Why Leadership Decisions Can End Before the Pressure Does
Written by Myra Swan Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist
Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate, and former Group Managing Director. Drawing on decades of leadership experience, she created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ and now works privately with women in senior corporate leadership.
There were decisions I made during my years in senior leadership that were finished long before I stopped carrying them. The meeting was over. The decision had been communicated. Everyone had gone back to their offices, and another problem was already waiting for my attention.
From the outside, we had moved on. I hadn't always. I could replay a conversation later that evening and wonder whether I could have handled it differently. I could know that a difficult decision was absolutely necessary and still think about the people affected by it. I could move straight into the next meeting, make another decision, and continue performing exactly as everyone expected me to.
That is one of the strange things about being highly capable. You can continue functioning long after something has stopped feeling finished inside you.
During my years as a Group Managing Director, I carried responsibility for hundreds of people. Decisions had consequences. They affected jobs, families, financial outcomes, and the future of the businesses I was responsible for. I understood that responsibility came with the role.
What I didn't understand nearly as well was this: My responsibility could be complete while the pressure associated with it remained active in me. There is an important difference between the two.
Difficult decisions still matter
I think we sometimes make leadership too simple when we talk about decision-making. We talk about being decisive: gathering the information, assessing the risk, making the call, communicating clearly, and moving forward. All of that matters. But some of the hardest decisions in leadership are difficult precisely because there is no perfect answer. You may make the right decision for the organisation, knowing somebody will be hurt by it, or end someone's employment while still caring about what happens to their family. You may choose one direction, knowing another person strongly believes you are wrong. Even when you make the best decision available with everything you know at the time, you may still wonder three days later whether there was something you missed.
This is not the pressure of trying to decide. It is what can remain after the decision has been made, communicated, and acted upon. That doesn't necessarily mean you lack confidence in your decision. Sometimes it simply means you are human enough to understand its consequences. The problem begins when caring about the consequences turns into continuing to carry responsibility for everything that happens afterward.
Where your responsibility ends
This distinction has become increasingly important to me. A leader should care. I never want to promote a version of leadership where becoming more senior means becoming less human. You should care about the people affected by your decisions. You should think carefully about consequences. You should be willing to question yourself and acknowledge when you get something wrong. But caring about something and carrying it indefinitely are not the same thing. There comes a point when your part is complete.
Perhaps you made the decision, explained why, treated people as respectfully as you could, and dealt with what was yours to deal with. What happens next may no longer belong entirely to you. That sounds obvious when written on a page.
It can feel remarkably different at two o'clock in the morning. Because your mind doesn't always respect organisational boundaries. It doesn't necessarily say, "The decision was signed off on Tuesday, therefore we are finished thinking about this." It goes back, replays the conversation, and searches for another answer. Because senior women are often exceptionally good problem solvers, we can keep trying to solve situations over which we no longer have any meaningful control.
What still belongs to you
One of the questions I wish I had asked myself more often in leadership was very simple:
"Is there actually anything left for me to do?"
Not think about it, worry about it, or mentally rehearse it. Actually do. Sometimes the answer would have been yes. There was another conversation to have, a decision to document, someone I needed to follow up with, or something I had promised to resolve. But sometimes the answer would have been no. My part was finished.
The uncomfortable part is accepting that completion does not guarantee a comfortable outcome. Someone may still be angry. A former employee may disagree with what happened, or a colleague may think you should have chosen differently. A board may make a decision you would not have made yourself, and a market may respond in a way you cannot control.
Leadership gives you responsibility. It does not give you authority over every consequence. Yet we can continue carrying outcomes as though thinking about them for another six hours will somehow increase our control over them. It won't.
How pressure travels
This is one of the places where Accumulated Executive Pressure™ becomes important. I use that term to describe the continuous, day-to-day reality of sustained executive responsibility and the pressure that can accumulate through carrying it over time. We tend to notice the restructuring, the crisis, the board conflict, the difficult dismissal, and the financial decision with enormous consequences. But an executive career is not one difficult decision.
It is thousands of them, and if each experience leaves something behind before you move to the next one, pressure can begin travelling with you. You finish one difficult conversation and walk into another meeting. You leave the office, but the conversation comes home. You go to bed, but part of your mind is still at the table. Then morning comes, and because you are capable, you get up and do it again. That ability to continue can become misleading. We can mistake functioning for completion. They are not the same thing.
When your body stays alert
There is another part of this that deserves attention. Sometimes you are no longer consciously thinking about what happened, but you still don't feel as though you have come down from it.
You may find it harder to switch off, notice that your patience is shorter, or notice that your sleep has changed. You may be sitting at dinner with people you love while some part of you still feels as though it is waiting for the next problem.
None of those things automatically means leadership pressure is the cause, and persistent or concerning physical or psychological changes deserve appropriate professional attention. But I do think senior women should become more curious about what their lives are telling them.
In my work, I call these Footprints™: the physical, cognitive, emotional, or relational changes worth noticing when sustained responsibility has been carried for a long time.
The question isn't, "Why can't I get over this?" I think there is a kinder and far more useful question:
"What am I still carrying from something that has already ended?"
Recognition changes what follows
This is where Recognition – Release – Recovery™ begins. Recognition is not analysing yourself endlessly. It is becoming clear about what is actually still active. Is there something you genuinely need to do? Is there a responsibility that still belongs to you? Are you carrying somebody else's reaction? Are you trying to control an outcome over which you no longer have authority? Or has an experience simply never had anywhere to go because you moved immediately from one demand to the next? Those are very different situations, and they require different responses.
Sometimes release means taking action: finishing the conversation, documenting the decision, or making the call. At other times, it means recognising that the responsibility belongs to somebody else now. It may also mean accepting that another person is allowed to be unhappy with a decision you still believe was necessary.
For some experiences, release means having one confidential place where you don't have to be the composed executive for an hour and can finally say what carrying that decision actually asked of you. That is not weakness. It is completion.
Let the decision end
I don't believe the goal is to forget difficult leadership experiences. Some decisions should stay with us. They shape our judgement, teach us what we value, and change the way we lead the next time we find ourselves sitting across from someone having to make another impossible choice. There are decisions from my own leadership years that I would never want erased because they became part of the leader, and eventually the woman, I became.
But there is a difference between carrying the wisdom of an experience and continuing to carry its pressure. That distinction matters. Because there will always be another quarter, another person who needs an answer, and another situation where the woman at the top is expected to know what to do.
The next time a completed decision follows you home, don't immediately tell yourself that you should have moved on by now. Ask whether there is genuinely anything left for you to do. If there is, do it. If there isn't, perhaps the work is no longer making another decision. Perhaps the work is allowing this one to finally become complete.
The decision can remain part of your leadership without remaining active in your life.
Read more from Myra Swan Kotze
Myra Swan Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist
Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate, and former Group Managing Director. Her work is grounded in decades of leadership experience and a deeply personal understanding of what it takes to keep carrying responsibility when everyone assumes you are coping. She created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ to give language to the often-invisible pressure that builds while accomplished women continue to lead, deliver, and hold everything together. Through Elevated Woman, her deliberately intimate private practice, Myra helps women in senior corporate leadership recognise what years of responsibility have asked of them and release the pressure their bodies have been carrying. She also hosts the Elevated Woman™ Podcast, where she opens honest conversations about the woman behind the leadership role.
