← Back to essays

Regulate before you resolve.

There is a principle I have come to treat as non-negotiable, in coaching and in leadership. Regulate before you resolve.

There is a principle I have come to treat as non-negotiable, in coaching and in leadership.

Regulate before you resolve.

Most leaders try to do the opposite. They push for clarity when the room, or their own nervous system, is still activated. They run the meeting to a conclusion because the discomfort of an open question is unbearable. They make the call on Sunday night because the anxiety has to go somewhere. The decision that emerges from activation is almost never the decision you would make from a settled system. And you cannot tell the difference from inside the activation.

This is not a soft idea. It is a physiological one. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that does nuanced thinking, is suppressed when the amygdala is alert. Under threat, the mind narrows. It reaches for the fastest available answer, not the best one. It returns to familiar frames. It forecloses on possibility. You can still produce sophisticated reasoning from this state. You are simply reasoning inside a much smaller field.

Regulation is not a warm-up. It is a prerequisite.

Before you try to resolve the question, settle the system that is asking it. A longer exhale. A slower walk. A night of actual sleep. Not as wellness practices. As the conditions under which you can actually think.

Most of the bad decisions I have seen people regret, my own included, were not failures of intelligence. They were decisions made at the wrong physiological speed.

The real question is not, "Can I resolve this today." It is, "Am I regulated enough that what I decide will still hold on Tuesday morning?"

hashtag#StayWithTheQuestion hashtag#Leadership hashtag#DecisionMaking hashtag#Coaching

Book a session — $540