Are you deciding in a crisis — or from one?

Why cortisol blocks precisely the capacity you need most when the stakes are high

Weeks of pressure had been building in that room. The decision about to be made could change the direction of the company for at least a year. Everyone looked to the leader as the person who needed to get it right — especially now, when the stakes had become so high. No one could see the exhaustion settled on his face. He had slept very little over the past few days, and that very morning had exchanged tense words with one of his partners.

The accumulated stress had not stayed outside the room. It had already taken up residence in him, quietly reshaping the way his mind was processing the pressure, the risk, and the options on the table. The decision was made. In that moment it felt clear — perhaps the only possible one.

Only later, in a different state, was he able to see the options he had not noticed at the time, the questions he had not asked himself, and the nuances he had moved past too quickly.

The problem was not that the decision had been made in a crisis situation. The problem was that it had been made from a state of crisis.

How stress narrows perspective

Cortisol, the hormone associated with the stress response, does not act uniformly across the entire brain. Its most significant effect for a leader is a selective one: it reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for strategic thinking and for the capacity to hold multiple perspectives at the same time.

This is precisely the capacity that begins to function less well when pressure becomes very high. As stress increases, the brain tends to search more quickly for certainty, simplification, and immediate reaction.

At the same time, the amygdala begins to take on a more dominant role in processing information. It is the part of the brain oriented toward rapid survival, threat identification, and immediate response. It does not seek out complexity and has little tolerance for ambiguity.

The result is a narrowing of perspective. Options contract, nuances disappear more quickly, and the decision begins to feel clearer — precisely because the nervous system is processing fewer variables at once.

The illusion of clarity

One of the most difficult effects of stress is that the leader does not feel as though they are seeing less. From the inside, the decision can actually seem clearer than before, the direction more obvious, the urgency more justified.

Yet it is precisely this sensation of clarity that signals perspective beginning to contract. A mind under pressure searches quickly for certainty and simplification, and the options that would complicate the decision become harder to access.

The questions that might have opened up new angles no longer arise as readily. Nuances fade, and the situation begins to be perceived in an increasingly simplified form: there is a threat, and a resolution needs to be found quickly. This is a biological response from a nervous system built to accelerate and simplify when it perceives danger. The difficulty arises when complex decisions with long-term consequences are made from within this state of narrowed perspective.

Three signs that a decision is coming from stress

The urge to decide immediately

The feeling that a decision must be made right now — even when there is no real time pressure — is one of the clearest signals that stress has begun to drive the process.

In this state, any delay starts to feel like a risk. The greater the internal tension, the stronger the need to close down uncertainty and recover a sense of control. The nervous system compresses exactly the reflective space that might have brought greater clarity.

Reality reduced to two options

Another signal appears when a complex situation suddenly seems to offer only two extreme choices, and the intermediate nuances have almost completely disappeared from view.

Reality has not simplified itself — the perspective available for processing its complexity has narrowed.

Certainty that arrives too quickly

Sometimes a decision that felt difficult becomes suddenly clear and obvious. The feeling can be reassuring — but this kind of abrupt certainty can indicate that the nervous system is trying to reduce tension and the psychological cost of uncertainty as quickly as possible.

In moments like these, the mind tends to select the option that brings the fastest sense of resolution, even if it is not necessarily the best one over time.

The state you decide from

Important decisions will always exist within difficult contexts and under real pressure. The shift comes when a leader begins to understand what stress does to their own perception. From that point, the question is no longer only “What is the right decision?” but also “What state am I in as I look at this situation?”

Excessive urgency, narrowed perspective, and certainty that arrives too quickly all become signals that stress has already begun to influence the process. Sometimes a few hours of distance from the pressure can completely change how a situation is seen. Other times, a night of sleep before signing something important, or a conversation with someone able to restore perspective, can make visible options that seemed non-existent just hours before.

A leader who understands this mechanism begins to create the biological and mental conditions that allow them to see more clearly what is actually in front of them. The quality of a decision depends significantly on the state from which the situation is being viewed.

A decision begins to be shaped at the moment stress creates the illusion of clarity — even before the pressure has reached its peak. The right moment for an important decision is the one in which the leader still has enough mental resources to see more than a single way out.

In a crisis, perspective begins to narrow before the leader realises they are seeing less.

The ideas explored in this article are part of the broader direction developed in How to Lead Without Losing Yourself and The Lucid Leader, where pressure, perception, and the biology of decision-making are examined in greater depth.