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High-pressure situations at work, like an important meeting, are often the backdrop for our most reactive professional moments. In 2025 nearly two-thirds (60%) of employees who spent more than 15 hours a week in meetings reported experiencing severe stress levels, according to a Wiley Workplace Intelligence report.<\/a><\/p>\n When conflict arises, our bodies often react before our brains. You might lose your temper, lose your words, or find yourself anxiously agreeing to something that you don\u2019t actually have capacity to do. It can feel deeply frustrating, and even shameful, when your responses feel impulsive and out of your control.<\/p>\n But is it the stressful meeting itself that causes our reactivity, or are we bringing it into the room before the meeting has even started? <\/p>\n In today\u2019s “infinite workday” (the term coined by Microsoft in their 2025 Work Trend Index<\/a>) of constant emails, meetings, and notifications, staff are already stressed and on the back foot. In this reactive state, you\u2019re expecting the worst\u2014listening out for annoyances, slights, and irritations. In my experience as an executive coach, our reactivity can go even deeper than that. It\u2019s a survival response laid down long before you got your current job title.<\/p>\n Reactivity in high pressure meetings manifests as freeze, fight, or fawn.\u00a0 Freezing doesn’t always look like paralysis. It\u2019s going quiet when you have something to say. Fighting doesn’t always look like aggression. It\u2019s a sharpness in your voice that you catch a beat too late. And fawning is agreeing when you don’t, accommodating when you’re seething, making yourself smaller in a room where you have every right to take up space. What starts as occasional reactivity can become reflexive, meaning that your body has learned this response as the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a gap between what high-achieving leaders expect of themselves and what they actually have available when it counts.<\/p>\n What I’ve noticed in nearly two decades of coaching senior leaders is that the ones who describe themselves as reactive in meetings are actually \u201cpre-reactive.\u201d In other words, the meeting isn\u2019t where the story starts; it\u2019s where it surfaces.<\/p>\n High performers don’t always feel <\/em>depleted and that\u2019s the problem. You\u2019ve recalibrated so gradually to mental pressure that the state you’re in feels normal. It\u2019s not. You\u2019re thinking about work when you’re nominally off, checking messages the moment you wake up and cycling through tomorrow’s agenda at midnight. This state is often described as conscientiousness but it results in a nervous system that never fully stands down. <\/p>\n Superficially you might feel okay, but in the meeting room when the pressure spikes, you discover there\u2019s nothing left in the tank. You\u2019ve got no capacity to regulate your emotions and decide how to react.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the neuroscientist Nicole Vignola<\/a>, when our brains are “always on” it becomes much harder to shift away from a state of vigilance. This state is increasingly becoming the norm when, according to a 2026 study<\/a> of over 1,000 organizations, artificial intelligence is adding to workloads rather than redistributing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reactivity is less about what\u2019s triggering you and can be more about how old<\/em> the response feels. The answer might reveal that the current agenda item isn\u2019t really the problem. That\u2019s because our most reactive moments often feel younger<\/em> than us. Suddenly you\u2019re not the 50-year-old in the room but someone earlier. Someone for whom being challenged in front of others carried a cost, long before this meeting existed.<\/p>\n When a colleague says something cutting, when someone takes credit for your idea, when the conversation shifts in a direction you didn’t anticipate\u2014your body responds before your brain catches up. That doesn\u2019t mean you’re insufficiently senior or experienced. It means your nervous system is running software considerably older than your job title.<\/p>\n Freeze, fight, and fawn aren\u2019t adult responses. They\u2019re survival responses\u2014circuits that were laid down before you had a leadership team or a P&L. In a high-stakes meeting, those circuits don’t distinguish between a real threat and a passive-aggressive peer. They just fire.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the 4-step system I use with senior leaders before they go into a challenging meeting, especially if they\u2019re not at optimal energetic capacity. It creates a shift that allows you to be more intentional and considered.<\/p>\n Always remember that your response isn’t being generated by the meeting. It’s been activated <\/em>by it. It was already there. That recognition\u2014even partial, even mid-meeting\u2014creates a pause that provides enough time to choose differently and have a moment of authorship over what happens next.<\/p>\n 1. <\/strong> Before the meeting: reset BEFORE you walk in <\/strong><\/p>\n Prior to the meeting, your aim is to get to a neutral place from which you can respond instead of react. There are three steps: First, name your current state (it might be \u201ctense,\u201d \u201crushed,\u201d \u201cdefensive\u201d). Then look at something in the distance to widen your focus. Finally, do a few rounds of baseline breathing, which is the name I\u2019ve given to <\/a>the physiological sigh<\/a>. Inhale deeply, then, without exhaling, take a top-up breath and hold for a beat before a long, slow exhale.<\/p>\n 2. Before the meeting: decide on your pattern override<\/strong> <\/p>\n Under pressure, you\u2019ll default to old patterns unless you\u2019ve consciously chosen and rehearsed an alternative. For instance, if you know you agree to things too quickly, your pattern override might be to say, \u201cMay I get back to you?\u201d In this case, your goal is to avoid committing to something in the meeting itself. You can revisit a considered answer but it\u2019s harder to undo a reflexive one.<\/p>\n 3. <\/strong> During the meeting: slow yourself down<\/strong><\/p>\n Reactivity loves speed. Leadership moves in a more considered way. Slow yourself down by anchoring into your body. Feel your feet in your shoes, where they make contact with the floor. Feel the pen in your hand. Practice speaking at a slower pace, and in a lower tone. If you need space in the heat of the moment, go slow and low. Say \u201cLet me think about that.\u201d Or use a phrase like, \u201cCan you say more about that?\u201d If you say something that felt reactive, having a phrase at your fingertips that you\u2019ve rehearsed is helpful\u2014for instance, \u201cThat came out more strongly than I intended. Let me reset.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. After the meeting: clear the residue<\/strong> <\/p>\n Resetting after the meeting is a power move. First capture any actions to minimize open loops in your mind. Then clear the whiteboard of your brain\u2014 ideally by doing something different for a short time to shift mental gears. Walk around the building. Grab a coffee. Do something away from your screen. As you\u2019re doing this, say to yourself, \u201cThat\u2019s done now.\u201d<\/p>\n Whenever possible, structure a buffer between meetings to minimize one call bleeding into the next, with no chance to reset. Try booking 25- or 55-minute meetings and you\u2019ll be surprised how little pushback you get.<\/p>\n Becoming less reactive doesn’t mean you have to stop reacting altogether. It means recognizing it earlier, understanding your own patterns and designing a system that better serves you.<\/p>\n The meeting doesn’t create the reactivity. In all likelihood, you brought it with you. That knowledge is more liberating than you think.<\/p>\n \nWhat does reactivity look like?<\/h2>\n
Why reactive moments aren\u2019t really about what triggers you. . .<\/h2>\n
A 4-step system to reduce your reactivity in meetings<\/h2>\n