701: How to Handle High-Pressure Situations, with Dan Dworkis

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dan Dworkis: The Emergency Mind
Dan Dworkis is Chief Medical Officer at The Mission Critical Team Institute. He's an emergency physician who helps individuals and teams apply knowledge under extreme pressure and perform at their best when it matters the most. He is the author of The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure*.

Every leader, at least occasionally, faces emergencies. In an emergency, the only way out is through. In this conversation, Dan and I explore the mindsets and tactics that will help us handle the most difficult situations.
Key Points

Emergencies are not just worse bad days. They are liminal — the only way out is through.
Apply graduated pressure. Never allow suffering to be wasted. By going a bit slower, you notice where and why failures happen.
Label an emergency with language that both recognizes the urgency of the situation and your faith in the team to resolve it.
The room is always smarter than any one person in it. Tell people what problem they are working and your confidence level in it.
Staying cool under pressure is not a fixed personality trait. You can get better by noticing and experimenting with what works for you (and doesn’t) to handle high-pressure situations.
Experience makes working under pressure easier, but you still need to practice for it. Notice what’s effective (and not) in past and new situations before you experiment.
Use situations in everyday life (a hard workout, an angry customer, getting cut off in traffic) to train yourself for responding in the toughest situations.

Resources Mentioned

The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure* by Dan Dworkis

Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes

How to Become the Person You Want to Be, with James Clear (episode 376)
How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404)
How to Prevent a Team From Repeating Mistakes, with Robert “Cujo” Teschner (episode 660)

Discover More
Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Every leader at least occasionally faces emergencies.
0:04.4	In an emergency, the only way out is through.
0:08.2	In this episode, the mindset and tactics that will help us handle the most difficult situations.
0:16.1	This is coaching for leaders episode 701.
0:20.8	Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.
0:29.0	Greetings to you from Orange County, California.
0:32.0	This is coaching for leaders and I'm your host
0:34.4	Dave Stahofiac. Leaders aren't born, they're made, and this weekly show helps
0:41.0	you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations.
0:45.9	Part of leadership for all of us is working under pressure, applying our knowledge under pressure.
0:52.4	Oftentimes we know what we need to do, we know the steps,
0:56.0	but when we're in a heated situation, when the stakes are high,
1:00.4	it's a lot harder for us to be able to do the things that we want to do that are going to help out the others around us and support our organizations.
1:08.0	Today, so glad to have an expert with us who has helped so many to do this better to really perform well in tough situations.
1:17.0	I'm so pleased to welcome Dan D'Workus.
1:19.0	He is chief medical officer at the Mission Critical Team Institute.
1:23.0	He's an emergency physician who helps individuals and teams apply knowledge under extreme pressure
1:29.0	and perform at their best when it matters most.
1:32.0	He is the author of the emergency mind, wiring your
1:35.4	brain for performance under pressure. Dan, a pleasure to have you on.
1:39.6	Dave, thank you so much for having me. Honor to be here.
1:42.6	This is a fascinating book.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dave Stachowiak, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dave Stachowiak and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.