The project is three weeks behind schedule. The client is in the room. Your boss is watching. The junior developer who missed the deadline is sitting across from you, terrified. You feel your heart rate spike. You feel the urge to say something like, “Well, if the code had been reviewed properly, we would not be here.” You want to deflect the heat. You want to protect yourself. Everyone in that room is watching to see what kind of leader you are.

Anxiety is contagious. When a leader panics, that panic ripples through the team like a shockwave. People start covering themselves instead of solving the problem. Information stops flowing because no one wants to be the next target. The original crisis, which might have been manageable, multiplies because the leader added chaos instead of absorbing it. But calm is equally contagious. When a leader stays steady, the team has something to anchor to. They can focus on solutions because someone is holding the emotional center.

The Bible gives us a vivid contrast between two leaders under pressure: Saul and David. Saul looked like a king. He was head and shoulders taller than everyone else. He had the appearance of strength. But when pressure came, he collapsed. When David received more praise than him, Saul spiraled into jealousy and started throwing spears at his own people. When God went silent before a battle, Saul consulted a witch. His impressive exterior hid a hollow interior. He was a tent; he looked stable until the wind blew.

David did not look like a king. He was the youngest son, a shepherd, overlooked by his own family. But his internal architecture was different. When Saul threw spears at him, David did not retaliate. When he had Saul cornered in a cave and could have killed him, he refused. When Nabal insulted him and David was ready to wipe out an entire household in rage, he listened to counsel and stood down. David made serious mistakes in his life, but when confronted with his sin, he did not spin or deflect. He owned it and rebuilt. His wilderness years, fighting lions and running from Saul, had built something inside him that could hold under pressure.

The difference between these two men was not personality. It was architecture. Saul never built the internal structures needed to govern himself under stress. David had spent years in obscurity, laying bricks that no one saw, and those bricks held when the weight came. This is the principle that matters for every leader: you do not rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training. The crisis reveals what you already built.

There is a concept in family systems therapy called the “non-anxious presence.” It describes the person in a chaotic system who remains calm without detaching. They feel the tension, but they do not amplify it or absorb it. They become a stabilizing force simply by being present and governed. This is what healthy leadership looks like in a crisis. You feel the anxiety. You do not pretend it is not there. But your anxiety does not govern your behavior. You become the harbor, not the storm.

Philippians 4:6-7 describes this dynamic in spiritual terms. Paul writes that when we bring our anxieties to God, His peace “garrisons” our hearts and minds. The Greek word is a military term; it describes soldiers stationed around something to protect it. The peace of God is not a pleasant feeling. It is a defensive position. The threat does not disappear, but the threat cannot breach the walls. This is what allows a leader to stay calm when everything around them is spinning. Not denial, not suppression, but a peace that holds the perimeter.

Back to that meeting. The project is late. The client is frustrated. The junior developer is terrified. Here is what the non-anxious presence looks like in practice. You feel the anxiety; you acknowledge internally that you are scared of looking bad. You do not transmit it; you keep your voice steady and refuse to let the fear leak into your tone. You own the team instead of throwing someone under the bus: “We missed the timeline. Here is the plan to recover. I will own the communication with the client.” Later, you debrief privately with the developer about what went wrong, but not in front of an audience.

The result of that approach is not just a better meeting. It is a culture. Teams that see their leader stay governed in a crisis learn that it is safe to bring problems forward. They learn that mistakes are addressed, not weaponized. They learn that the leader will protect them from external pressure instead of adding to it. Over time, this builds the kind of trust that allows organizations to move fast and recover quickly from setbacks. The non-anxious presence is not just a personal discipline; it is a strategic advantage.

The time to build this capacity is not when the storm hits. It is in the ordinary days when nothing is on fire. Every time you practice governing your reactions in a low-stakes moment, you are laying a brick. Every time you pause before responding to an irritating email, you are building the architecture that will hold when the pressure is real. The crisis will come. That is guaranteed. Whether you become a ruin or a stronghold depends entirely on what you built before the crisis arrived.

What does your team see when pressure hits?

I write about leadership at the intersection of timeless principles and modern workplaces. Follow for weekly insights on building teams that actually work. For more articles like this consider subscribing to my Substack at: https://justinwilson411.substack.com/