Who Do You Become When You're Under Pressure?
Best of Motivation | Clarity Over Noise
Think about the Thursday afternoon of your last compressed week. Not how you felt. How you sounded. Somebody on your team is still carrying the version of you they met that day.
In this episode Jessica and Brian take apart the most common story people tell about a hard week, that it made them someone they are not, and replace it with something less comfortable. A heavy week does not hand you a new personality. It takes the dimmer switch off the one you already have. Three things move, and they move in the same direction every time: up, in, and down.
You will hear two stories from the same team in the same launch week, a ten-minute check-in and a nine-at-night write-up, and why nobody in either one was wrong. Jessica owns up to being the thorough one who became the delay. And there is one sentence to say in a calm week that buys you the whole of the next loud one.
In this episode
• 0:00 Nobody turns into a different person in a bad week
• 0:19 Up, in, down: the three things a heavy week moves
• 3:28 Two stories from one team in one launch week
• 5:55 Which one is loudest in you?
The three movements
Up is volume. Your default does not change under a deadline, it gets louder. Decisive on a normal Tuesday is abrupt by Thursday. Thorough becomes the bottleneck. Warm becomes the person who will not give anybody a straight answer. Same trait, no dimmer.
In is what your view does. It narrows to the thing you personally own and everything else greys out. It is not selfishness, it is triage, and it is invisible from where you are standing. Two people leave the same meeting each certain the other has lost the plot. They are not disagreeing. They are looking at two different problems.
Down is your tolerance, and not for people. For how long things take. Somebody wants to sleep on it and it reads as an obstacle. You are not annoyed at them, you are annoyed at how long they need.
Try this in a calm week
1. Tell the handful of people you work with every week what you look like under strain. One sentence: "I get short, it is never about you." Said before a heavy week, it is a map. Said during one, it is an excuse.
2. When somebody lands badly on you, ask one question before you respond: is this who they are, or is this Thursday? Most of the time it is Thursday.
Start here
All three happen to everyone. But one of them runs louder in you than the other two, and it is usually the one you would argue you do not do. You have watched your team under strain for years. You are the one person in that room you have never seen from the outside.
Take the free Colour Personality Quiz. Twelve questions, three minutes. It names your colour. Start there.
Related reading
• How to communicate with each personality colour
• What the personality colours actually mean
• Personality colours at work
Support the show
If this episode helped you think more clearly, try the free Colour Personality Quiz at bestofmotivation.com/personality-color-quiz — it takes 2 minutes and shows you how you lead, decide, and communicate.