TED'S TAKE: WHAT PRESSURE REVEALS

I recently read an article about Formula One (F1) racing. It focused on a team principal who found remarkable success despite extraordinary pressure. Eventually, he was dismissed from the team and received a significant contract buyout.

What struck me wasn’t his departure. It was how well he performed while under pressure.

He faced dissatisfaction from the team’s owners (a very large corporation), performance demands from a star driver,  public criticism from that driver’s father (an ex-F1 driver himself), internal conflict  among key team members, the possibility of losing technical staff, and a team-related harassment investigation. Yet, despite all of it, the article concluded his performance was pretty good -- astounding actually. He didn’t get distracted. He managed multiple crises simultaneously.

It left me wondering: How do some people continue to perform and sometimes excel when under pressure?

On reflection, I’ve experienced similar pressure.

One example was between 2006 and 2012, when I led a major Medicare litigation against the federal government. What I expected to involve 125 hospitals grew to more than 700. I was managing hundreds of hospital clients, multiple law firms and key attorneys of varying personalities (all with egos), complex litigation strategy, government rule making, competitor interference, and the day-to-day work of my own consulting practice.

At the same time, my wife’s breast cancer, first diagnosed in 2001, returned in 2008. She eventually succumbed to the cancer at the very end of 2010.

Looking back, I sometimes ask myself the same question I asked about that F1 team principal: How did I keep going? What allows people to work under these types of pressures? To persevere? To sometimes excel under such pressure?

We often assume the answer is tenacity. Know-how. Passion. Will power. Those qualities matter, but I don’t believe it’s any one attribute. I suspect that in every difficult situation, one quality becomes the driving force. It’s different for every person and circumstance.

Maybe pressure itself changes us. Perhaps the greater the resistance, the greater our desire to succeed. The pressure provokes us to excel.

Many people think they understand it. And while we all experience stress, most haven’t had that kind of sustained pressure that tests every part of you. Thus, they may never understand that pressure doesn’t create character. It reveals it.