When your business is under pressure, are you helping your employees remain calm and focused, or is your own reaction making the situation worse?
Your employees notice more than the decisions you make. They notice your tone, body language, confidence, and how you respond when things don’t go according to plan.
Those reactions can influence how effectively your team handles unexpected challenges.
In a recent episode of The Workforce Alchemy Show, I interviewed Marc Hildebrand, a former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, leadership coach, and author of Mastering Your Life Through Self Coaching.
Drawing on 20 years with the LAPD, Marc shared powerful lessons about leadership under pressure, overcoming overthinking, improving employee performance, and understanding how our own thinking influences the way we lead others.
Although his experiences come from law enforcement, the principles apply directly to business owners, CEOs, executives, and managers responsible for leading people through difficult situations.
Here are several important leadership lessons from our conversation.
1. Your Employees Take Their Cues From How You Respond Under Pressure
During his LAPD career, Marc witnessed situations where a supervisor’s panic made an already dangerous situation even more difficult.
He described leaders who began screaming over the radio when circumstances weren’t going according to plan. Rather than helping officers respond effectively, their behavior increased confusion and uncertainty.
He also worked with a lieutenant who demonstrated the opposite approach.
Regardless of the circumstances, this lieutenant maintained his composure and projected confidence that the team would figure out how to handle the situation.
The difference was significant.
A leader who remains calm can help others think clearly when clear thinking matters most.
Consider what happens when a business experiences an unexpected setback.
A major customer threatens to leave. Production falls behind schedule. An important employee resigns. Revenue suddenly declines.
Employees naturally look to leadership for direction.
If the CEO reacts with anger, panic, or accusations, employees may become defensive, distracted, or reluctant to share information.
If that same CEO acknowledges the challenge, communicates the objective, and calmly involves the team in identifying solutions, the situation can unfold very differently.
The circumstances may be identical. The leadership response changes the team’s experience.
2. Stop Correcting Employee Behavior Without Understanding What’s Driving It
One of Marc’s most revealing stories involved a fellow officer who responded unusually during a situation.
Rather than immediately criticizing his partner or demanding different behavior, Marc recognized that something wasn’t right and asked questions.
He discovered that his partner was experiencing serious difficulties in his personal life, including marital and family problems.
Those circumstances were affecting how he showed up at work.
Marc didn’t ignore the problematic behavior or abandon accountability. He took the time to understand what was happening before addressing what needed to change.
The result?
His fellow officer eventually requested to work with him as a long-term partner.
Their relationship improved because Marc created an opportunity for honest communication instead of immediately assigning blame.
What Business Owners Can Learn
When an employee misses a deadline, reacts defensively, or demonstrates an unexpected decline in performance, it’s tempting to focus exclusively on the visible behavior.
But what if that behavior is a symptom rather than the underlying problem?
Perhaps the employee doesn’t understand the expectations.
Maybe the person lacks the training required to succeed.
There could be a communication problem, conflicting priorities, personal difficulties, or a mismatch between the employee’s natural abilities and the requirements of the position.
Effective employee management requires understanding the cause of a performance problem, not simply reacting to its symptoms.
That doesn’t eliminate accountability. It makes accountability more informed and potentially more effective.
3. Overthinking Can Undermine Your Effectiveness as a Leader
Business leaders are expected to make important decisions, often without having every piece of information they’d prefer.
That responsibility creates an understandable temptation to analyze every possible outcome.
Marc explained that he has personally struggled with overthinking and excessive preparation.
He described how these habits can interfere with confidence, communication, and the ability to connect authentically with others.
Preparation is valuable, but there comes a point when additional preparation stops improving the result.
For a CEO, this might look like repeatedly postponing a difficult employee conversation, second-guessing a hiring decision, or delaying an important operational change because every possible risk hasn’t been eliminated.
Marc recommends reflection as a way to recognize these patterns.
After an important interaction, ask yourself:
- What did I handle well?
- Where did I prepare too much or too little?
- What would I do differently next time?
- What can I learn without continuing to dwell on the experience?
The objective isn’t to criticize yourself.
It’s to extract useful lessons and apply them to future situations.
Productive reflection improves future decisions. Unproductive overthinking keeps you trapped in decisions you’ve already made or situations you cannot change.
4. Change the Questions You Ask Yourself to Make Better Decisions
During our conversation, I asked Marc what a CEO should do when faced with a difficult decision or conversation but unable to stop replaying potential outcomes.
His response focused on changing the questions leaders ask themselves.
Instead of repeatedly asking what’s wrong, why something isn’t working, or why an employee keeps making mistakes, Marc encourages leaders to focus on the outcome they want to create.
For example:
Instead of asking: “Why does this employee keep making mistakes?”
Ask: “What needs to change so this employee can consistently meet expectations?”
Instead of asking: “Why is everything going wrong?”
Ask: “What’s the most important outcome we need to achieve, and what’s the next step toward it?”
Instead of asking: “What if this decision fails?”
Ask: “What information do I need to make the best decision possible with what I know today?”
These questions don’t guarantee the right answer.
They change the direction of your thinking toward identifying options, making decisions, and taking productive action.
For business owners and CEOs, that distinction can be especially valuable when time is limited and employees are waiting for direction.
5. The Five-Part Growth Model: How Your Thinking Influences Results
Marc shared a framework he teaches called the Growth Model.
It consists of five interconnected elements:
Reality → Perspective → Emotion → Response → Results
Here’s how the model applies to a common business leadership challenge.
Reality
An employee makes a significant mistake that affects an important customer.
That is what happened.
Perspective
The leader interprets the mistake.
One possible interpretation is that the employee is careless, incompetent, or unwilling to follow instructions.
Another interpretation is that something about the employee’s training, communication, role fit, or understanding of expectations needs investigation.
Emotion
Those interpretations can create very different emotional reactions.
The first may produce anger or frustration.
The second may encourage curiosity and a desire to understand what happened.
Response
Emotions influence behavior.
An angry leader may immediately criticize the employee or issue threats.
A curious leader may ask questions, investigate the circumstances, clarify expectations, and then determine the appropriate corrective action.
Results
The leader’s response influences what happens next.
One approach may create defensiveness or fear.
The other may reveal the underlying problem and provide an opportunity to correct it.
Neither approach guarantees the desired outcome, but the quality of the leadership response can significantly influence the possibilities.
The central lesson is that leaders can become more intentional about the meaning they assign to situations and how they respond.
6. Explaining Why Can Improve Employee Buy-In
Marc also shared an experience from his time as an LAPD sergeant involving an unpopular change to the department’s vehicle pursuit policy.
Officers were frustrated because the new policy restricted pursuits based solely on minor traffic infractions.
Instead of simply telling his officers that they had to follow the rules, Marc researched the circumstances surrounding the policy change.
He discovered safety concerns involving officers and civilians during pursuits.
When he explained the information he’d found and emphasized his responsibility to help officers return home safely, the response from his team was noticeably different from the resistance he had observed elsewhere.
He wasn’t asking them to agree blindly.
He was helping them understand the reasoning behind the decision.
Applying This Lesson to Business Leadership
Imagine announcing a new attendance policy, revised sales process, scheduling change, or operational procedure.
Employees may understand what you’re asking them to do without understanding why the change is necessary.
That missing explanation can contribute to frustration and resistance.
Whenever practical, communicate three things:
- What is changing.
- How the change will be implemented.
- Why the change matters.
Employees don’t need to agree with every management decision.
However, understanding the business reasoning behind a decision can help them see the broader objective and their role in achieving it.
7. You Must Lead Yourself Before You Can Effectively Lead Others
Near the conclusion of our interview, I asked Marc what he meant by earning the right to be a leader of leaders.
His answer was straightforward.
Leaders should be willing to demonstrate the same behaviors they expect from the people they lead.
If you expect accountability, demonstrate accountability.
If you expect employees to remain calm during stressful situations, work on maintaining your own composure.
If you expect employees to accept constructive feedback, demonstrate that you’re willing to accept it yourself.
Marc’s point wasn’t that leaders must be perfect.
It was that leadership credibility grows when expectations and personal behavior are aligned.
Employees can see the difference between a leader who consistently demonstrates the standards of the organization and one who simply demands those standards from others.
The Bottom Line: Better Leadership Begins With Better Self-Leadership
Business owners and CEOs cannot control every customer problem, employee mistake, economic development, or unexpected business challenge.
They can, however, work on becoming more intentional about how they interpret those situations and how they respond.
Marc Hildebrand’s experiences provide several useful reminders:
- Remain composed when employees need clear direction.
- Investigate the causes of employee behavior before jumping to conclusions.
- Recognize when overthinking is delaying necessary action.
- Ask questions that direct your thinking toward productive outcomes.
- Explain the reasoning behind difficult decisions.
- Demonstrate the behaviors and standards you expect from others.
Improving these habits takes deliberate effort, reflection, and practice.
But the potential benefits extend beyond the leader.
They can influence employee trust, communication, engagement, accountability, and the overall effectiveness of the organization.
Before asking how to get better performance from your employees, consider whether changing how you lead yourself could change how effectively you lead them.
Watch or Listen to My Conversation With Marc Hildebrand
Want to hear Marc explain these principles through real experiences from his 20-year law enforcement career?
Watch or listen to our full conversation on The Workforce Alchemy Show.
Watch the full interview on YouTube:
Listen to the full podcast episode:
https://open.acast.com/public/streams/5cd334e4e3b953af742edd5d/episodes/6acd2e64f38f25c0f0038577.mp3
About Marc Hildebrand
Marc Hildebrand is a former LAPD sergeant, leadership coach, and author of Mastering Your Life Through Self Coaching.
He and his wife host the Modern Leadership Coaching podcast, where they explore strategies for self-leadership, personal growth, and navigating difficult situations.
Learn more about Marc and his leadership resources:
https://modernleadership.us/lead
About Mason Duchatschek and Workforce Alchemy
Mason Duchatschek hosts The Workforce Alchemy Show, where business owners, executives, and organizational leaders discover practical strategies for selecting, engaging, developing, and retaining employees.
Explore additional leadership, hiring, and workforce management resources at:
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