I once watched a leader turn a normal Tuesday into a crisis with one email. A project slipped, a client asked a hard question, and the leader hit reply-all with a paragraph of heat. The message moved fast, but it did not move the work forward. By lunch, half the team was defending themselves, the other half was going silent, and the client problem was still unsolved.

Urgency feels like leadership because it looks like action. In reality, urgency is often just anxiety with authority. It is the internal alarm system screaming, "Fix this now so I do not look foolish, weak, or out of control." Your team can tell the difference between a true emergency and a leader who cannot tolerate discomfort. One builds trust. The other trains people to hide bad news until it is too late.

The discipline you need in those moments is not better wording, it is a brake. Scripture says we should be quick to hear and slow to speak, and that word slow is not a personality trait. It is a governance action. It creates a gap between stimulus and response. Without the gap, you are not leading, you are reacting.

That gap is usually won in the first thirty seconds. Put your hands off the keyboard. Close the laptop. Stand up and walk to the other side of the room. Say "stop" out loud if you need to. It sounds simple because it is simple. You cannot think your way out of a physiological hijack if you keep feeding it with motion.

This is where faith gets practical. Second Corinthians 10:5 says to take every thought captive, which means you do not negotiate with a rogue impulse. You arrest it. Proverbs 19:2 warns that haste makes you miss your way, which is true in leadership as much as it is in life. **Urgency is rarely the Holy Spirit. Wisdom rarely screams; panic and pride do.**

If you want a quick diagnostic, ask yourself one question before you respond: what am I trying to protect right now. If the honest answer is your ego, your image, or your need to be understood immediately, slow down. If you cannot slow down, that is information. It means the moment has more power over you than it should, and you are about to spend relational capital to buy a few seconds of emotional relief.

Here is the takeaway for this week: **build one standing order that blocks urgency from driving the car.** Do not send important messages at night. Do not confront while you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Do not make a high-stakes decision in the same hour you received the triggering news. If something is truly urgent, it will still be urgent after you regain clarity. If it is not, you just saved yourself and your team from unnecessary damage.

Where does urgency tend to hijack your leadership, and what is one brake you could install today?

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/