The Perception of Pressure Podcast

A small comment from a business partner, and Leo is already fighting before he has decided anything. Years later, the same kind of moment lands differently. Where the show begins: you don’t lose intelligence under pressure. You lose access to it.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Flock. Five ways your body answers pressure before you get a vote. Most people know the first two. Nobody talks about the last one.

2023. Alone at the water, Leo reads an investor’s offer as a threat and turns it down. Six months later: “Dang, I blew an opportunity.” What the Scorecard measures, from the inside.

Days from signing a deal that felt right on paper, Leo hears himself say, “We can work it out on the backside.” A feeling that won’t sit still forces a walk-away. Condition, Clarify, Choose, Respond.

Two years into a partnership he had filed under “the cost of doing business,” a real way out opens. Leo stays. Flight isn’t always running from a threat. Sometimes it’s running from an exit that’s already standing open.

A management meeting. The president speaks without the full picture, and the room agrees. Leo needs to say, “I’m shorthanded.” He stays quiet. What that silence costs a team.

Called in to answer for his team’s mistakes, Leo walks in regulated instead of defensive. He hears every complaint and names what the team did right. The room’s anger turns into a multi-year contract.

“I felt like you were checking boxes.” One honest line from his daughter shows Leo what he had been carrying into every room he walked into.