when they are not. It’s a way of showing up being there for others and choosing connection first.

“My ability to self-reflect created a buffer between my emotions and my reactions. It gave me enough space to actually choose how I wanted to show up.” This is Emily, who leads seascape conservation work.

That buffer is not a personality trait, or something we just have. It is something Emily built with practice.

What changes when you train your social and emotional abilities is not who you are. You remain fully yourself, and in fact feel more yourself, because you can be more authentic.

What changes is how you are, especially under pressure.

The space between when you feel something and how you respond lengthens. You build the capacity to say the true thing in a way that opens people rather than closes them. You learn to fully be there without the urge to soothe anyone directly, nor to go away from discomfort. You learn to regulate your emotions, your nervous system, and to support others when they are emotional themselves.

You are not meant to do this alone

Another great finding in the Gallup data is that leadership gets lonelier the further up you go.

Leaders experience substantially more stress, sadness and loneliness every day than the people they lead. Gallup notes that leadership can mean greater social distance and the weight of decisions that affect many people’s lives.

I see this often: the higher you go, the more you carry alone — information you cannot share, tensions you cannot name, doubts you cannot voice directly, organisational trends you must not yet share.

Part of what people find when they grow together with other leaders is not just the skills and toolkits they build, but the relief of being in a room with others carrying similar things. And growing together and from each other.

The Empathic Leader course exists because of these needs and responds to them directly. It draws on over a decade of working with leaders in exactly these situations, my background in neuroscience, my training in Nonviolent Communication, and my own experience of getting this wrong — many times — and learning, slowly, how to do it better.

This work is more of a life-long practice than something you hear once and then can do, I am afraid. I practice the material alongside my students and each round of the course I deepen my abilities.

For instance, a few weeks ago I found myself flopping entirely on the listening front, getting agitated and responding in exactly the way I know doesn’t work, within ten minutes of finishing an empathic listening workshop! It was humbling.

However, I didn’t collapse about it as I once would have, starting the self-attack. I composted this moment I once would have seen as “failure”. I saw it as a sign that I am human and still learning That is also something the course teaches, how to change the self-critic into an ally.

If this resonates, there is a free taster on May 8th. A new cohort of the course starts May 22nd. Register here.

The world needs leaders who know how to make people feel they matter. It always has.

The data is just making it harder to ignore.

And I am so happy about that!

Thanks for reading.

About the author:

Nati Beltrán is an executive coach, Certified Nonviolent Communication trainer and neuroscience researcher with an MSc from University College London. She works with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business, helping them build the inner capacity for outer impact. She is the founder of The Empathic Leader course and the LEAP community, and a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity.

Sources:

Gallup. (2026). State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report. Gallup, Inc.

Harvard Business Review, by Ruth Gotian, April 15, 2026. Why Leaders Need Power Skills.

Recently, someone I was working with on a project gave me feedback about a comment I’d made.

It was unexpected, and before I’d finished processing the words, I felt something land in my chest. A small, sharp twang.

The beginning of shame.

I know that feeling. I imagine you do too.

Perhaps it was the surprise element, but more likely it was that I went into “I am wrong” or “I am not enough” type of mindset.

Many of the leaders I work with know the feeling of shame too. It is the remnant, they often tell me, of growing up in systems that graded us, assessed us, told us our worth was measurable and up for review at any moment. Performative systems, focused less on the person’s development (let alone wellbeing) and more on the outcomes and ticking curriculum boxes.

I gather that for most people being brought up in these judgment-based systems left a mark of doubt about their self-worth. Even if you were at the top of the class, you may have had parents or adults around you who tied their approval (and even warmth) to your results rather than simply accepting you for who you were.

So, the potential (or reality) of “not being good enough “didn’t just sting — it told you something about who you were as a person. And it foretold how much and how well you’d be loved and accepted.

This can be really painful to realise.

It’s systemic, in schools, in families. Most of us grew up absorbing the message that our worth is measured by our performance. This has quite a few consequences, one of which is how we receive feedback.

Most of us are used to being judged on outcomes, and for other more human elements to be ignored, like intentions, effort, or the very real circumstances that shaped what was possible for us in that moment.

So, for many people, the first reaction to potential criticism is to protect ourselves, either defending, pushing back, or blaming ourselves and going into shame.

And, unless you have done a lot of inner work, you are likely carrying that into every room— into meetings, performance conversations, or any moment someone says “can I share something with you?”

So, even when feedback is kindly meant and accurate, it can arrive as threat—often even before people start sharing it. And we close up to it, in different ways.

That’s what happened to me in that moment.

The stress reaction starts inside us.

The question is: are we listening to the signals and can get get on top of it?

Or are we about to be enveloped by one of the two most common exits we take when someone offers us feedback?

The 2 exits to receiving feedback

There are 2 usual ways we respond to feedback that feels like it might be threatening. They both have to do with blaming.

The first exit is shame, which is really self-blame.

“I got it wrong, I’m not good enough, I should have known better.” It pulls you inward and downward, into self-criticism and contraction.

The second is blame.

“What a careless way to put it. Who says something like that?”

It pushes outward, into defensiveness and distance.

Both responses get us out of the bind. They are exits that feel true in the moment. But they both have a cost.

What’s really important for leaders to realise is that this is not a character flaw or a sign of weakness. It is what happens to a brain under threat. Our initial reactions are only trying to protect us, for good reason. They are fed by a long history of being judged and pitted against standards and against each other.

When we feel threatened, the brain circuits responsible for reflection, perspective-taking, and taking in new information become much less accessible. We are not stupider, nor weaker, but we are certainly not in our top form cognitively or emotionally. Learning, flexibility and even empathy are greatly diminished. The pull to protect is very strong. Almost automatic, readily accessible.

So unless we catch those initial signals that we are about to go into defensiveness, we will have reacted before we are fully aware, let alone at choice about how to respond.

But we don’t have to be ruled by that initial reactivity. We can create a small pause, just enough for the brain to recoup, and for a more considered, nuanced response to emerge — one that comes from our adult wisdom and resourcefulness rather than from our oldest wounds.

And when you defend, even subtly, even just by explaining yourself a little too quickly, the people around you notice. They file it away. And what’s worse, they interpret it and think you don’t care, you are not really open to feedback (no matter what you say), you have 2 faces, etc., etc.

The next time they have something real to tell you, something that might actually help you improve in your leadership, they hesitate, and they give you the safer version instead. Or they remain quiet.

And you don’t learn from it.

Over time, you lose access to honest information. Perhaps you don’t even know it’s happening, because nobody tells you that you are withholding information.

That is the trust cost of defensiveness. It’s not necessarily dramatic. Just a slow, quiet closing of doors.

When people don’t feel safe to share real things because of your defensiveness, you forfeit both trust and your own development.

Your defensiveness causes their protectiveness—which interestingly came from your own urge to protect!. It goes around in circles.

If you cannot hear the hard stuff, people stop trusting that your words reflect your values. You can tell people how important respect, openness are and that you have a willingness to be challenged, but unless you actually live that in your interactions, they won’t trust you.

But there is a different way and choice we can make.

For me, that day, I didn’t take either exit. I didn’t let myself go into self-blame nor did I blame them.

Because I noticed those first subtle signs of shame — the thoughts running in my head, the tightening, the fear of being judged — I could make a different choice. I stayed with the discomfort of knowing I had not been perfect in my leadership. I named what I was feeling to myself, and that made the sensation soften a little.

They had a good point. I was actually not happy with what I said that day, but instead of shaming myself, I took a moment to do something different.

What exactly did I do?

The Empathic Leader’s Way is a reader-supported publication. Your paid subscription includes access to the LEAP community — monthly sessions, Ask Nati Anything Q&As, and a community of purpose-driven leaders.

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It’s Easter weekend, and the world feels relentless. Conflict escalating. Oil prices rising. Force everywhere you look.

When I stop long enough to take it in, I notice that my baseline level of anxiety has raised—am I the only one, I wonder?

So much of what’s unfolding feels avoidable, if we had a different calibre of leaders. And the way conflict is talked about and shown—detached, almost strategic, sits uneasily. I can’t shake the sense that they are playing videogames.

But these are real lives.

It feels disheartening, especially if you are in the work of trying to make the world a better place.

I keep coming back to the same question: did we not learn from the past? From the wars even in the last century, and from the people who resisted them?

Many of us were raised to value peace, human and planetary thriving, but few of us have actually been given the keys to create it.

Growing up, Easter was about hope. A reminder that things can renew, that life can return even after the darkest moments.

And personally, this Easter weekend that’s what I needed to find again. And, unexpectedly, I found it in the most unlikely place: a memory.

Let’s focus on some positive changes that are also happening alongside the craziness, so that we can keep ourselves motivated to keep making the world a better place, and not cave into the despair and overwhelm that is so easy to fall into.

Renewal and Regeneration are happening all around us

Last Spring, I enjoyed a beautiful, restorative visit to 42 Acres, a regenerative estate and nature reserve in Somerset, UK, one of those rare places that moves you and stays with you long after you leave.

I found myself captivated by something unexpected: the story of beaver reintroduction in the UK. As I walked through their rewilding landscape, our guide explained how these industrious creatures had been absent from British waterways for over 400 years.

What struck me most was the leadership parallel and the universality of humans relating and communicating: When conservationists first proposed bringing beavers back, the resistance was fierce. Farmers worried about flooding. Fishermen feared disrupted salmon runs. Local communities questioned whether these “foreign” animals belonged in modern Britain.

Sound familiar? Humans fear change, and we resist it fiercely.

It reminded me of every leader I’ve worked with who’s tried to introduce positive change in their organisation, only to meet pushback. It reminded me of the difficulty of bringing people on board: the harder one pushes the more they resist, and the slower the change is.

Today, beaver populations are thriving in several UK locations. The key to this puzzle wasn’t overwhelming opposition with data or forcing change through authority.

Instead, successful reintroduction happened through working with people and meeting them where they were. I love the movement away from force and towards empathy and human connection, especially these days.

They did things like these:

Starting small and proving value: People cannot trust what they have never seen or lived. They piloted projects in contained areas where benefits could be clearly demonstrated and people could see and feel the changes. For me at 42 Acres, it felt like pristine watershed and pure nature all around it. No one needed to convince, it was clear I had not seen such pure nature since childhood, and the engineering the beavers provided created deep awe, evidenced by every face there.

Building unlikely alliances: Finding farmers who became champions after seeing reduced flooding on their land was a successful place to start. No convincing needed. A real need motivated an openness to try something different and take the risk that others were not ready to take.

Patient persistence: Allowing skeptics time to witness positive results rather than rushing the process. Everyone has reasons for thinking and feeling the way they do. Challenging those only makes people more entrenched in their views and positions, and this is precisely what moves people towards disconnection and towards violence. Empathetically accepting people where they are and being curious is much more effective, and is the source of sustainable solutions that are good for every party involved.

Addressing specific concerns: Responding to individual worries rather than dismissing resistance as “difficult people” or “out to get me.” It takes a lot of inner work to not take things personally and stay effective in teh hard conversation, especially when those concerns are literally the opposite of what you want.

The Leadership Lesson

Watching those beaver dams create thriving ecosystems and rejuvenate nature in a short span of time, I realised that sustainable change —whether in nature or organisations— follows similar patterns.

The most effective leaders I know don’t try to bulldoze through resistance. Instead, they work with people, with utter respect, from an authentic place of caring.

My head can’t stop making parallels with the opposite approaches so prevalent in the news. But we can make different choices.

Try these instead of fighting people’s resistance:

Start with willing partners: find your early adopters and let success speak for itself. Let people see and feel some of the change, and respect people’s willingness to take risk, working with those who have more tolerance first, letting the work and successes speak for themselves.

Listen to the resistance: often, pushback contains valuable information about genuine concerns. Become proactive in seeking this information, and stop judging people for pushing back! Stay open and learn something instead.

Stay present under pressure: when resistance feels personal, remember it is not, even when people use “attacking” language. Use the tense moment to find out what they value while maintaining empathetic curiosity— this is what transforms conflict into collaboration, instantly sometimes.

Demonstrate value consistently: small, repeated wins build more trust than grand gestures or promises. Trust is built through little, repeated actions and is fragile at the beginning. The more you show you are consistent, authentic, and deliver results, the more people trust, naturally. No convincing needed. People convince themselves, and change their mind willingly… which melts the resistance.

Your Change Challenge

Think about a change or decision you’re trying to lead right now, even a small one. What would happen if you approached resistance the way conservationists approached beaver reintroduction— with patience, curiosity, and genuine partnership rather than pressure?

In my experience, leaders who can maintain presence and empathy during resistance create the conditions where transformation becomes not just possible, but inevitable. And the journey is a more joyous one, full of connection and humanity. This is how leaders can sustain thriving spaces and thriving people.

If you’re navigating organisational change and finding yourself frustrated by resistance, you’re not alone. It is human nature and you can find the key to that lock and stop wasting energy in strategies that don’t work. This is exactly the kind of challenge we explore in The Empathic Leader course where you get practical strategies for leading change that honor both effectiveness and humanity.

Ready to join other leaders who are transforming how change happens in their organisations? Learn more about The Empathic Leader course here. Join me for the taster session on May 8^th (free) and learn to listen beyond people’s upsets and create alliances. Register to get the link here.

Or if you’re dealing with a specific leadership challenge right now, become a paid subscriber to join our community of leaders learning to lead with empathy, authenticity and presence. The next Ask Nati Anything session is on April 28^th, 2026. You can being your challenge then.

About me

I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with an MSc in Neuroscience from UCL. I am a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity. I work with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business who want to build the inner capacity for outer impact so that they can lead with empathy, authenticity and presence, especially when it’s hard.

I found myself really engaged in a panel on farming and ecological solutions. Organisations like the Wildlife Trust are doing genuinely purposeful work to protect landscapes, while also trying to support farmers to make choices that protect the land while at the same time sustaining their livelihoods, which has become increasingly hard.

The panellists were candid about the difficulties. How do you support a change of mindset without imposing?

Farmers have been tasked with feeding the nation for decades now, and they have done incredibly. Now they have been tasked to protect the environment and there seems to be resistance to pivot.

How do you collaborate with people who have every reason to stay the same and not listen to you? I was finding much to appreciate in the panellists honesty,

However, in all the strategising talk, I was missing something about human connection. The care to help farmers make a better livelihood while using their land more ecologically was somehow getting lost for me, even though the proposals and strategies sounded really great.

As I was forming my question about human connection and how change actually happens through interactions and conversations and discovering shared values and purpose, a man spoke.

He was outraged, he spoke with force.

He was a senior leader of an organisation that works closely with and champions farmers. He stood up to the pannel, questioning their intentions.

“If the farmers could hear you, they would feel diminished and humiliated, blamed and judged.”

Silence.

He had good points, which he reasoned. His outrage was strong. His care for the farming community was obvious and real.

But what really struck me was that he had genuinely missed the intention of what the panellists had been offering — their deep respect for farmers, their honest sharing of the difficulties of the work, the very fact that they were wrestling with how to do this well by them.

And I found myself wanting to defend them, to say “I don’t believe that’s what they meant.” I could really sense how much they cared about farmers. I got it, even if he hadn’t.

And then I watched something unfold that I see all the time in my coaching sessions, in The Empathic Leader course, and in organisations everywhere.

The head panellist did what most of us would do. He apologised, honestly and openly, and explained what he had actually meant.

Another panellist, said that perhaps he hadn’t made himself clear enough, explained himself better showing care and respect for the farmers (which to me was clear from the start!).

A third offered data that countered the misunderstanding and arguments the senior leader argued.

All three responses were skilled, reasonable, and, most importantly, well meaning.

They were the kind of thing that works perfectly well in a thousand other conversations, but none of them worked here.

The man didn’t soften, he seemed to get more entrenched in his position. The exchange didn’t settle.

My question about human connection didn’t need to be asked, because it was being played out, live, in front of the whole room. I found it tragic because I know it is avoidable. Both parties so caring, and now so alienated from each other.

Noone was convinced, and connection was lost.

What’s tragic to me is that all good intentions were lost in a split second. And trying to explain, defend, add more data… these responses only extended the distance this man felt.

It’s easy to think it won’t happen to us, but I urge you to think again. It’s human nature.

When we feel misunderstood, we explain our intentions.

When we feel challenged, we clarify, or we bring evidence, or we apologise more carefully.

They are the instincts of thoughtful, articulate people trying to make things right. And they can work, a lot of the time.

Just not when the person in front of us already feels upset. Or has a position they are defending and trying to get you to see.

Interestingly, there was a farmer in the audience who spoke later in the session. He hadn’t interpreted what the panellists said anywhere near as harshly as the CEO had on his behalf.

The very person being defended actually didn’t need it. That stuck with me.

So what was actually happening?

And what do any of us do when we find ourselves in that leader’s shoes? When we are certain that harm is being done, certain we need to speak up.

Or when we are facing someone who feels upset with us and our best efforts to explain ourselves are simply not landing?

Most people I know let the moment pass, unclear of how to make it better besides what they already tried.

Others judge the person who attacked or dissented.

But none of these work, either.

Why do your well meaning intentions get lost when someone is upset?

When someone feels “triggered” — diminished, challenged, humiliated — something happens before thought.

We need to think of what brain state people are in when they come at us like this man did. When we feel acute stress the prefrontal cortex goes offline first. That is the part of the brain that processes nuance, context, and other people’s intentions.

In that state, the most honest and well-meant explanation cannot reach them. Not because they are by nature, temporarily “unreasonable” or less able to reason. They also do not have their usual access to empathy, so to ask them to see your point is actually lost on them.

This is why explanation doesn’t work. Why data doesn’t work. Why even a genuine apology can make things worse.

Ask yourself a simple question :

If someone cuts themselves, what do you do?

Do you tend to the hurt first and foremost, until the person is no longer hurting?

Or do you start explaining how they should have held the knife or anything else?

Most people answer no. 1 immediately.

And yet in the heat of a difficult conversation, we reach for the explanation almost every time. It’s an impulse to “help,” But I dare say it does not help at all!

Many of us have been trained to be articulate, to justify ourselves, to make a good case. But we have not tried to tend to the emotional hurt first.

How we see the person in front of us in that moment matters enormously. Whether we experience them as someone to connect with or something to protect ourselves against shapes everything about what becomes possible next. Both responses are human. Only one opens the door.

Learning to recognise the moment when someone has shifted into that defended state, and knowing what to reach for other than a better explanation, is a very valuable skill.

And this capacity to connect first before we do anything else, especially correcting them changes conversations in ways that are quite remarkable.

This is the work we do in The Empathic Leader course starting April 24th. It is why I know how much it matters, because I see leaders defaulting to those responses every day. And it is not because they don’t care, but because nobody has ever given them anything else to reach for.

I have a taster coming up on April 14th if you want to feel what this is work is like. Register for free here.

Have a look at The Empathic Leader course and see how it can transform your leadership, from the inside out. Not from more tools or tactics (which you will get), but from increasing your capacity to connect and hold people in their upset and to weave new ways to move forward together. Schedule a call here to discuss.

Check out the LEAP community here: monthly Lunch & Learn sessions, Ask Nati Anything Q&As, and a library of resources including a self-paced course on Regenerative Presence.

About me

I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with an MSc in Neuroscience from UCL. I am a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity. I work with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business who want to build the inner capacity for outer impact so that they can lead with empathy, authenticity and presence, especially when it’s hard.

It takes an emotional fortitude that is quite something.

When a client tells me their business is about to be decimated by the war, or the policy change.

Or they are dreadfully worried about a colleague in the U.S. and the threat of ICE agents.

Or they lost a child, or a parent.

These things are real. And they are happening more and more.

In those moments, what’s hard is what happens inside of me.

It’s so tempting to soothe them. Everything in me is screaming to fix it, to “make them feel better.” And it is equally tempting to flee emotionally, simply ignoring the intensity of their pain.

But I choose not to do that.

I choose to stay with that emotional discomfort just the next moment. And the next, and as long as I manage.

And, time and time again, magic happens before my eyes. Someone deep in distress or overwhelm finds deep inner clarity, and they start seeing new ways forward.

They thank me, and I feel that I “didn’t do anything.” I just listened and held space.

And yet, that is the hardest thing to do. And the most active. Except, it all happens inside you, so it feels like we didn’t do anything.

But to the person who brought us their pain, who dared to be vulnerable with us, and hand over their heart… we did everything. Because by the end, it all shifted inside them, and they now touched a n inner power and agency they can act on. And this brings them hope and the initial overwhelm or fear dissipate or lessen.

The hardest thing to do is doing nothing at all

I’ve trained myself to withstand the discomfort of emotion. I am a very sensitive person, and it used to floor me. i would take on people’s upsets and problems and carried the weight. It’s easy to do, especially in the impact and purpose-driven world.

It’s a beautiful thing, how human beings resonate with each other. But it is also a really hard thing to endure.

If you let yourself be present enough, you will resonate with people. And this is really hard on the inside!

So we flee emotionally.

We do dozens of things to avoid this discomfort.

Anything to get the person in pain away from the pain any way we know:

We silver-line it— has that EVER worked in the entire history of humanity?

We attempt solving it for them.

We tell them our own story.

And a very painful one that I keep hearing about: we spiritually bypass it. We layer on our spiritual beliefs to give them a reason to not feel the way they do.

We change the subject.

Pause for a moment. I invite you to remember something in your body.

You felt it. A small (or huge) closing. A tension. A pain.

And a quiet decision: not here. Not with this person. I wish I could take my words back.

They may still be talking, but you are more in pain than when you started. And you are gone, gone into some protective mode. Perhaps you are arguing with them, or nodding absently, or trying hard to regain the mic, and their attention and care.

That is what we are doing when we can’t stay there, holding other people’s pain with them. And make no mistake, it is not useful to take their pain on, or away. That is sympathy, and people really don’t like it.

Ask yourself: Is my response here invalidating their experience?

Your intention might be pure and wonderful. It likely is. Most of us genuinely care.

But no intention in the world can undo the impact of those words. That tone. The moment your body turned away.

The world right now is not making this easy

Leaders are carrying more than usual.

People are scared, though not always out loud. But in the body, quietly, it is there if you listen with all your senses.

People’s baseline anxiety has shifted upwards a few notches.

And leaders are at a crossroads right now, especially impact, purpose-driven leaders working toward a better world:

1. Succumb to the worry and fear. (Looking away and ignoring what people carry is a form of that too, by the way.)

2. Or step up. Hard as it is.

I don’t mean step up as in push harder, solve more, carry everyone on your back.

Stepping up our game now means something different than we think. it means being fully there for people, in all the difficulty, no matter how hard it gets.

What is needed now is to show up fully, to be there for each other genuinely and people journey through hard things that seem to be getting harder all the time.

Therein lies our personal and collective resilience.

In any moment, do you have willingness to come down your mountain and climb someone else’s with them?

Do you dare to stay with what is hard, for long enough that the person in front of you feels genuinely met, seen, understood?

That is what makes them feel less pain and less overwhelm!

Your empathic presence is what shifts things. And the work part gets a lot easier after that.

What it actually costs when we don’t

Research on social pain shows that experiences of dismissal and invalidation activate the same neural circuits as physical pain (Eisenberger, 2012).

I find that mind boggling, and yet so true!

The sting is not a metaphor. It is real and it is felt in the body.

Emotional pain hurts! That’s where phrases like a broken heart come from.

And there no amount of dismissal or reframing that will take it away, no more than if there is a cut will it stop hurting.

What stops a wound from hurting is healing!

And the thing that heals is human connection. We all know this deep down. And research shows it as well.

If people close up in conversation with you, watch what you did. Are they putting the weight back in their bag, while they smile slightly, or they change the subject?

You meant to help by actively helping. But you made their pain heavier.

And you lost a piece of their trust.

Take emotional pain seriously, and meet it with what heals it, empathy!

An example of how to step up in leadership

Emma had been dreading the executive team meeting for weeks. As CEO, difficult conversations came with the role. But this one felt different.

A senior executive she admired, someone she had worked with for years, was no longer performing as he once had. And she was the one who had to address it.

In the past, she would either avoid it entirely (then spend months swallowing the consequences) or go in so bluntly that the relationship was damaged and nothing actually improved.

Avoid or attack. She knew neither worked.

The night before the meeting, she tried something different. She paused. Placed her hand on her belly where she felt the tension. Breathed. And asked herself one question we got to in our coaching call earlier that day:

She did not prepare what she needed to prove, or the potential decision.

She didn’t prepare how to protect herself from the conversation going wrong.

She tried to get in touch to what genuinely mattered for this person and for the organisation, for herself as CEO and for the exec team.

She walked into that room not with criticism, but with curiosity and care. She felt very human, and very calm.

In earlier conversations she had had with him about this, he had insisted everything was “fine”. She sensed it was her inability to actually listen that might be the reason she didn’t yet know what was happening and that it now was part of the meeting agenda.

What made it even harder that he would be in that room.

“I know it’s come up in other meetings and private conversations with all of us, and you’ve told us everything is fine.

But we’re all seeing something different, and feel concerned, it’s out of character for you. And I’s love to understand if there is anything going on that makes your work harder than it was before?”

The silence that followed was uncomfortable. The kind most people fill immediately.

She just held it.

What came next surprised everyone in the room. He disclosed something nobody knew — a serious family health crisis he had been carrying alone, saying everything was fine because he didn’t believe this was a place to share that. And being tough, with an executive needs to be.

Someone moved in to redirect, starting to offer solutions, next steps, something actionable.

But Emma paused them— gently, with grace. She stayed with him in that moment. With them all.

She let it land. She waited. She let him be seen.

Those moments are a few seconds long, but they feel like an eternity.

That was the turning point. It was not the disclosure. It’s what happened after that. The executive started to find solutions and ways to support his family and do his work, like “it would help if I could work from home 2 more days a week besides Friday.” But 2 days in the office feels too little?

The team rallied around him. They would keep an eye on his team on those days. They were willing to pick up the slack if he needed that, no questions asked. Everyone had a supportive offer.

Within weeks, both his wellbeing and his performance transformed.

But it all started when the space was held for him to feel safe enough to dare to share, and for the others to be there to receive it.

Emma told me afterwards:

“I discovered there really is a kindness in being honest. When we care, honesty feels like kindness.”

This moment transformed Emma’s leadership. Empathic connection is the most effective leadership choice. That moment to listen, those few minutes of holding someone’s difficulty transform what happens later and make the work flow.

When leaders do this consistently, something happens across the whole team.

People surface more information. They stop hiding.

Psychological safety grows and with it, better decisions, more honest collaboration, stronger results. And research backs this up (Edmondson, 1999).

What our times are actually asking of you

You don’t need to fix the world’s problems in a single conversation.

But if you do want to help the world become a better place, you need to be willing to stay present with what is hard, long enough for the person in front of you to feel that they are not alone in it.

Come down your mountain and climb theirs with them.

Hold someone’s heart in your hands with care. It’s fragile. There is a responsibility there to take very seriously.

And then — from that place of real connection — you can be more honest. And that honesty will be caring.

Then you can hold each people accountable and they’ll feel it as support, not judgment.

Then you can move forward together.

Our times are calling for leaders who can do both.

Deep empathy and caring honesty.

That is not a small thing.

But we can all learn it. And the world needs us all to learn to have a more empathic presence.

Tomorrow, Monday April 14th at 6pm GMT, I’m running a free live taster: Listening Beyond Words. A real experience of what this kind of presence feels like, from both sides. You’ll discover the listening practice that creates safety even in the hardest conversations — and leave with something you can use immediately. https://www.natibeltran.com/what/the-empathic-leader-course/

And if you want to build this as a sustained practice, in community, with coaching — The Empathic Leader course starts its next cohort April 24th. A four-month immersive for leaders who want to lead with real empathy and real honesty, together. Book a discovery call here to explore whether it’s right for you.

Nati

About me

I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with an MSc in Neuroscience from UCL. I am a Trustee at Hometree, an Irish nature restoration charity. I work with purpose-driven leaders in sustainability, social impact and conscious business who want to build the inner capacity for outer impact so that they can lead with empathy, authenticity and presence, especially when it’s hard.

Sources

Edmondson, A.C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. Eisenberger, N.I. (2012). The pain of social disconnection: examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13, 421–434.

You feel it somewhere in your body before you can name it. Sure, feedback is good in leadership… but your gut says otherwise!

For me, the strings those moments pull on are “not feeling enough”, and, deeper, fear of rejection. I have more than once lost myself in my inner spiral (shame, what-if scenarios, blame, dismissal,…).

Or found a reason to change the subject, pulled up a spreadsheet or make everyone laugh.

Some of us hide under perfectionism to avoid these moments. That’s my default.

Some of us hide under self-deprecation.

I know people who are very skilled at judging themselves publicly, making everyone laugh—a strategy I have noticed strengthens the armour and supposed protection. People hearing them feel too uncomfortable to pile on, and they end up offering them reassurance instead of addressing the issue.

Some of us hide under data, or under humour, or under a quickly redirected agenda or a skilfully crafted diversion.

Any or all of these familiar?

All of these responses are common, human. And all of it, at its root, is the same thing:

We are running from vulnerability by putting on an armour we hide behind.

We finally get that sense of “Phew! Moment averted.”

Our body relaxes. But, this has all came at a high cost.

We didn’t show up authentically.

We didn’t connect authentically.

And wearing this armour constantly wears us down.

Why We Avoid Vulnerability

You already know that we are wired, first and foremost, to survive. Our nervous system’s job is to protect us from threat and risk to our lives, and it has several mechanisms in place to ensure you stay alive and hopefully intact.

We feel signals of potential threats: feelings, emotions, sensations, gut feelings. I take them purely as information, signals for the brain to then make an assessment of whether we are in danger or not, whether something is life-enhancing or not.

We also have automatic reactions to certain stimuli that are lightning fast and beyond our conscious awareness or control. Like when you move away from a heat source, well before you become aware of the danger. Very handy when we inadvertently near a flame or burning hot surface. Or when something is painful.

This is why we are naturally drawn toward comfort, and rightly so. Pleasant emotions and bodily states are reliable signals that our needs, hopes, motivations and values are being fulfilled.

Discomfort, on the other hand, is a great signal that our needs, desires, motivations, goals and values are not quite being fulfilled, or not at all.

All these mechanisms and tendencies keep us safe and alive.

However, once we are safe enough, and there is no real threat to our live, it matters that we tend to all the other needs and aspirations we have so that we can develop and truly thrive.

When an important need like connection goes unmet, it has a huge toll on how we feel. That is the signal to go look for ways to meet it better, to find more connection!

So we avoid discomfort often. And we are wired to avoid situations that bring it on.

We close meetings quickly when something awkward surfaces. We brush over feedback. We stay quiet. We reach for certainty.

And sometimes our fear is right, there is some degree of danger to us.

But how many times have you pulled back from someone because you assumed something about what they meant that turned out not to be true at all?

How many conversations have stayed polite, nice, kind on the surface (avoiding any discomfort), while something important was left unsaid?

What is vulnerability, actually?

The Cambridge dictionary describes vulnerability as “the quality of being able to be easily hurt, influenced, or attacked.”

That is a scary place. Everything in us screams “protection”.

And yet research gives us a different frame. Dr. Brené Brown found in interviews with thousands of people across diverse populations that the courage to be authentic takes vulnerability. Those things we most long for, as leaders and as human beings, live on the other side of it.

Vulnerability, she found, is described by people as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”

Make no mistake, vulnerability is not weakness. It actually takes a lot of inner fortitude to show vulnerability and pause to make space for it, sitting in the discomfort and unknown of what might happen next.

Vulnerability requires that we manage our automatic tendency to hide or run from emotional discomfort. That’s a given, you’ll feel uncomfortable, at times naked, disarmed.

What you do next is your choice. Armour up, or allow vulnerability?

I am so fortunate to be witness to this transformation towards vulnerability often in the Empathic Leader course, where little by little participants start shedding their armour and trial out vulnerable authenticity, connecting empathetically, and actually making space for all they feel—and often have spent a lifetime trying not to feel or hide.

Elena arrived holding herself back in ways she hadn’t quite noticed. After 4 months, she was delighted to notice that her voice was literally different. As she embraced little vulnerability moments, her voice became more open, more clear, and more her. The change was noticeable, not just in her voice, in her entire posture.

Finn discovered that when he stopped bracing against vulnerability in his interactions, especially with “certain people”, he could finally hear what people were actually saying. He started feeling genuinely connected to them for the first time in years and discovering who they were beneath their armour. But it first took daring to show himself more transparently.

Powerful leadership follows every time we choose vulnerability in moments that require it.

Our next cohort of The Empathic course starts on April 24th; limited spaces, a transformational experience to acquire the toolkit to lead with authenticity and empathy. More information here.

What vulnerability is not

Vulnerability, however, is not overexposing yourself recklessly for its own sake. Nor is it ignoring the inner defences that protect you psychologically, especially if you have a history of trauma.

Honour your boundaries, your needs, and the feelings that tell you what you require.

Overriding your own limits is not vulnerability. It is just exposure without safety— and there is nothing brave or useful about that!

Vulnerability lives in the ordinary moments

Vulnerability visits unexpectedly: admitting you don’t know, taking feedback that stings without succumbing to defensiveness, disagreeing when it costs you something (like losing face), defending ethics, boundaries and values.

Vulnerability is the natural consequence of daring to try new things, daring to open up a little, daring to show up as you are, daring to check how your words landed, daring to try something new or leave something behind.

It’s felt when we take a risk, when we let the armour drop, when we open a little window into our inner worlds, when we show up humanly, when we listen to another person fully.

To practice listening vulnerably with me, I have a free session on Empathic Listening: Listening Beyond Words on March 23rd, 6-7pm.

Register for free

That is so powerful:

The thing most of us spending a life crafting strategies to avoid and not feel, is the very key to our success and happiness in life and leadership.

You need real courage to allow yourself to be vulnerable. And real discernment to do it wisely.

But the benefits are phenomenal.

And the cost of not doing it, and staying inside your armour is also huge.

The cost of the armour

Armour is heavy.

It costs us resources, energy, cognitively and emotionally, all day long.

Think about what it takes to appear certain when we’re not.

Or to hold the mask in place when something hard surfaces.

Or to stay in your head and keep your body out of it.

It is exhausting work, and most of us are doing it on top of everything else. All the time.

The cost is not only the exhaustion.

When we close down against the discomfort of vulnerability, we close down against beneficial things too. Things like joy, connection, authenticity, awe, learning, growing.

There are consequences to your work and team, huge ones. The team that cannot be vulnerable together cannot be honest together. So they cannot truly innovate, or trust each other with the things that actually matter. They can’t feel safe to express hard things honestly, so collaboration is surface and fragile.

What’s worse, loneliness grows quietly inside organisations that look, on the surface, like high-functioning teams and departments.

The human cost of avoiding vulnerability is enormous, personally and collectively.

And what a leader can change just by daring to show up more vulnerably is also enormous.

The Brain on Discomfort and Discipline

You may have seen or heard neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast talking with David Goggins, where he discusses discipline and grit, and their effects on a brain region called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC). As a runner and swimmer, it is one of my all time favourites!

Research suggests the aMCC grows in volume and connectivity in people who push through difficulty. It is larger in athletes, and especially large in people who see themselves as challenged and overcome the difficulty. It is smaller in people who are sedentary (Touroutoglou et al., 2020).

And this has very positive consequences for all of us and for our leadership.

When a brain region grows in volume it involves new neural connections forming and existing pathways strengthening, which in turn makes it easier for your brain to mobilise that same capacity in the future, with less resistance and less effort.

So, you are not stuck with the same degree of vulnerability and dread as you started with. Each time you face a difficult moment adds up and changes your brain structure, and therefore function.

I used to think that certain situations like public speaking would become easy and comfortable, but they don’t necessarily. However, my capacity to face them and endure the discomfort involved has grown. And my experience of it is much easier. It happened last December, when I gave a talk to 200 people, and the ease I felt with the discomfort made me reminisce of how very anxious I was for weeks one year prior in a much smaller talk.

What I have wondered for years is whether the same neural circuitry activated and changed by demanding physical challenges is also changed by demanding emotional ones, like staying present in a difficult conversation, taking in feedback rather than deflecting it, or tolerating the discomfort of not knowing?

My field practice with leaders and people overcoming emotional intensity led me to believe it did. It seems to be Huberman’s sense, too. And I am thrilled that recent research is now confirming this observation!

It has been found that the aMCC integrates not just physical challenge but emotional distress and cognitive effort in the same region (Shackman et al., 2011). A more recent review confirms it supports staying goal-directed specifically under emotional pressure (Holstege et al., 2025)— meaning, when you work towards something you want, specially when it is hard.

I think this is incredible news for all of us and it actually confirms what we have all known forever: “no pain, no gain.”

Hard things are hard… but the benefit of growing our capacity to withstand them or do them is well worth the effort.

Now, I am not advocating for pushing past your own boundaries or pushing yourself past the point of pain or whatever level of discomfort feels adequate in each moment and situation.

However, I am saying that there is a real neurological benefit to practising the willingness to be uncomfortable. And this translates to real leadership and life benefits.

Keep practicing being willing to withstand a certain level of vulnerability and emotional discomfort. Dare to take that armour down a little and see what happens, keep at it like a scientist, adjusting based on the evidence your trials show you.

You decide what moments and how you show up. But the point is, expect discomfort! And learn to live with it and not let it stop you from doing the things you want like having connected conversations, speaking up or giving and receiving feedback that leads to growth.

By the way, naming your limits and holding your boundaries for others to honour, that too is vulnerable and takes strength and courage.

Useful Vulnerability in Leadership

Remember, vulnerability is not about taking all your armour off at once. That is not necessarily safe, and not always wise.

It is more about relating authentically, within your willingness, while staying committed to showing up honestly.

It’s about saying the hard thing and then staying present for how it lands.

It’s about sitting with a colleague’s distress without rushing to fix it.

And it’s about letting feedback in when people share it, even when it stings.

In all of these moments it is natural to feel vulnerable. Which is often uncomfortable.

In my experience, vulnerability is also profoundly relieving. It is freeing. And it is deeply connecting. You feel more you without that armour, and others show themselves more transparently, too, like Fynn realised.

The goal is not to become someone who never protects themselves.

The goal is to stay awake to the moments when the armour is costing you more than the vulnerability ever would.

And to reap the benefits of daring to stay with the discomfort of vulnerability.

So, when you are facing that comment that stings, and you notice that familiar pull— the urge to explain, to qualify, to deflect… STAY.

You have a choice.

Do you stay inside the confines of your armour, hiding behind perfectionism, covering up the tension or running?

Or do you let it land, sit with the discomfort, and see what there is to learn?

I am still sitting with this for myself on recent feedback. Growing is uncomfortable and vulnerable! No two ways around this.

For those wanting to go deeper into this in a sustained way — into vulnerability, empathy, the neuroscience of connection, and what it means to lead from all of this, The Empathic Leader course begins April 24th. Book a discovery call here if you want to explore whether it’s the right fit for you. Come to the taster on April 14th!

With presence and hope for this crazy world,

Nati

About me

Thanks so much for reading to the end. I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with a neuroscience background, helping purpose-driven leaders stay grounded under pressure so that they can have more impact and achieve their missions. A proud trustee at Hometree, Irish nature restoration NGO, where the human element is protected so that we can protect nature together.

Sources

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to Lead. Penguin.

Holstege et al. (2025). The neuroscience of pushing through: How the anterior mid-cingulate cortex enables determination and lifelong wellbeing. ResearchGate.

Huberman Lab, "How to Increase Your Willpower & Tenacity" hubermanlab.com/episode/how-to-increase-your-willpower-and-tenacity

Shackman, A.J., Salomons, T.V., Slagter, H.A., Fox, A.S., Winter, J.J. & Davidson, R.J. (2011). The integration of negative affect, pain and cognitive control in the cingulate cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12, 154–167.

Touroutoglou, A., Andreano, J., Dickerson, B.C. & Barrett, L.F. (2020). The tenacious brain: How the anterior mid-cingulate contributes to achieving goals. Cortex, 123, 12–29.

A sustainability director I coached was known for being “the empathic one” on her senior team. People came to her. She listened, she helped them. She never raised her voice. People loved her. She was a truly “lovely,” positive person.

After a 360 review, her kindness and people’s fondness of her came through clearly, but so did a few pieces of feedback that stopped her cold and were really hard to face.

“I wish she’d tell me what I’m doing wrong so I can actually grow and advance in my career.”

“Everyone knows there’s a conflict brewing, but she acts as though it weren’t there. Like it’s not OK to disagree and she expects everyone to play nice.”

“I never know where she actually stands.”

“She always has an answer ready to my problems, but somehow I leave feeling disempowered and like I wasn’t really trusted.”

When we started our coaching, she was devastated. She had been working so hard at empathy and trying so hard to be the nice leader that people loved working with. She went out of her way and sacrificed herself to help others.

She was truly baffled.

Until she realised that what she’d actually been doing — for years — was keeping everyone comfortable. Including herself.

She was keeping peace on the surface, but in so doing was avoiding lots of conversations and situations. She needed to rediscover what empathy truly is and how to act empathetically.

I see this scenario often in leaders who describe empathy as one of their core values. These are people who genuinely care. They really mean to be empathetic and try very hard to do it.

The problem is not their intentions. It’s their actions.

There is pervasive confusion that surrounds the concept of empathy.

Let’s break it down so that you will never again wonder if something you are doing is empathetic and aligned to your intentions to be kind or not.

Here is what empathic leadership is not.

Empathic Leadership is not people-pleasing

Empathy is not sugarcoating

Many leaders sweeten their messages in the name of “being nice”, because they don’t want to “hurt” or “upset” people. A little softening here, a little cushioning there, and soon enough the message has dissolved completely and tastes entirely different from what you actually wanted to get across. Sure, it’s sweet and warm, but what’s expressed is vague. And, unfortunately, often useless to the person who needed something candid and clear.

Empathy is not keeping everyone happy

In my experience, withholding difficult information and then watching someone repeat those same behaviours until they lose the respect of their colleagues or face bigger issues— that’s the unkind thing to do. It would have been much more empathic and kinder to them to actually be honest early on. The problem is not the feedback, it’s not sharing it! You can be very empathetic while you share difficult things.

Empathy is not remaining silent

Waiting for the “right moment” to say something you expect to land as difficult often just delays honesty. If your intention is to be “kind,” not saying something you expect to ruffle some feathers is the opposite of kind. The longer you wait, the more the silence sends its own message: that the person isn’t worth the truth, or can’t handle it.

Empathy is not lowering expectations

Quite the opposite. When people feel genuinely heard, they can be held to higher standards, and often do so voluntarily, or they set their own higher standards than what you thought they’d be comfortable with. Connection makes accountability possible and natural.

Empathic Leadership is not tiptoeing around emotions

Empathy is not walking on eggshells

Many leaders fear that if they disturb someone’s emotions, they’ll be “insensitive.” So they sidestep. They keep things light, change the subject when the air gets heavy, or stay carefully away from anything that might crack the surface. This is a disservice — and it’s often rooted in their own discomfort.

Empathy is not rescuing

Jumping in to console, reframe, or find the silver lining often backfires. When you do this, you’re not helping the other person. You’re helping yourself relieve the discomfort of being present with theirs. Empathy makes space for authenticity — theirs and eventually yours. It does not rush. It does not rescue. It stays. It accepts.

Empathic Leadership is not erasing yourself

Empathy is not weakness

This is perhaps the biggest myth of all. Real empathy is one of the most demanding things anyone can do. It takes courage — the courage to hold someone’s space when they are upset, confused or even mistaken. They may even be attacking you. It takes a lot of effort to come down from your own mountain and climb theirs, with genuine openness and curiosity, without knowing what you’ll find at the top. It is a huge sign of strength and and courage that few leaders have learnt to have.

Empathy is not caving in when someone pushes back

This one is quieter and harder to catch. You enter a difficult conversation with a clear position. The other person gets upset, and suddenly you find yourself agreeing — not because anything new was said or you were convinced, but because yielding feels easier than staying present with the disagreement and discomfort.

Empathy is not losing yourself to keep the peace

There’s a widespread confusion that “empathy” looks like endless accommodation. But putting yourself aside so completely that nothing of you remains is definitely not empathetic—not to yourself or to others. Your steadiness is what people actually need, not your collapse: staying present, staying yourself, even when someone is upset.

Empathic Leadership is not sympathy

This is one of the biggest confusions.

Empathy is not feeling bad for someone

Sympathy says: “I’m so sorry, this must be really hard.” Yes, it is warm. And it is well-meaning. But it positions you slightly above the person— looking down at their situation with concern. There is a risk, too, that you take on their feelings, and feel bad for them. It’s a thin line to notice how others feel and be moved by it, and to take on those feelings or to pass a judgment on them. Empathy simply sees and accepts.

Empathy is not assuming someone can’t handle what they’re going through

The moment we feel bad for someone, we’ve already decided their situation is terrible and they are not resourced enough for it. Pity goes one step further than sympathy: “you poor thing.” Now you’ve decided they can’t cope. This strips away their sense of agency. Your lack of trust of pitying them is felt and most people really don’t like it or actively resist it.

Empathic Leadership is not taking sides

Empathy is not agreeing

Listening is listening. Period. It is not agreeing, disagreeing, or deciding who was right or wrong. Those verdicts have their place, but if they come too early, people tend to clam up. What you are validating is their experience — how they think and feel — not whether you agree or whether they’re “correct.”

Empathy does not take sides

The moment you take a side, something shifts. The other person feels it — a slight relaxing, a sense that you’re with them. But you’ve just left the territory of empathy and entered the territory of alliance. And alliances, in teams and organisations, are expensive things sometimes. They can unite, but they take away from seeing the individual and for them to feel valued and trusted. And at other times, people think that if you side with them now, you may side with someone else later or even go against them. Empathy is neutral.

Empathy is not identifying yourself with them

When someone shares something difficult and we say — warmly, genuinely — I know exactly how you feel, the same happened to me... we think we’re connecting. But we’ve just moved the conversation away from them and on to us. They’ve been gently displaced. And however kind the intention, people often feel a little more alone. They find themselves somewhere you placed them that they didn’t intend to go, and away from where they actually wanted to get. They may not be able to name this, but watch their response.

Empathy is not being ready to respond

True listening and empathising means suspending your own assessments and beliefs entirely. Your full attention is on the speaker. Curiosity is on, judgement is off. During empathy, there is no shaping your response while they are speaking. You need to hold back those impulses. The moment you start doing that, you’ve hopped off empathy. This takes your attention away from being able to empathise at all! Empathy is just presence, being there fully. Being with them.

Empathic Leadership is not solving or fixing

Empathy is not fixing

This is especially tricky for leaders. You’re used to solving problems. Often you have the answer before the other person has even finished speaking. You see the big picture, you have the experience, and offering a solution feels like the helpful thing to do.

But when someone needs empathy, solutions often land completely wrong.

When you resist the urge to fix and stay present instead, something interesting happens: people begin to find their own solutions. Often better ones than the ones you were about to offer. And usually much faster than anyone expected.

I see this shift happen all the time in the Empathic Leader course, as leaders practice true empathy with each other. Within two or three rounds of true listening, people arrive at their own clarity. Watching the surprise on leaders’ faces when this happens is a beautiful thing.

I have a free taster on empathic listening, Listening Beyond Words, coming up on March 23rd. Join us to learn how to stop fixing and start being more empathetic. Register here.

Does this mean you never share your ideas and solutions? Of course not! The sweet spot is to not do it too early, and to not do it when people would rather find their own solutions.

Empathy is not educating

When you offer a solution too soon, your good intention disappears entirely. What arrives instead is: “you don’t trust me to figure this out.” People make themselves smaller in the face of your greater expertise, knowledge, and power. They stop thinking out loud, they defer to you. And simply because the space for their own thinking quietly closed when you started educating them or correcting them too early.

Empathic Leadership is not a strategy

Empathy is not a technique

Leaders quickly learn that empathy builds trust, that people respond better to them, that it improves performance. And then — often with entirely good intentions — they start to “use it” to get buy-in, to soften resistance, to move people toward a conclusion they’ve already reached.

These tactics can look exactly like empathy on the surface. The listening, the apparent interest. But empathy is not a technique you use. It is staying open to another human being, genuinely, and respecting them deeply. It is not something you “do to them,” it is a space you share together.

Empathy is not a vehicle for influence

That is manipulation, however well-meant it is (forgive my directness). Covering up the intention to steer someone by inviting vulnerability is dangerous and in my opinion disrespectful. People feel the difference when you openly listen to understand them and when you have an agenda you are trying to push on them. It is not necessarily a conscious thought. But they will feel it in their body that you are trying to sway them. A sense that the attention they’re receiving is not quite for them, that it has an end goal. And it will likely cause a guardedness and a lack of safety.

Empathy will serve you, and it will do this when it is steeped in genuine openness and connection. It will benefit you naturally, as a consequence of the understanding and connection it creates. It will bring you better relationships, more trust, and more impact. But the moment that serving yourself becomes the intention, it stops being empathy entirely.

In my opinion, true empathy cannot be faked.

There is a lot of confusion about this online. Directing people toward your agenda can seem innocuous, even helpful. But look at the extreme end of that spectrum and it becomes clear why it isn’t empathy at all. Psychopaths are masterful at appearing to listen, at finding out what matters to people, and then using that information for their own benefit. They appear to care, but nothing could be further from the truth, they are using their listening for self-serving purposes. No one would call that empathy. The difference is not necessarily in the actions. It’s in the intention.

So What is Empathic Leadership, then?

After all the things it isn’t, you may already sense what remains.

Empathy is something far more demanding and deeper than niceness.
It asks for courage.

Make no mistake, empathy is not cold. But it is also not warm or sweet for its own sake. It’s something else entirely. The sweetness comes from real connection, openness and care. It is not something you do or put on.

True empathy holds tensions that many leaders find difficult to sustain.

It is warm while neutral.
It is being present without interference.
It is caring and emotionally responsive, while staying clear on personal boundaries.

It asks you to show up as yourself — present, attentive, authentic — while resisting the impulse to mix in your own judgements, advice, or solutions.
It asks you to let another person’s experience land, to be moved by it without being swept away, to understand without merging, and to care without losing the thread of who you are.

Holding these tensions is what makes empathy genuinely hard — and quietly, one of the bravest things a leader can do. To stay with discomfort without trying to make it go away, or to fix it.

If you want to practise empathy and empathic listening, join me at the upcoming free taster session on March 23^rd (18:00 GMT): Listening Beyond Words. It’s a live experience of what real listening feels like, from both sides.

Register for the Taster

This taster is a glimpse into The Empathic Leader course — an immersive four-month journey for leaders who want to be genuinely empathic and transform their capacity to connect, communicate and lead. The next cohort starts April 23rd. Book a discovery call here if you’d like to explore whether it’s right for you.

To go deeper on what Empathic Leadership actually is, the three dimensions of empathy and why it has become the most critical leadership skill of our time, my article Empathic Leadership Explained: Leading with Heart is a good place to start.

Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, spent his life teaching exactly this, and left us with something I return to constantly:

Listening first, even for a few moments, creates enough connection and openness for others to then be open to hearing your ideas, thoughts and feelings about the situation.

Think of it as a dance.

First, connect. First, listen. First, let it be received in you and show them that you get them.

The accountability, the feedback, the information sharing, the correction, the solving— all of that becomes possible after the person feels more open because you cared to connect and to understand where they are coming from. And your message lands on fertile soil.

Empathy brings effectiveness when we let go of our agendas and we dare to be there for another human being.

Sources

Rosenberg, M. (2003). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. PuddleDancer Press.

You probably know the feeling I’m about to describe, even if yours happened somewhere different.

You’ve poured yourself into something that matters. You work not just for yourself, but for a cause, for a group of people, a community.

You’ve done your work carefully and honestly, giving it your very best.

You walk into the room ready to serve it. And then something happens that you couldn’t have imagined, something that tears right through the careful preparation and leaves you standing there, naked, unable to find your voice.

I’ve been in that room. I know this in my own flesh. Different rooms and moments, but the same moment.

There are times when the love and steady commitment to the mission are not enough. It all goes pear shaped, no matter how beautiful the work and the mission are.

One drop that threatens your own stability and the mission's success.

The meeting that still makes me shiver

I was on the board of directors of a collaborative organisation with a genuinely beautiful mission that was community-led, values-driven. The kind of place that attracts people who truly care.

I had been voted in specifically because I was an NVC trainer and the community and the board had been impressed by my skills in navigating difficult human dynamics.

I most definitely did have those skills... until things got unmanageable.

The board tasked me with investigating a potential merger with another organisation who had approached us. I was to assess whether the vision, values and culture aligned.

I spent weeks on it, researching, interviewing, observing, reporting, analysing. And I came back with an open-eyed report: the alignment wasn’t enough. The risks of losing our essence and of a future split were significant.

But there was not sufficient openness to this information at board meetings. Financial pressures and eagerness for stronger leadership made the merger feel appealing, and hearing evidence to the contrary was not something that other board members were open to.

In fact, several members of the board had already decided before I presented a single finding.

How do you talk to people who are closed to listening, let alone convince them?

Frustration mounted, mine for not being heard and theirs because they didn’t want to face the conflicting information I was offering.

I asked the president one thing before the Annual General Meeting, where the merger would be presented to the full stakeholder community:

Can we work this out between us first, reach a shared understanding, or at least agree on how to present our differing views as a united front not yet sure of a decision? Can we resolve our differences before we walk into that room?

He didn’t take it on board. “We’ll be fine,” he said.

The AGM meeting started days later. The president began discussing the merger, omitting my findings. I spoke up—respectfully, but unmistakably clear. Dissent surfaced immediately. I found myself in a position to publicly challenge him, though this was never my intention. No matter how gently I tried to do it, it was not well received.

Tension cut the air.

When the president realised he couldn’t bring me around to his position by pressure and fear of a room full of dozens of people, he literally stormed out, uttering disbelief about me. I had never seen anything like it.

Just like that, in a moment. The doors practically shook as he walked out. The silence hung heavy.

The finance trustee stepped in. And what came next was something I still find difficult to describe. Lies, accusations, slander, all delivered in front of dozens of stakeholders. I felt I was being stoned.

My analysis dismissed. My credibility attacked. All of it untrue.

It was driving me crazy that their reactions were taking the stage when they were really covering up what was really at stake: information that forebode a risky, unsound decision.

I was utterly shocked.

I could feel my body freezing.

I tried a few words, some attempt to defend myself, to counter what was being said, and it only fed the fire.

The choice was a public fight and I didn’t want to engage with the aggression.

My body felt heavy. My throat closed. Tears pushed upward, and I swallowed them hard.

At the time it felt like I only had one option: I fell back into silence, waiting for it all to end, wanting nothing more than for the meeting to stop, and for people to stop looking at me.

I simply could not speak, let alone make a neutral case so that the stakeholder community had the information to decide honestly.

No one came to my rescue. None of those who begged me to take on this role months before were there with curiosity about what had just happened and why and how strange it all was.

I came home that night to find an email presenting an opportunity and a few days later, I resigned. Within a week, my family and I had packed up and left the country. Talk about fleeing.

In hindsight, I know what I was doing: moving away from something that had cost me more than I was ready to admit. Cutting ties with people and an organisation I didn’t know how to handle and move the mission forward, while keeping my own integrity.

My reputation suffered in a way I did not know how to fix, and internally I was a total mess.

I simply didn’t know how to remain intact inside while also effective in handling this very high stakes moment and situation.

What happened in the end?

The merger went ahead. As I feared, it was one of those apparently peaceful semi-hostile takeovers. Two years later, the leader of the other organisation who was put in charge was removed because she was not a good fit.

It pained me, because a lot of strive could have been avoided, and the ways in which the mission suffered, too.

The original mission was shaken. Not by lack of vision or by external forces, but by what happened inside the human beings in that room when the pressure came.

It was we who got in the way.

It’s not that people are “bad”

I’ve thought about that night many times since.

The president wasn’t a bad person, he was actually a wonderful person that I liked very much. He was simply someone who had lost the capacity to hear dissent to the vision in his mind. He felt overwhelmed by a challenge to the decision he wanted to make, so much so that his nervous system had nowhere to go but out. The storming out was a survival response in a moment when the inner pressure felt too much.

The finance trustee wasn’t malicious at his core either. He is a strong willed person who was fighting for what he held dear: the same shared mission I loved. He was backing up his ally in a moment of perceived threat, the way humans do when the group feels under attack and someone needs to act to protect it.

And I, the trained communicator, the person voted in precisely for my skills? In that critical moment when the heat rose, I lost my presence entirely as well. My capacity to stay regulated, to think clearly, to remain neutral and curious: gone. What was left was shock, a closing throat, and a whole body freeze. I was stuck inside.

It’s Not Just you, It’s the Environment too

This is what happens to people under pressure. And in our current world, these are the circumstances most people are navigating: high stakes, high pressure, lingering threats, instability, unpredictability.

So it is no surprise that nervous systems are more reactive than usual, whether that means more dissociated, more attacking-mode or more keep-the-peace-under-any-circumstance.

When one person’s threat response activates and escalates, it spreads. Affect is contagious, because we are wired to resonate with each other, which is usually one of our most beautiful qualities.

But under pressure, it becomes the mechanism by which an entire room dysregulates together. You can read more about this in my Substack How to Lead Through Collective Dysregulation.

The system doesn’t perform at the sum of individual human capacities, either. It performs at the quality of interaction between people when the stakes are high and nerves are firing.

And this depends on each person’s inner capacity to lead themselves with calm and remain flexible and curious to others.

That night, everyone in the room was a capable, caring person on an ordinary weekday evening. But this was no ordinary moment, the stakes were too high.

None of us had built the inner capacity to stay present and connected when the real heat arrived. Even those of us who normally would have had “skills.”

And the mission suffered.

The Way out is In

I had poured years into mastering NVC. I had so many skills. I had practised them, taught them, lived them. In fact, that’s why I was part of that leadership team.

And still froze.
I knew that something big was missing.

So I went looking for something deeper. It was clear that more techniques were not the solution.

I needed to understand the source of why human beings act in the ways we did under pressure. Why we attack, flee, dissociate, people-please, even manipulate.

What actually happens inside us when the stakes feel existential?

How does the environment shape the person?

How do systems shape behaviour? (I was one in a series of many undergoing such situations in the name of the mission).

So, I poured myself into this research. I completed a master’s in Education and Leadership that taught me about human development and about complex system theories. I then pursued a master’s in Neuroscience to understand the root of how our brains and the entire nervous system work.

The big find for me was this:

Without that, the skills might be there, but you can’t access them. The neural pathways allowing you to do something better than you did years ago are intact.

But you’ve lost access to all of it, because the brain is now in one mode only: survive. And your whole body follows suit.

The work, then, isn’t just to learn more. It’s to train the capacity to keep yourself regulated, from the inside out. Especially in difficult circumstances.

So I practiced new things. Daily. Unglamorous. Drip by drip. Moment by moment.

Years later, leading a large workshop full of 65 people with another beautiful mission, a man began attacking me directly, repeatedly, forcefully. I felt the familiar signals, the situation was a copy of that earlier one (enough to put me immediately into trauma land).

I noticed the beginning of the throat tightening. The internal tension and jitteriness starting up. The fists and jaw clenching.

But this time they were signs I knew how to handle and work with, not sentences of an unavoidable cascade.

I breathed.

I stayed in the room.

And, what happened was surprising even to me: I kept access to my thinking. And very soon, I knew exactly what to do to move us forward. I handled the situation effectively while being caring for him, and for everyone watching.

The difference of why I failed or succeeded wasn’t the skills. I’d had those before.

The difference was the capacity I had built underneath them. And this allowed me to lead myself with grace and compassion.

This successful experience transformed my career and how I see what is possible in leadership.

I wanted others to share this success in their change-making work, so I redesigned my leadership course around this concept to go well beyond skills training towards the deep transformation and building of inner capacity that is at the core of handling crisis moments.

The Empathic Leader programme became less about communication frameworks and more about the physiology beneath them and the neuroscience, the systems dynamics, the practice required to build real capacity under pressure. My aim became to help leaders have a steadier nervous system.

Skills are not enough, because the ability to stay present when a room turns charged isn’t a personality trait or something you “do” or “deliver”.

It’s how you show up, how engaged you mange to remain, and how much access to your higher brain functions you keep intact. Especially when the heat goes up. Without this inner capacity, even the best techniques collapse at the point of strain.

But when something shifts internally in you, it changes the field around you. You stop losing access to your thinking when it is most needed. You stop exporting your own dys-regulation into those around you. You stop letting your survival brain make leadership decisions.

You become a regulated presence others can stabilise around. And you keep making better decisions.

And that’s when the mission actually has a chance.

Why I’m sharing this now

The times we are living in require leaders with this sort of deep capacity to handle uncertainty, distress, heightened emotions in everyone, even violence. Not just to understand why human beings do the things we do when we are stretched but to be able to bring yourself and others to a regulated state that can actually bring on sound decisions and effective work towards you mission for a better world.

The mission of that organisation was real and beautiful. We all loved it and believed in it fervently. The people in it cared tremendously and worked very hard. It was worth protecting.

But the humans in the system, myself included, didn’t yet have what was needed to protect it when things got hard. We didn’t manage to live the values in the difficult moments— the conflicts, the disagreements, the times when someone pushes back hard and your body wants to run or freeze or fight.

I think about this often now, especially as I watch the leaders I work with navigate their own versions of this in meetings that erupt, or the team that spirals worried about the restructuring, or the conversation that should have been straightforward and somehow became a wildfire.

They are good people, thoughtful people, people with strong values and genuine care for what they’re trying to build.

What I find hopeful is that nervous system reactivity is not fixed. With deliberate practice, you can strengthen it, and widen what you can handle, be able to return to balance faster, and stay present in moments that would previously have knocked you completely off course.

If you want a taste of what this work feels like in practice, I’m running a free session on March 23rd: Listening Beyond Words. Staying present and listening openly is one of the most foundational skills when someone is pulling hard in another direction, disagreeing or outright attacking you. It is the capacity that deescalates aggression most effectively. Register for free here.

And if you’re ready to go deeper, The Empathic Leader 4 month programme opens doors on April 24th. More information here, spaces limited.

About me

Thanks so much for reading to the end. I’m Nati, executive coach and NVC trainer with a neuroscience background, helping purpose-driven leaders stay grounded under pressure so that they can have more impact and achieve their missions. A proud trustee at Hometree, Irish nature restoration NGO, where the human element is protected so that we can protect nature together.

One morning this week I found myself mulling over a situation with my 18-year-old son that had not yet happened—with the same fervour as if I were dealing with the aftermath.

All sorts of doom scenarios were running wild in my head. I could already see the whole thing playing out. As I watched the movie, well into the future, I started realising the cost of not saying anything.

And the dread of saying something.

I knew exactly what I would say—that is, if I dared to broach the topic. And I knew how he’d respond. I’d rehearsed his lines too— and I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet!

Before the day had started, I was already in a state with all this mental activity.

I stopped and gave myself a moment. This was not how I wanted to start my day!

I realised that for weeks I’d been avoiding the conversation. He’s walled off in the way teenagers can be. I had taken the closed doors and the one-word answers with grace. I was watching his moods closely, telling myself I was being patient. I was taking the grunts calmly. Giving him space. I was trusting him around this one topic, banking on our last conversation 2 months ago, hesitant to ask directly.

But how I felt was no sign of patience.

It felt loaded.

More like a pressure cooker about to explode. On appearance, in calm order, but boiling on the inside.

I took a closer, more honest look at myself. After all, I was the one having all the feelings.

I had a lot to say— about his behaviour, about his attitude, about the future.

As parents do with their children and as leaders do with their reports.

But I kept not saying anything.

Something was building underneath the surface patience. I could feel the risk of words spilling out all at once. And the damage from the potential explosion.

So I paused and I asked myself:

Then I saw it, and it was humbling!

What surprised me was that I had a very rigid agenda already pre-decided. I had entire scripts written. Outcomes already fixed before even approaching him.

An entire conversation playing out in my head, the rehearsed scenarios feeding it. Not just what I would say, but what he needed to hear. My reply to his resistance in the conversation, too.

Well before I stepped into a conversation, I’d walked into my script.

My agenda was about correcting him, fixing him, making him see, steering his future, regaining a sense of control.

All very justified, I believed.

The verdict we've already written

But in the grip of strong emotion, I was skipping the likely impact. If I said the words the way they were playing in my head, I could predict the outcome: defensiveness, shutdown, distance.Not what I wanted to create, and yet the movie kept looping.

My parenting and my leadership are one and the same, because I am one and the same person.

I had a choice to make about how to relate to someone with less power than me. And how to approach a delicate subject where I was pining for influence and a particular approach and outcome.

In my coaching room, I hear this from leaders all the time, different scenarios, same phenomenon. For them, it might be the colleague they’re walking on eggshells around, the difficult conversation that keeps getting pushed to next week, the person whose behaviour they want to (need to) influence.

For all of us, the script is already written in our heads before coming in. The desired single outcome already imagined and attached to. The other person already cast.

And then we wonder why the conversation feels so heavy and dreadful before it’s even begun! Or why it goes badly.

We’re not walking into a conversation. We’re walking in to deliver a verdict.

Your brain wrote the script before you even knew

The brain doesn’t wait for a conversation to begin before it starts processing it. It creates it ahead of time!

Long before you walk into the room, it has already run the scenarios, surveying the emotional landscape, predicting what’s at stake, selecting the outcome that is most likely to benefit you. Dr. Feldman Barrett (2017) and other neuroscientists describe this as predictive processing:

And the brain doesn't just predict. It craves certainty.

The more uncertain or threatening the situation is appraised or imagined, the harder it works to close the loop, to find the ending, to “know”. Which is why the script keeps playing even when we want it to stop.

We don’t do this because we’re controlling, closed or rigid.

We do it because our brains are wired to protect us, to prepare us, and they start early before things actually happen.

Making up stories, movies and scripts is just how our brain works by default. Scenarios are run all the time. And the most likely or most advantageous wins. At times, the most appealing.

But let’s not fool ourselves:

Natural doesn’t mean effective!

All my scenario-making with my son was taking away inner resources. The potential outcomes of his actions and inaction. The potential conversation. All priming me for potential futures and mobilising me to do something about the situation. Emotions launched, body reactive already.

I was being run unconscious streams that were not necessarily useful without further self-reflection.

It all created a rigid agenda, and a pressure to speak before I deliberately got clear on what would be useful to say.

There’s a high cost to letting this happen unchecked— emotionally, relationally, and cognitively.

The tighter you hold the outcome, the less you get it

Clinging to a fixed agenda isn’t harmless. In fact, the tighter we hold the outcome, the less likely we are to get what we want.

When we’re attached to our agenda, three things tend to happen:

1. We stop listening and seeing the other person. Not because we mean to necessarily, but because we’re already waiting to speak. And we leave no room for the other person, who feels the pressure closing in, sometimes before having said a word. They feel it because they’re doing the same thing we are: reading the room, running their own predictions, deciding how safe and beneficial to them this situation is.

2. We offer advice. But advice without listening and without space for their views lands as criticism. Our well-meaning words turn to weapons in an instant.

3. We try to prove our rightness. And of course, in doing so, inevitably we make the other person wrong, even if we didn’t mean to. And we all know how people respond to that and how that conversation unfolds.

It’s not just at the kitchen table between teenagers and parents. In the coaching room and in my trainings I hear this same pattern again and again:

A well-intentioned leader who genuinely cares, offering advice and guidance… and the person across the table who can’t quite breathe, or has completely checked out.

The leader’s prewritten agenda is costing them dearly. And often, they don’t even realise this is the origin of their troubles.

Clinging to a predetermined agenda is often ineffective, and takes away the very thing we want to achieve.

Often the consequences show up systemically, well beyond the kitchen table or the boardroom.

There's a story I keep returning to that shows just how much our well-meaning agendas can cost us.

For years, conservationists arrived on the US’ Maine coastline with a fixed mission: to protect the North Atlantic Right Whale, and change the lobster fishing practices that were entangling the whales.

A beautiful mission that became a fixed pre-determined agenda.

The harder the conservationists pushed, the more the fishermen dug in and the more they lost— despite how sound their scientific case was and how real the urgency was.

It’s ironic, even tragic.

Our approaches create the very opposite we want and actually can even prevent the desirable outcome we seek, even if it is a shared hoped for ending.

It wasn’t until some of the conservationists stopped arriving with what needed to happen already decided that something shifted. They started asking the fishermen what they were seeing, what they cared about, what they knew.

The started holding their own agenda lightly, and they discovered a shared love of whales and the ocean. Something that was completely inaccessible when the fishermen felt pushed aside and forced to change.

Of course, the change did not happen overnight. But the fishermen gradually began to trust and soon enough to choose protection themselves.

The conservation agenda wasn’t mistaken. It was worthy.

The whales needed protecting and the fishermen needed to change their behaviour.

But the attachment to it, and how things “had to go,” the convincing, the righteousness got in the way. Rigidly attaching to the outcome without seeing the people involved was the very thing that prevented it.

The irony of influence is this:

So, what do you hold, when you let go of the outcome?

Once I did that bit of inner digging and clarifying, I went into the conversation holding one intention: stay connected.

I tossed my scenarios and agenda (no, it wasn’t easy!).

I wanted to stick to what mattered most to me. Of course I had my favourite outcomes in mind, but I aimed at holding the agenda lightly enough that he could breathe, that he could be himself.

I am happy to report that the conversation wasn’t shaped by the outcome I wanted and how to “make it happen”. This relies on force and tends to damage relationships.

My guiding light became the quality of connection. I could feel that in each moment, and the sense of whether his door was opening or closing. When I felt myself tightening around what I “needed” him to understand, I came back to sensing the level of connection between us. And so we continued to chat, slowly discovering layers.

By the end, he stayed engaged throughout. He didn’t shut down or storm off. Miraculously.

We didn’t resolve everything, not yet. I won’t know the outcome for a while because some situations in life and work take a long while to evolve. They call for our (real) patience.

But his door is still open. And that is the biggest win for me. That he willingly stayed open. This is the pre-requisite to influence!

None of this means abandoning what matters to you. It means catching yourself before you walk in. Noticing what you're carrying. Prioritising what matters the most.

And choosing, in that moment, whether to lead with what you carry or with what matters the most in this situation.

Then you lead with that.

Our most walled-off colleagues (and our teenagers) can be our best teachers, if we’re willing to look at what we are bringing into the room.

If you’d enjoy exploring what this actually looks like in practice and how I did it, come join me this coming Tuesday 24 February, 12:30-13:00 GMT. I’m offering a Lunch & Learn session on exactly this:

How to prepare for difficult conversations.

Get the session link here

You’ll leave with practical tools to face the dreaded conversation so that you can be more effective and create the conditions that actually make connection and influence possible.

Note: Lunch & Learn sessions happens monthly and are included in your paid subscription, but this month I am opening up the doors for anyone to come and try out what we do. If that feels timely, I’d love to have you (follow the button above).

About me

I’m an executive coach and Nonviolent Communication trainer with a neuroscience background (MSc UCL) helping purpose-driven leaders transform how they show up under pressure for more impact. I bring together neuroscience research and emotional intelligence to develop what I call regenerative presence—the capacity to lead with both wisdom and heart during difficult moments.

Two weekends ago, I spent two days in nature with a small group doing yoga, journaling and mindful introspection.

On the morning of the second day, a friend shared something that echoed something I know to be true and truly stand by:

“What we create inside, we carry out into the world.”

She describe how she felt a deep sense of joy within herself after all the work we had done on the first day. She reflected on how her inner state had carried into the world already. She went to someone’s home for dinner that evening and felt the room shift as soon as she came in full of joy. A joyful evening for all.

In Spanish we have a verb for this, meaning 'to contagiate,' same root as contagion. It's meaning is close to getting affected, rubbed off by someone else's mood. The word ‘spreading’ doesn't quite capture the contagion effect of our inner states on others.

We know this is possible and yet, so often we forget how our presence shapes the environment.

Our inner state is contagious

Science is finally catching up to what we’ve always known.

We love being around people who “make us feel good” and avoid the Eeyores—those gloomy souls with a cloud permanently overhead.I think we all have at least one Eeyore in our lives

You may have felt it when you walk into a tense meeting already frazzled, watching that tension spread. (Mass hysteria is real!)

Or when you’ve shown up calm and present, how that steadiness creates space for others and seems to touch everyone invisibly, but tangibly.

We’re constantly broadcasting. And we “vibe” with each other.

I see this in every client I coach, every workshop I teach. And it was most vivid at that retreat. Each person naming their own version of the same recognition:

We influence each other profoundly.

What Actually Gets Created Between Us?

Throughout the weekend, people kept describing connection. Oneness. Feeling truly held, listened to, accepted.

We’re wonderfully unique, and yet so universally and humanly the same. When we show up authentically from a steady centre, others are positively affected.

In the closing circle share, I mentioned something that impacted me from my interview with Dr. Daniel Siegel (coming soon): neuroscientists are finally naming what we’ve always felt.

They are calling it neural synchronisation. It is at the source of great collaboration. It is at the root of collective intelligence and team flow. Our brains link up, especially when we hold a purpose together.

When we show up with genuine care for each other, our brain patterns actually sync (Jiang et al., 2015). This can happen within 30 seconds! When it does, teams access something no individual could—the capacity to integrate different perspectives and solve problems that need more than one mind.

Something gets created between us when we’re genuinely present together. The neuroscience can blow your mind, even though we all know it happens.

We are in an exciting new era where these concepts which would have been shunned earlier are now being proved and becoming mainstream. And they explain that gentle power of influence through presence that many of us have known or experienced.

Dr. Daniel Siegel has come up with a word, “mwe,” to describe this thing that happens when “we” and “me” connect together; the group mind that seems to be created.

I find it incredibly exciting, all this new vocabulary being invented to describe humans at their best, in community functioning as a unit.

Our brain seems to have developed to expect community and collaboration.

Mirror neuron networks help us understand each other’s intentions without words, they help us learn quickly, copy each other and accelerate learning from each other.

Our nervous systems sense and respond to each other’s states, no doubt about it. This is co-regulation—one regulated nervous system helping another find balance. If you want to learn more, read How to Lead Through Collective Dysregulation).

What my friend experienced spreading ripples of joy wasn’t magic and she didn’t make it up. Her joy rippled outwards, from inside her. Her work had brought her a joy that made the world a better place in a very tangible and most enjoyable way.

How We Create those Ripples of Positive Influence

During the retreat, there were lots of precious moments dedicated to connecting more deeply with myself. Journaling, yoga, meditation.

Those were the moments that allowed me to have more presence and connection with the external world. From a place of being anchored, I could steadily reach out and take in the world.

From that grounded, calm presence, I could feel the self in the world. I could bring presence to being in nature, and be fed by that expansive feeling we get when we connect with something larger than ourselves. I loved the meditative walks, feeling my own system settling into the rhythm of nature.

And then there were the moments connecting with others. Sharing. Working together. Each person in that circle was finding their own path inward. And all of us together were sharing a purpose—to work on ourselves, to bring ourselves to balance for a more peaceful world.

Not in an echo chamber way. In a resilience way.

When we connect with ourselves, then with each other, and also with something larger than ourselves like Nature, we're meeting many fundamental human needs. To be seen. To belong. To matter. To be inspired. To grow. To get clarity.

And little by little this connectedness with ourselves, others and the world creates the feeling my friend carried into that dinner. Centredness. Connection. Joy. Hope. Openness. Trust.

That is what we can carry into the world. The circles expand: deep connection with yourself, then with one other person, then with the room, then with the larger community.

Like when you touch water. A gentle touch creates ordered ripples. A jarring bang creates disruption, discord.

The most influential and beneficial leadership flows from the inside out.

And that is what we carry into the world.

Life is the Training Ground

In the retreat’s closing circle, someone else said something I’ve felt for years: we’re becoming warriors of light.

Warriors of peace.

When you become that peaceful leader speading clarity and hope, that person who commands a room with calm, not control, the ripples of influence magnify.

Of course, this doesn't happen by chance. It takes training. A lot of patience and deliberate practice.

Your presence changes the environment. And it can mean the difference between joy or tension, escalation or deescalation.

It takes intentionally aiming to connect through a day’s tricky moments.

Use that challenging meeting awaiting you this week. Can you do some work beforehand to get clear? Calm? Composed?

Can you connect deeply with yourself and that person before you even enter the room? Can you show up with trust that you will work things out together?

Can you walk in emanating waves of possibility? Soothing waves of peace and compassion?

That’s where the ripples begin. In you, before you even walk in.

The Blessing of Growing in Community

This weekend, I felt doubly blessed.

Blessed to be in a circle of people open to getting ever more familiar with themselves, with radical self-compassion.

And doubly blessed because, unlike many of them for whom spaces like these happen only once a year, I experience them regularly and feel the benefits often.

I’ve created a way for all of us to have this connectedness consistently. I host a community shaped like a town, the LEAP community. A dojo for peaceful warriors to grow together and keep renewing those vibes we send out.

The LEAP community is a place where you can be as you are. Where you can bring the issues you cannot bring elsewhere. Where we prepare ourselves to face the world, armed with tools. Where we hold each other and strengthen each other.

The ripples of change you want to create in the world start with you, and within me. And as I;ve said before, no one can do it alone.

And it’s so much more fun when we are together!

Special invitation: Come see what we’re creating together.

I’m holding two special live gatherings next week where you can experience what we do together at LEAP. I’ll give you a tour of the community town we’re building, while you learn and connect.

1. Lunch & Learn: How to Prepare for Difficult Conversations. Tuesday, February 24th, 12:30-13:00 GMT: Lunch & Learn (20 mins) + Community Tour after (10 min). Register here for Lunch & Learn.

2. Ask Nati Anything Q&A. Monday, March 2nd, 18:00 GMT-18:30: Ask Nati Anything Q&A (20 min) + Community Tour (10 min). Register here for Q&A.

Bring your toughest leadership question. Get live coaching. See how the community feels and works.

To get access to the LEAP Community Foundation Circle become a paid Substack subscriber for access (annual membership you get 2 months off).

Subscribe now

About me

I’m an executive coach, Nonviolent Communication trainer with a neuroscience background (MSc UCL) helping purpose-driven leaders transform how they show up under pressure. I bring together neuroscience research and emotional intelligence to develop what I call regenerative presence—the capacity to lead with both wisdom and heart during difficult moments.

References

Jiang, J., et al. (2015). Leader emergence through interpersonal neural synchronization. PNAS, 112(14), 4274-4279.

Shehata, M., et al. (2020). Team flow is a unique brain state associated with enhanced information integration and interbrain synchrony. eNeuro, 7(5).

Your mind is racing before you even open your eyes.

That meeting with the disgruntled employee... The email you have to write about the restructuring everybody is panicking about... The decisions you haven’t make yet but have to start implementing next week.

You feel agitated, tight, even before you get out of bed. Like your nervous system never actually rested.

You reach for your phone—not to scroll, but to find your way back.

You open the LEAP community app and click on a meditation from the Sanctuary.

Ten minutes. That’s all you have.

But ten minutes of hearing the soothing voice of someone who actually understands what it’s like to carry the weight you carry—that’s enough.
It doesn’t make anything disappear. It’s just enough to loosen the knot in your chest and let your breathing deepen.

And somehow, that’s effective. By the time you step into the shower, something has shifted. The problems that hijacked your sleep haven’t vanished, but they feel orderly, manageable.

You notice the warmth of the water. You let the pressure hit your shoulders, you feel your body relax another notch.

You’re present, noticing every sensation—instead of the usual three steps ahead in catastrophe-planning on days like today.

You let yourself enjoy that moment of peace fully. You’re showering anyways, you might as well enjoy it.

It feels like a short eternity.

A Place Where Small Wins Matter

Over the morning coffee, you do something you wouldn’t have done six months ago.

You share it.

You go to the Community Lounge space and ping aquick post, letting yourself feel the change:

You don’t have time to write a long celebration, but this is enough. You know they’ll get you. There’s no win too small here. No moment too ordinary to celebrate. This circle has become a place you trust. A place you feel a part of.

As you head to work you remember that you can use this time not to worry, but to get extra calm. You put on the walking meditation playing in your earbuds. It keeps the worry at bay. You don’t usually do this, but today, you want to start on a good foot.

As you arrive, a colleague stops you:

“What happened to you today? You’re a ray of sunshine.”

You smile. Because you know what happened. You found your footing before the day could knock you off balance. You’re surprised people can tell just from looking at you.

You sigh, but you’re ready. You bravely start the workday.

When Reality Hits

By mid-morning, the weight returns. That dreaded meeting time comes, you enter with a lot of trepidation, worried about what’s going on that you don’t know about.

The meeting is indeed stressful. The person shows up quite upset, angry, self-righteous. You try to get them to stop hyper-reacting and being so dramatic. Did you actually say those words? You can’t remember the exact words you used—you switched off the more upset they got. You were there, and not there at the same time.

If you are honest, you didn’t manage to reassure them. You can’t fully appease anyone until there is formal notification of the restructuring, and in the meantime there’s so much talk and guesswork in the air, and it all seems to funnel back to you.

You are not proud of how you responded, you also got upset with their impatience and holier-than-though attitude.

It’s time to face the second dreaded task: the restructuring email looming over your shoulders. You need to explain enough of the top management restructuring process without hinting at layoffs, role changes, or salary cuts. What do you say when you cannot be explicit yet?

You know you need to write this email in a way that prevents a stampede. Your breathing shortens, your throat is scratchy, your stomach a rock.

You can barely think about lunch. In fact, what if you skip lunch altogether today and get to the email?

But your calendar pings: Nati’s Q&A session in 5 minutes.

You’re too buried. It’s not a good day. But wait..

What if today was exactly the day not to skip lunch?

You pause. You decide to go to lunch nevertheless.

On your way to lunch, you open the LEAP community app, put on your headphones, keep your video off, and just... listen. Just being part of this small group soothes something in you. There’s familiar people and new people.

Ten minutes into the call, you remember: this is the place where you can bring problems. You don’t have to have all the answers!

When Nati asks, “Anyone else have something they want to ask or need help with?” you surprise yourself.

You turn on your video.

How do I reassure people when I can’t yet tell them what’s actually changing?
How do I ask for trust while withholding the very information that would earn it?

I don’t even agree with the decisions I’m being made that I will be forced to implement. How do I show up honestly while presenting a united front, when my hands are tied?

The words tumble out.

But instead of judgment, you find understanding.

Other leaders who’ve been exactly where you are. Nati offers a way of seeing this that honours both your integrity and your responsibility. She asks a question that reframes everything. You run a few tricky sentences by the group and get some feedback for how to say things to build trust while being as authentic as you are able to be in the situation.

You’re not alone in this impossible situation. It feels that you hold these things together.

When you return to your desk, you sit and tackle that email. Now you have language for it. Instead of worrying, you just get to it, and say it as it is, with care and factually.

You feel your integrity intact. You are more clear, and more connected to the purpose of your role. You have a way forward that doesn’t require you to lose yourself—which is what was nagging you inside.

End of the workday and you’re drained.

The email was sent. The tough conversation happened. You held it together, but barely.

Before leaving work, you open the app again and go to the Listening Bench. You could go to the SOS! space to ask for help and ideas, but you actually don’t want anyone’s input.

You decide you just want to make sense of what happened today and why it was hard. Someone to listen.

You type quickly, before you can talk yourself out of it:

“Need help processing today. Just need to be heard. Told a report to stop being so dramatic. Had to deliver news I didn’t agree with. Held the line but feel like I lost a piece of myself today. Anyone available to just listen?”

An hour later, you get a notification: Scott replied, he is free after dinner. You send an emoji confirmation.

The listening moment comes. You wanted to wrap it at 15 mins, but Scott was in no rush, and you felt yourself feeling better as you put things in perspective. Scott didn’t try to fix anything. That’s the rule in the listening bench, no advice, no criticism, no fixing. Just listening.

Scott’s silence, his acknowledging noises and the few words he mirrored back to you were just what you needed. They let you see yourself in a new light.

By the end of it, life feels colourful again. You are not focused on the failings, but can now see your achievements today. The heaviness hasn’t disappeared fully, but it does feel a lot lighter.

Then it hits you.

This restructuring is going to be ongoing for months.

It will be like a marathon and you better prepare.

But you don’t need to do it alone. You can keep leaning on the community for support. You have people to bounce ideas off of, get feedback on how you might phrase sensitive messages, or just to be there.

These are people who get it. People committed to lead from a place of authenticity and empathy.

People with your values. People far enough away to have perspective, respectful enough not to give unwanted advice. People who trust you and get that most often just need a sounding board. Sometimes an accountability partner.

But always, someone who sees you and gets you.

The hard things are more easily carried together.

Before Sleep

Ten minutes before bed, you browse the Library. You want to end the day on a hopeful note. There’s articles by Nati, resources on conflict, on being more empathetic, on staying grounded under pressure.

You pick an article on Empathetic Leadership. A few paragraphs in, a quote stops you cold. You read it twice. Three times.

It strikes a chord for how you want to navigate these months ahead.

That’s just the motivation you needed tonight.

You fall asleep with hope and a plan: to become more empathetic.

At 3a.m., you wake up. Mind spinning again. The minutes pass, and you get more and more anxious worrying about yet another bad night sleep. Is this another night of insomnia?

Then you remember—you could do the night meditation now.

You put it on. It’s soothing. It’s about gratitude, and acceptance.

You notice your body softening. You start relaxing. Your mind slowing down. Your mood lifting. You recognise the good stuff happening in your body. You remember the little and the big wins today. You did do so many things you are happy with.

The meditation is ending. You are not yet asleep. The music still soothing you.

So, instead of worrying about your sleep, you play it back.

This time you notice yourself drifting quickly... relaxing, and... drifting off.

The alarm rings.

You feel so different from yesterday morning—less anxious, a bit hopeful. You know it’s not coincidence.

You make a resolve: today, I’ll do the evening meditation, without fail.

How do I want to start this day?, you wonder.

This is LEAP!

LEAP is more than a leadership course you complete. Or a framework you learn.

LEAP is a living community—a basecamp you return to throughout your day, your week, your month.

It’s your leadership journey, always improving.

Inside LEAP you find:

The Community Lounge for everyday chats with other purpose-driven leaders. You can share wins, struggles, and the small moments that matter. By knowing what others go through, you discover you’re not the only one feeling the way you do.

The SOS, Help! space where you ask for exactly what you need—strategy, perspective, or just someone to witness what you’re going through.

And the Success Stories space is where we learn from what works, and feel good about your and others’ progress.

You visit the Listening Bench when what you need most is to be heard without advice or fixing.

The 20 mins Live Monthly Q&A monthly sessions with Nati is where you bring your real leadership challenges and we work through them together, live. We unlock your issue to get clear on what’s happening and how to go about it.

The 20 mins Lunch & Learn monthly sessions is where Nati shares a bite-size piece of leadership learning. Easy to consume, impactful when you apply it.

In the Library you find the Regenerative Presence self-paced course, articles, meditations and other resources you can access anytime—on your commute, during a break, when you can’t sleep.

In the Sanctuary you will find meditation series for specific moments in your life: When the world feels overwhelming (£29), When you need grounding, When you can’t sleep.

You can access all of this from your phone or your laptop. Download the app and carry this community with you—whether you’re walking to a difficult meeting, traveling for work, or lying awake at 3am needing to remember you’re not alone.

The Place Where We Transform Together

Everything changes when you have somewhere to land.
Especially when that place is filled with people who understand you, respect you, and want to grow alongside you.

Things feel lighter when you know that on your hardest days, there’s a place where your struggle makes sense. Where you can connect with other leaders navigating the same complexity, asking the same hard questions, trying to do this work with integrity and heart.

LEAP is a place to learn together and support one another — a place to practice a different way of being before we have to step back into the world.
It’s where you transform how you show up under pressure, by practicing alongside people who are trying to do the same thing you are: lead with wisdom and humanity in a world that doesn’t always make that easy.

Because we can’t do meaningful change alone.
And especially on hard days — and in hard times — we need each other.

I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of belonging, reflection, and shared practice.

For £10 a month, you’re coming home to yourself, and finding your people while you’re at it.

Join LEAP monthly subscription here for £10 a month.

Join LEAP yearly subscription here for £100 a year.

About me

I’m Nati Beltran—an executive coach, Nonviolent Communication trainer with a neuroscience background helping purpose-driven leaders transform how they show up under pressure. My work sits where science meets soul in leadership. She is a trustee at Irish conservation NGO Hometree.

For coaching inquiries: nati@natibeltran.com | natibeltran.com

Snow leopards had killed calves from his family’s yak herd. It happened on his watch and he felt responsible. So one day, he tracked a leopard to what looked like its den and killed it.

For years, this was the norm. When these rare cats killed livestock—sometimes as many as 77 animals in a single night—farmers retaliated. The conflict felt absolute, clear. Your family or the leopard. Survival trumped conservation.

Across the Kangchenjunga region, on the border between Nepal and northern India, an estimated 221 to 450 snow leopards were killed annually by herding communities.

Then in 2005, something changed.

It was not a shift that came through lectures about endangered species or environmental duty.

WWF Nepal, led by Ghana Gurung—himself a former herder who’d grown up killing snow leopards—tried something different. Together with the local communities they asked a different question than the usual why should this species be saved? Instead, they considered the situation from a different vantage point:

The inquiry yielded community-based solutions. Working with Himali and other local herders, they co-created Snow Leopard Conservation Committees run by the herders themselves, not outsiders. The University of Zurich donated 1.2 million rupees ($12,000) to seed a livestock insurance fund. Herders contributed a small annual fee ($1.50 per yak), enough to show commitment without causing hardship, to keep the insurance system going.

When leopards attacked, families got compensated quickly, roughly $25 per yak. The community verified the kills themselves. It was a nimble system based on trust. No bureaucracy, no waiting. It provided fast relief when crisis struck and people lost just about everything.

They built 8-foot stone "proof corrals" to protect young yaks from leopard attacks. They trained the herders themselves as "citizen scientists" to monitor snow leopard populations using camera traps and tracking signs. They set up guarding systems where community members took turns watching their herds while grazing, so yaks wouldn't wander off and become prey.

Most crucially, they helped farmers reconnect with something their Buddhist culture had always taught but somehow had been lost amidst the pull to survive: snow leopards were manifestations of mountain deities. The cats weren’t separate from the herders’ world. They had historically been revered as messengers of the natural order, part of the same sacred system.

They reframed the relationship to what was previously seen as the enemy.

Instead of “leopards versus livelihoods,” it became “leopards are sacred, we protect leopards, leopards attract eco-tourism, tourism supports our economy, insurance protects us when attacks happen, and we’re honouring our spiritual tradition.”

Noone forced them to shift their way of thinking. The interests were aligned all along. But they just couldn’t see this through the lens of their survival threat response.

Himali Chungda Sherpa, that same man who once chased down and killed a snow leopard, became chairman of the conservation committee for eight years.

Today, snow leopards have returned to Kangchenjunga. Locals keep spotting them prowling the area. And retaliatory killings have essentially stopped.

The story isn’t complete. Retaliatory killings still happen occasionally when someone loses their entire livelihood to a leopard attack. The herders remain poor, and yaks are everything to them. As one committee chairman said:

“putting a complete stop to human-wildlife conflict is a big challenge.”

But collaboration is never a destination. It’s an ongoing practice of reframing, discovering new alignment, adjusting and committing.

The Story We Tell Ourselves About Conflict

Most people enter conflicts assuming zero-sum opposition. Us versus them. Someone wants what we don’t want. Their success means our failure. We want opposite, non-overlapping things. We can’t both possibly get what we want.

These presuppositions are all based on a divisive mindset that pits us against each other. And it makes collaboration and resolution feel impossible before we’ve even tried.

Consider what happened with the herders.

When they held the zero-sum story, “leopards versus our livelihoods,“ they stayed locked in threat. This led to narrow solutions: kill or be killed. Cultural traditions of reverence were abandoned. The leopards were headed toward extinction. In this divisive mindset, the herders remained stuck in anger and resentment, losing both their animals and their spiritual connection to the mountains. Everybody lost something very precious, not to forget what would have happened psychologically to a culture who killed their revered animal.

But then they shifted to a collaborative story: “leopards are sacred, we protect leopards, leopards attract eco-tourism, tourism supports our economy, insurance protects us when attacks happen, and we’re honouring our spiritual tradition.“ And something softened and opened up.

They discovered their own forgotten values. They found solutions that worked better for them as well as for the leopards. They created a new way of life that embraced more of what actually mattered to them: their culture, their livelihood, protection of their ecosystem, their identity as mountain people.

Same herders, same leopards in the same mountains and situations.

But a very different reality was being created. And it all started with their mindset and how they framed the conflict.

When we’re hurting or facing problems, our focus goes to actions and strategies: what should we DO about this?

We skip becoming aware of the actual reason of those impulses to act. Where it all starts is in our thinking, in the lens we have on and look through, how we frame the situation.

But we can learn to see conflict as an ally. We project our emotions on the process itself and this works against us. When we see conflict as a process of discovery, transformation, and connection, we are creating that opening for win-win solutions.

When we reframe how we see a situation we are manufacturing a different brain state, one where higher thinking and emotional regulation remain intact. Let’s see how this happens.

What Your Brain Does in Conflict

When we’re fearful, our brain function changes, and protective stress responses get activated. The result is that the nervous system defaults to survival mode. This is useful, and if you are a herder confronted face to face with a charging snow leopard, in that instant, it would be adaptive to experience the fight-flight response. The trouble is that we keep ourselves in that stress response longer than needed. And our brains take a toll.

Whether the threat is perceived or real, our brains respond equally, by launching the stress response. Stress hormones flood our system. Our thinking becomes narrower, more focused. We become more self-centred, more rigid. We lose access to nuance, to possibility, to creativity, to being able to hold and navigate complexity. We default to the oldest, most simplistic stories—us versus them, good versus bad.

The trigger need not be large; it can be a small thing. Like that feeling you get when someone pushes back on your idea in a meeting. Your chest tightens, your jaw clenches, jitteriness, or sweating, impulsivity…

Why?

Because you perceived a threat. You thought there was some kind of danger.

Most people frame conflict as something dangerous, which immediately activates the brain’s threat system.

The moment we perceive danger, the amygdala fires, and a cascade of neural events ensues. Your prefrontal cortex (PFC) gets inhibited, and with it your executive functions. In practice, this means that 3 functions are compromised: your working memory takes a dip, your self-control drastically drops, and your cognitive flexibility suffers. Your higher thinking, creative problem-solving, strategic planning, empathy, creativity and flexibility are all thwarted. And your survival systems kick in, triggering fight (the herders), flight, freeze, or fawn automatic reactions, and resulting in a whole brain-body state.

This survival-type brain state makes resolution nearly impossible. You become rigid, defensive, reactive, self-interested, narrow-focused. Innovation vanishes. The very skills you need—listening, curiosity, creative problem-solving—go offline precisely when you need them most.

By the way, all of this is biology, not a character flaw! It happens to all of us.

Survival always takes precedence for your brain. After all, its main job is to compute and make sense of the world to keep you alive!

But was it really a survival-type situation? Or was it a nuanced, complex situation that would be better solved with analysis and flexible thinking?

The trouble is this:

That’s why reframing conflict and how we see the people “on the other side” is so crucial.

It literally changes your brain state. So, watch your thinking—you could be keeping yourself in that reactive state much longer than behooves you.

Luckily this is not the end of the story. We are not trapped by our biology. Our brain has other mechanisms to bring us back to balance and regulation.

The first is self-awareness. When you notice you’re activated, when you catch the film you’re living in your head, playing the story you are. making what’s happening mean and be, you create a tiny space. If you stay in that moment of inner observation, simply watching, that’s enough to start the self-regulation cascade that brings you back to normalcy.

Anytime you can be more present with upset and discomfort, your executive functioning capacities come back online. You can think strategically again. You can hold paradox, see complexity. You see patterns you couldn’t see before. You can see other people’s perspectives.

You might even realise that the conflict wasn’t actually about opposition. Like the herders, it was caused by not yet seeing how your interests aligned. It is in the nature of leopards to kill yaks. How could the herders protect themselves and their livelihoods while also respecting the king of their mountains?

Last week I wrote How to Lead Through Collective Dysregulation (thanks so much for your supportive comments). So many of us are constantly activated right now. Our nervous systems are screaming “threat”. And many of us have lost our zen zones (including me). We live in perpetual dysregulation, our nervous systems activated chronically.

It becomes all the more important to watch how our framing is contributing to additional stress and anxiety that we could actually part with if we chose a different framing. Then we might actually be more effective in solving our problems and taking care of ourselves and each other.

I wrote about the noxious effects of this chronically activated stress response on body and brain in Is Crisis Leadership Quietly Destroying your Body and Brain? Here I just want you to realise the HUGE effects that your thinking and framing situations have for your nervous system state and your capacity to find solutions and new avenues that work for best for you (including caring for others).

The Discovery Question

The Nepali farmers didn’t start by trying to love snow leopards. They had good reason to be angry and want to retaliate. The conservationists did not attempt to get them to stop killing. They didn’t judge them.

They simply invited curiosity.

That open-ended question that painted a conciliatory future, less biased by assumptions, opened them to discovering new truths and to being moved by what they found.

They stopped asking: how do we get rid of this threat?

They stopped justifying their behaviour.

They instead became curious about what is actually happening?

That question opened space for discovery, for seeing the entirely of ecosystem they were in, for finding what they shared underneath what looked like the enemy. [I wrote about the effects of holding this view in Are You Burdened by an Enemy Image?]

I’m watching leaders make this same shift in other spaces.

A nonprofit director facing donor pressure to scale faster than felt sustainable, instead of framing it as “they don’t understand our work,” she got curious. What did the donors actually care about?

It turned out they were terrified their funding wouldn’t make enough of a difference before climate tipping points hit. So they wanted results faster. The conflict dissolved once they discovered the shared urgency, which led them to collaboratively redesign the scaling plan.

A tech team lead whose engineer kept pushing back on every decision caught himself thinking “he’s undermining my authority,” she asked what he was protecting. It was quality standards that had been eroding in previous projects. His colleague’s resistance was trying to safeguard something they both cared about.

When you can get underneath the positions people are defending, you almost always find shared values, shared fears, shared hopes. And the initial step to be able to do this is your own calm and openness to seeing people and the conflict differently.

From Threat to Discovery

Here’s what happened in those farmers’ brains when they reframed the conflict.

When they were in threat mode driven by thinking like ”leopards are robbing us, they are killing our livelihood,” their thinking narrowed to pure survival. Kill or be killed. Zero-sum game.

But when they shifted the question and engaged curiosity and a different way to see the conflict, to “what would we need to live together? ”their brain state changed. This change did not happen through willpower or force. It was the result of a simple reframe in how they saw the conflict and of stopping focusing on what was opposing to what was shared.

Suddenly they connected with themselves as part of the ecosystem. They could think strategically again. They could hold complexity and see that protecting leopards could mean insurance payouts, eco-tourism revenue, honouring their spiritual traditions, as well as protecting their unique ecosystems.

They had more choices. They were not choosing between their needs and the leopards’ survival anymore. They were discovering aligned interests they couldn’t see before, and this led to novel solutions that were beneficial for both sides.

This is what happens when one person stays regulated enough to help others shift out of threat. That person becomes a true leader with positive influence in that moment. They listen and understand, without judging, accepting, and this helps people feel safe enough to start thinking clearly and start discovering common ground.

Don’t Shy Away from Conflict, Embrace it

You’re probably facing conflicts right now that feel impossible, in your team, your organisation, sector, or maybe in your family or community.

What if they were not actually impossible?

What if they were invitations to discover what you haven’t seen yet?

I’m not suggesting that conflict is ever easy. Especially not when you’re already stretched thin, dysregulated and carrying too much.

What I am suggesting is that new collaborative solutions that work for everyone are possible. And the way to find them is through the conflict. Through finding common ground, and new solutions we didn’t see before when we fought to defend our initial assumptions.

The skills to get through a conflict that seems intractable are trainable. It requires body awareness, self-regulation, co-regulation, reframing conflict as information, being open and calm.

Transforming conflict is about building the capacity to stay present when everything in you wants to shut down or fight back. From there, you can help others find their ground it feels to them like it is shaking. You can learn to mine conflict for the gold it’s trying to show you.

The challenges we’re facing at the moment are not going to be solved by one brilliant leader with the right strategy. In fact, we see single-handed leaders destroy decades of collective agreements in an instant.

The wicked problems we face are going to be solved by people who can work together towards a shared purpose, even when it’s hard or when it feels impossible. We need people who can find alignment even in apparent opposition. We need people who can build community around shared purpose and values by integrating every voice, instead of expecting or insisting everyone agree.

The snow leopards are still there in the mountains, growing in numbers. The farmers are still there too, in a strong community bonded by a shared purpose and systems that protect them. They’re protecting something together and finding a new balance in their ecosystem with the godlike creatures around them.

I truly believe in the power of community to support us in this crazy world. We need to come together to find ways through the conflicts and apparently intractable problems we face.

I have created a community for Leadership who want to Lead with Empathy, Authenticity and Presence, the LEAP community. I am opening doors on January 31st. It’s the home where purpose-driven leaders find like-minded people and develop their capacity to regulate themselves, turn conflict into connection and keep growing their capacity. Become a Substack paid subscriber for access.

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If you want to find out more about the neuroscience behind collaborative leadership and the BRAINS-smart framework to develop leadership, read my article Collaborative Leadership Requires Biology, Not just Strategy.

About me

I’m Nati, an executive coach and Nonviolent Communication trainer with a background in neuroscience, helping purpose-driven leaders transform how they show up under pressure. My work sits where science meets soul in leadership.

For coaching inquiries: nati@natibeltran.com | natibeltran.com

Sources

WWF Nepal. “Snow Leopard Conservation in Kangchenjunga.”

WWF. (2012). “Himali’s tale: From snow leopard killer to conservationist.”

Snow Leopard Conservancy. (2025). “Community Empowerment in Nepal.”