What happens to your judgement when the pressure rises?

I spent this morning with a group of senior public leaders exploring a simple but powerful idea:

We all lead two teams.

👉 There’s the 'external team'.

The real people we work with every day, with all their different personalities: the enthusiastic ones, the cautious ones, the loud ones, the tired ones.

👉 And then there’s the 'internal team'.

The different parts and voices inside our own head. They’re remarkably similar: the enthusiastic voice, the cautious voice, the “just get on with it” voice, the people-pleaser, and the quiet, wise one.

Most leadership training focuses on tools and techniques for leading the external team. That’s useful. But today we went deeper.

We looked at what happens when the pressure goes up. That’s when our internal team often gets disrupted:

➡️ The cautious part gets louder 

➡️ The people-pleaser starts negotiating 

➡️ The action-oriented part demands “just decide now” 

➡️ The wise part that spots the real risks often goes quiet 

Suddenly, one voice takes over, and the rest of our inner team gets sidelined. That’s usually the moment judgement starts to suffer.

The session was about learning to notice this earlier and lead our internal team more consciously, just as we try to lead our external team.

Because when you lead your inner team well, you show up with far more clarity, courage and calm for everyone else.

These ideas are also shaping the book I am currently writing on self-leadership, which will be published by Routledge.