How to Keep Your Cool When Emotions Are Running High: The Leader's Guide to Emotional Mastery

Picture this: You're in a crucial meeting when a colleague challenges your proposal. Instead of responding thoughtfully, you feel heat rising in your chest and hear yourself getting defensive. Your voice gets sharper, your arguments become more rigid, and you watch your credibility diminish in real time. Sound familiar?

Or maybe you've sent that email in frustration, snapped at a team member, or made a decision you later regretted—all because your inner 5-year-old grabbed the wheel of your leadership.

Here's the reality: We've all been there. What happened in those moments is that your limbic system—your inner 5-year-old—was in the driver's seat of your decision-making. Psychologist Daniel Goleman called this overreaction to stressors "amygdala hijack." I call it letting a 5-year-old drive your leadership and hoping you'll reach your destination with your credibility intact.

Research from the Center for Creative Leadership reveals that 75% of executive derailments stem from poor emotional regulation. The price tag? Lost productivity, damaged relationships, diminished team trust and derailed careers.

The Science Behind Reactive Leadership

Think of your brain as having two key players: the Reactor (amygdala) and the Strategist (prefrontal cortex). According to the triune brain model, we have three regions responsible for different functions:

• Brain stem: Our primal brain responsible for instinctive responses
• Limbic system: Our emotional brain, including the amygdala—your internal alarm system
• Neocortex: Our thinking brain, where executive functioning, logic, and strategic thinking occur

Under normal circumstances, you process information through your prefrontal cortex—your Strategist—where higher-level functions like problem-solving, decision-making, and planning occur. This is where mature leadership lives.

Your amygdala—the Reactor—constantly scans for signs of danger. When it perceives a threat, it wants to immediately activate fight-or-flight mode. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex processes the same information to determine if danger is actually present and what the most strategic response should be.

When the perceived threat is mild, the Strategist can override the Reactor, and you respond rationally. However, when the perceived threat feels intense, the Reactor automatically triggers the fight-or-flight response. You get flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

Here's the leadership challenge: Modern workplace "threats" aren't physical dangers—they're psychological stressors like harsh feedback, public challenges to your ideas, budget cuts, or missed deadlines. Yet your Reactor responds to these daily leadership challenges as if they're life-threatening emergencies.

The Hidden Pattern: Your Emotional Triggers

Here's what most leaders don't realize: The strengths that have helped you succeed are also your greatest emotional triggers when you feel someone is not honoring what makes you special.

Your brain has learned to value certain needs based on your life experiences and past successes. When these core needs feel threatened, your Reactor immediately sounds the alarm—even when there's no real danger to your career or credibility.

Common Leadership Triggers

Which of these needs, when unmet, tend to activate your inner 5-year-old?

• Acceptance • Respect • Be liked
• Be understood • Be needed • Be valued
• Be in control • Be right • Be treated fairly
• Attention • Comfort • Freedom
• Peacefulness • Balance • Consistency
• Order • Variety • Love
• Safety • Predictability • Included
• Fun • New challenges • Autonomy

Take a moment to identify your top three triggers. Be honest—which needs, when threatened, consistently knock your Strategist offline?

Here's the leadership paradox: The more attached you become to these needs, the more your brain scans for circumstances that threaten them. Your greatest strengths become your emotional Achilles' heel.

For example, if your success has depended on maintaining control, establishing safety, and having your intelligence appreciated, your brain becomes hypervigilant about situations that might threaten these needs. A colleague questioning your strategy isn't just feedback—it becomes a perceived attack on your competence and control.

The key questions: Is someone actually taking something away from you, or are you taking the situation too personally? Can you ask for what you need? If it doesn't truly matter, can you let this go?

The Cost of the 5-Year-Old at the Wheel

When your inner 5-year-old takes control, the Reactor immediately shuts down neural pathways to your Strategist. Your ability to think rationally and access your leadership wisdom gets compromised. Executive brain functions go offline, and all energy gets directed toward handling the perceived threat—even when there's no real danger to your career or credibility.

With your Strategist offline, you can't think clearly, make rational decisions or control your responses.

Now, your emotional brain - the 5-year old is at the wheel of you car and is making decisions for you. The results? Reactive leadership that damages relationships, undermines trust and limits your influence.

The STOP Method: Your Leadership Reset

The good news is that research shows you can train your brain to be less reactive during potentially triggering events. When you practice mindfulness, you can learn to down-regulate your Reactor and bring your Strategist back online faster.

When you notice the fight-or-flight response has been activated, your goal is to calm down your inner 5-year-old and take control of the steering wheel.

Remember: Being reactive isn't a character flaw—it's an automatic response. You don't consciously decide to be reactive and damage relationships. It's your natural self-defense mechanism, your automatic unconscious response.

However, it doesn't have to stay that way.

When you're mindful and self-aware, you create a gap between the triggering event and your response. Instead of letting your inner 5-year-old make decisions, you can pause, reflect and consciously choose how to proceed. This mindful approach allows your response to be more appropriate for the situation and aligned with the outcomes you want to achieve.

Before you let your 5-year-old drive and see what happens, implement the STOP exercise below anytime you start feeling irritated, frustrated or pissed of. This will help bring your Strategist back online so you can choose how to respond, instead of being swept away by emotions.

STOP Mindfulness Exercise

Follow these steps: 

Step 1. Slow you breathing - Find Your Anchor

Take a few deep diaphragmatic breaths, and mindfully observe the breath flowing in and flowing out. Inhale on a count of 3, and exhale on a count of 6. This will help to anchor you in the present.  

Why this matters: Just as a ship needs an anchor in rough waters, your breath serves as your leadership anchor during turbulent moments. This physiological shift activates your parasympathetic nervous system, moving you out of fight-or-flight mode.

Step 2. Take Note - Become an Observer

Take note of your experience in this moment without judgement:

• What thoughts are running through your mind?
• What emotions are you experiencing?
• What physical sensations do you notice?
• What actions are you taking or wanting to take?

Think of yourself as a curious scientist observing your internal landscape. You're not trying to change anything yet—just becoming aware of the mental and emotional "weather patterns" within you.

Step 3. Open Up - Create Space, Don't Fight

Instead of resisting difficult emotions or getting caught up in racing thoughts, practice making room for them. Imagine your mind as a spacious room rather than a cramped closet.

For emotions: Breathe into uncomfortable feelings. Let them be present without trying to fix or escape them.

For thoughts: Step back and watch your thoughts like clouds passing through the sky. You don't need to grab onto them or push them away—simply observe them moving through your awareness.

The leadership insight: What you resist persists. By creating space around challenging experiences, you prevent them from hijacking your decision-making.

Step 4. Pursue what's important (needs and values)

Once you’ve done the above three steps, you will be in a mental state of mindfulness. The next step is to respond to a situation consciously by connecting with your needs first and values second

To connect with your needs, ask yourself:

• "What need feels threatened right now?"
• "Is someone actually denying this need, or am I interpreting the situation through my trigger lens?"
• "What do I need to do to take care of myself in this moment as I'm dealing with this situation?" 

To connect with your values, ask yourself:

• "What kind of leader do I want to be in this moment?
• How do I want to show up so I can feel proud of my response years from now?" 
• "How can I address this need directly rather than reactively?"
• "What would my best leadership self do in this moment?" 

This step releases oxytocin—your bonding and trust hormone—while reengaging your prefrontal cortex for clearer thinking.

From Reaction to Response: The Choice That Defines Leaders

Emotional mastery isn't about eliminating triggers—it's about recognizing them quickly and choosing your response consciously. 

Implementation Strategy: Practice STOP during low-stakes moments—traffic delays, minor frustrations, email overload—so it's available when high-stakes leadership situations arise. Even 30 seconds of this practice can transform your leadership presence and decision-making quality.

Success Metrics: You'll know STOP is working when you notice a pause between trigger and response—even a 3-second gap represents neural rewiring in action. Look for:

• Decreased defensive reactions
• More thoughtful responses to challenges
• Improved team dynamics
• Greater sense of leadership control

After-Action Review: After using STOP, conduct a brief review: What worked? What would you do differently? This reflection strengthens your leadership muscle memory.

Remember: This isn't about eliminating stress or difficult emotions—it's about developing the leadership capacity to work skillfully with whatever arises. Mature leaders keep their hands on the steering wheel, especially when their inner 5-year-old wants to take control.

Once you understand and become self-aware about your biological reactions in high-stress leadership situations, you have the power to make a conscious choice. You can choose to follow the urges of your inner 5-year-old—regret your actions—become overwhelmed by emotion—and repeat the cycle. Or, you can choose to take personal responsibility for how you respond to triggers and choose behaviors aligned with who you want to be at your leadership best.

Remember: Every moment of reactivity is data, not failure. Use these moments to strengthen your self-awareness and build your emotional intelligence muscle.

The choice you make between automatically reacting versus consciously responding is often the difference between the amount of success and satisfaction you'll experience in your leadership role and professional relationships.

Your Next Step

This week, identify your top three  triggers. Practice STOP with one of them. Notice the difference in outcomes when you respond rather than react. Your team, your credibility and your career will thank you for keeping your hands on the wheel.