How to Lead Learning Under Pressure
What do you do when the pressure at work never seems to let up?
In this episode of Learning for Good, I sit down with peak performance coach Jay Abbasi to talk about what it takes to lead under pressure, and how nonprofit L&D leaders can build resilience into how they lead themselves and others.
Nonprofit leaders carry a heavy load, with tight resources, shifting priorities, and a mission that never feels like it can wait. That pressure builds quietly and shapes how people think, communicate, and lead, often without them realizing it. This can push even strong leaders into constant reaction mode instead of intentional leadership.
▶️ Key Points:
00:00 How Pressure Shapes Nonprofit Leaders
03:10 Jay's Path From Personal Loss to Peak Performance Coaching
08:51 How L&D Leaders Can Stay Effective Under Pressure
13:32 What Pressure Does to the Brain
18:51 Building Clarity and Intention as a Learning Leader
22:46 Balancing Organizational Urgency With the Patience Behavior Change Requires
28:19 One Shift Nonprofit Leaders Can Make to Lead Under Pressure
Is Pressure in the Workplace Bad?
On episode 202 of the Learning for Good podcast, I sit down with peak performance and resilience coach Jay Abbasi to talk about leading under pressure.
Jay asserts:
Pressure isn’t the problem; what you do with it is.
I opened the episode with a comparison. First, I described the volcano. Pressure builds with nowhere to go. Eventually it erupts. This is what happens when nonprofit leaders stay stuck in reactive decision-making, compressed timelines, and burnout. Then, I described the diamond. The diamond is also formed under pressure, but under the right conditions, that same force creates something valuable instead of something destructive. The pressure is real in both scenarios, but the outcomes are very different.
In nonprofit L&D specifically, we are often operating with teams of 1-3 people, and we are responsible for learning for the entire organization. Priorities shift with funding cycles, leadership changes, evolving technology, and more. None of that is going away, so we have to learn to lead inside of the pressure it causes. We want our outcomes to be more like the diamond than the volcano.
What Pressure Does to the Brain of a Nonprofit Leader
Before you can lead under pressure, it helps to understand what pressure is doing to you physiologically. Jay shared that when you feel threatened, your amygdala triggers a rush of cortisol, and your body moves into fight, flight, or freeze. Your sympathetic nervous system takes over, and rational, strategic thinking becomes harder to access.
Your brain reacts the same way to a perceived threat as it does to a real one. An unreasonable email from a stakeholder doesn’t put you in physical danger, but your nervous system can respond as if it does, activating the same cortisol response you’d have facing an actual emergency.
Responding to Pressure: A Three-Step Framework
Jay offers a simple, three-step way to work with this physiological response instead of being run by it:
Acknowledge what you’re feeling, without judgment. Notice it the way you’d notice an object in the room.
Get curious. Ask questions instead of reacting immediately. This activates your prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain responsible for objective, strategic thinking.
Channel the response into something productive, rather than letting it drive the decision.
The same three steps apply when you’re leading someone else through pressure: acknowledge how they feel, get curious about what’s really going on, and guide them toward a productive next step. Learning by nature is uncomfortable. You’re asking people to try things they aren’t good at yet, so this isn’t a technique reserved for crisis moments. It’s foundational to how you design and facilitate change.
Reacting vs. Responding to Pressure at Work
Jay described his own pattern as a learning leader early in his career. He experienced a constant stream of requests with no time to step back. What changed it wasn’t a bigger team or fewer requests. It was a single internal question he asked every time a new request came through: Am I reacting, or am I responding?
Reacting is saying yes automatically to avoid conflict or keep the peace. Responding is pausing long enough to check the request against where you’re actually trying to go and having the harder conversation when it doesn’t align.
That requires knowing your destination in the first place. Jay’s analogy: you don’t fly from Newark to LAX without knowing LAX is where you’re headed. You might adjust course along the way, but you need a destination before you can evaluate whether an incoming request moves you toward it or off course.
For nonprofit L&D leaders, that destination is your learning strategy tied to organizational goals. Without it, every request becomes the plan. Talent development stays reactive and fragmented not because leaders don’t care about strategy, but because nothing is anchoring decisions to one.
Remaining Adaptable and Communicating Under Pressure
Having a clear destination protects your strategy. It doesn’t automatically get anyone else on board with it. That takes a different skill: adapting how you communicate without losing what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
Jay described watching a colleague do this well. This colleague matched the tone and language of whoever he was talking to. With someone direct and fast-moving, he’d meet that energy and then use it to make the case for slowing down and thinking through strategy. With someone more big-picture and visionary, he’d speak that way instead. The vision underneath never changed. Only the way it was communicated did.
As L&D leaders, we have to communicate to a variety of audiences from the CFO to the program director to the learner. Learning to adapt and communicate under pressure is as essential as the learning strategy itself.
Getting Support as You Lead Under Pressure
Trying to diagnose every performance gap, design every solution, and manage every stakeholder relationship alone is challenging. But it isn’t a requirement. Inside the Nonprofit L&D Collective, we have built a home for just for you — a place where you can ask questions and learn from other leaders just like you.
And we’re bringing the Learning for Good Summit back on October 28. Our theme: Influence to Action — How to Move People, Priorities, and Ideas forward in Your Nonprofit. This is a chance to experience the lessons of the Learning for Good podcast combined with the virtual room of the Nonprofit L&D Collective. You’ll meet other nonprofit HR, L&D, and talent development leaders navigating the same pressures. You’ll trade ideas about what’s working and leave with a clearer sense of your own destination. Registration opens soon.
To learn more about leading under pressure, tune into episode 202 of the Learning for Good podcast.
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