At the head of the table, she didn’t even need to hear the whole question: ‘So… what do we do?’ Her brain was already three steps ahead.
She snapped into gear and started assigning next steps. Tight, clear, fast, efficient. She calls it her “robot mode.” The room relaxed as people started typing again, but her shoulders still felt like they were up around her ears.
She wished she could escape for five minutes and actually feel as calm as she sounded. But she never felt like she had that option. In her mind, if she didn’t keep a tight grip, the whole thing would unravel. And she could never let that happen.
Today, you’ll get one simple habit you can use in those “all eyes on you” moments, so your nervous system isn’t paying quite as high a price for how much you’re holding.
When your “robot mode” runs the show
When this client logged on for our session the next day, she didn’t even say hello. She just said, “Man, I feel more like a robot in those rooms than an actual person. On paper this job is great, but my health is telling a different story.”
We’d just been through her 360. A lot of the comments were glowing, like she “keeps us on track,” “always on it”. And then there were a few like, “I don’t always speak up because she’s already moved on,” and “sometimes it feels like decisions are made before the conversation even starts.” Hearing those together said it all: Helpful, steady, and yet maybe sometimes a little too fast, a little too in control.
She laughed and said, “I mean, isn’t that what they count on me for?” And yes, in operations, a lot of people do count on you to hold things together. But she was starting to see that when everything is locked down that tightly, there’s no room for anything new to happen.
And she could feel what it was costing her. By late afternoon it always felt like her shoulders had moved in permanently up to her ears, and by the end of most days she was simply too exhausted to do anything but go home and crash.
The yellow-light experiment in your next ops meeting
She decided to try one tiny experiment: Next time she sensed that “So… whadda we do?” feeling in the room, in that moment, instead of hitting the gas, she’d treat it like a yellow light. She’d take one extra breath to look around and see what else was happening, to allow things to be a little more unsettled for just a moment.
When the time came, sure enough, there it was: the question, the urge to talk. She had the answer. She felt her body lean in, ready to go green. Instead, she took a sip of water and gave herself that one extra breath. She told me later it felt weird for a second, like she’d tossed a ball and wasn’t sure if or where it would land.
Then someone unexpected spoke. What they said wasn’t her answer and it didn’t solve the whole thing. But it did bring in another angle of what was really happening on the ground. And then, someone else chimed in.
Things moved from there. She still stepped in and approved what happened. She just wasn’t first this time.
Letting your team carry more of the load
Afterwards she said, “That pause felt like it took forever, BUT I didn’t have to do it all by myself.”
I wonder, if your nervous system could weigh in on how you handle those high-pressure moments, what do you think it would ask for more of, or less of?
The funny thing is, physics has been telling us forever that systems need a bit of disorder if they’re going to settle into a better pattern. Operations is no different.
I’m not going to tell you to stop doing what you’re great at. You wrangling disorder is a big part of why things work at all. I just wonder how often you do it as a choice, instead of an involuntary obligation.
You might try this next time you feel called to ‘fix it’; when your brain has already gone to green and the answer is at the tip of your tongue: Can you catch yourself long enough to ask “Could this be a yellow?” And every now and then, let it be. Take a breath. Look around. See what happens (for you and for them) when they have a chance to think and sort themselves out a little.
Before I close, I want to say: If you want someone neutral in your corner to help you sort what’s on your plate and find a realistic way forward, there’s a spot for you at yourfuturerealized.com/VIP.
Remember, you can’t stop the chaos, but you can decide how tightly you hold it.