The invisible erosion
Here’s something I’ve never read in a leadership book: pressure doesn’t just test decisions. It can change how an organisation runs.
My client saw this happen when her CEO began going directly to her team during preparations for an upcoming funding round.
Direct requests. Side conversations. Decisions made without her.
It wasn’t constant, but it was enough to make her uneasy. At first, she assumed trust was eroding. The reality was more complicated, and harder to fix.
When pressure drives avoidance, not action
As the stakes rose, the CEO slipped into patterns that looked like progress but avoided the real work.
She bypassed established systems. She held side conversations with team members. She made decisions outside the usual channels.
At the same time, she said she’d “lost visibility” on what was happening.
The information was there. Dashboards. Project updates. Regular reports. But she wasn’t using them.
Instead, she reverted to familiar territory: operational involvement and “silver bullet” hires meant to solve everything.
A high-profile industry recruit. A marketing VP brought in mid-stream.
Each new hire carried the implicit promise that they would deliver the revenue growth investors expected.
This wasn’t about my client’s competence. It was about a CEO using activity to avoid leading through uncertainty.
The real risk of leadership avoidance
Bypassing can look like a trust issue. In this case, it was something more dangerous.
This was a leader stepping away from responsibility while still holding control.
When leaders avoid core challenges by creating new activity, the effects ripple through the organisation:
- Teams receive conflicting priorities
- People work long hours on initiatives that don’t move the business forward
- High performers begin questioning whether leadership knows what it’s doing
Pressure doesn’t just strain systems. It exposes how leadership responds when certainty disappears.
The harder conversation
My client eventually realised the conversation she needed wasn’t about information flow, decision speed or operational tweaks.
It was about helping the CEO see that all the activity—the hires, the bypassing, the side conversations—had become a substitute for the strategic leadership the moment required.
This is often the point where leaders reach for executive coaching: not to fix systems, but to think more clearly under pressure.
But how do you say that?
You don’t start by accusing. You start by naming the pressure everyone feels but hasn’t said out loud.
For example:
We’re all carrying the weight of this funding round. Let’s make sure we’re putting our time where it counts.
Naming the pressure without blame creates space for better judgement.
The deeper principle
Pressure doesn’t bring out your best or your worst.
It brings out your most practised way of dealing with discomfort.
For some leaders, that means reverting to operational habits. For others, it means creating new complexity to avoid facing difficult truths.
The leaders who hold their organisations together in high-stakes moments don’t just redesign systems.
They notice when their own response to pressure is becoming part of the problem.
Your diagnostic moment
If you’re being bypassed when the pressure is on, don’t only ask:
Do they trust me?
Also ask:
What is this behaviour helping them avoid?
Sometimes bypassing isn’t about you at all. It’s about a leader staying busy instead of facing what matters most.
Recognising that pattern is often the first step to steadying both the relationship and the organisation.
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