The fight or flight response at work: what it does to founders' decisions

What the fight or flight response actually is

Fight or flight is your nervous system's built-in alarm. When your brain reads something as a threat, your body gets ready to act before you've consciously decided anything. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol rise, your heart rate and breathing speed up, and blood moves towards your big muscles.

Brilliant if you need to get out of the way of a car. Less brilliant when the “threat” is a board update, a tense 1:1 or a runway spreadsheet. Your body can't tell the difference between a lion and a difficult Slack message. It just responds to pressure.

What it does to your decisions

When you're in that state, the parts of your brain you need for nuanced thinking (weighing options, reading people, holding the long game) get less airtime. Your system prioritises speed and survival. In founder life that tends to look like:

• Snap decisions you'd never make on a calm Tuesday
• Tunnel vision: only seeing the problem, not the options
• Getting defensive or sharp with your team, then replaying it at 2am
• Over-controlling, micromanaging, or doing it all yourself
• The flip side: freezing, procrastinating, avoiding the hard email
• Feeling wired all day and exhausted the moment you stop

And it spreads. Teams pick up a leader's state fast. If you're living in fight or flight, your team usually ends up there too: less honest, less creative, more cautious.

Why “just stay calm” doesn't work

You can't think your way out of a body response. Telling yourself to relax while your heart is pounding is like shouting at a smoke alarm. The alarm isn't the problem. It's doing its job. The skill is noticing it earlier and helping your body come back down, so the thinking parts of you can come back online.

That's trainable. It's not about never feeling pressure. It's about having the capacity to feel it and still lead well.

Getting out of fight or flight with A.R.E.™

A.R.E.™ is the framework I use with founders and leadership teams. It's simple on purpose, because you need something you can use in the middle of a hard day, not after a retreat.

• Assess: notice what state you're in before you act. Jaw tight? Breath high? Typing fast? That's information, not failure.
• Regulate: give your body a signal it's safe enough to come down. A longer exhale, feeling your feet, slowing your voice, a two-minute pause before you hit send.
• Energise: once you're steadier, choose how to act. Make the decision, have the conversation, set the pace on purpose rather than on autopilot.

Do that a few times a day and something shifts. You catch stress at a 4 instead of a 9. Hard calls stop wiping out your whole afternoon. Your team gets a steadier version of you.

Try it today

Next time you feel that surge, pause before you respond. Name it in your head (“that's fight or flight”), take three slow breaths with longer exhales than inhales, and feel your feet on the floor. Then decide. That's it. Small, real, repeatable.

If you want to build this properly, for yourself or your whole leadership team, that's exactly what my 1:1 mentorship and team training are for.