Episode 651 - The Emergency That Isn’t There

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Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through

strong human relations, team building and goal achieving.

This is the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Felle

Valido.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast.

It's episode 651.

The most healing thing you can do is stop living like everything is an

emergency.

Listen to that again in your mind because if you're a leader, especially a

high performer, there's a strong chance you are operating like every email is

urgent, every phone call is critical, every meeting is life or death, and

every mistake is catastrophic.

And that pace will quietly destroy you.

I've worked in environments where real emergencies happen.

Sirens, radios, flashing lights, command posts, decisions that actually

change outcomes in minutes.

I understand urgency.

I understand pressure and most of what you are dealing with today is not

that.

It feels urgent.

It is not.

And when you treat everything like an emergency, three things start

happening.

First, your nervous system never resets.

You live in a constant state of elevated stress.

Cortisol stays high.

Your breathing stays shallow.

Your tone gets sharper.

Your patience gets thinner.

You are physically present, but mentally scattered.

Second, your team starts mirroring you.

If you move fast, they sprint.

If you panic, they panic.

If you send late night emails, marked urgent, they assume everything is on

fire over time.

That creates a culture of reaction instead of a culture of strategy.

Third, you lose perspective.

When everything is labeled critical, nothing actually is real,

red key moments get buried under routine noise.

Let me say that clearly when everything is an emergency, nothing is one of

the most disciplined leadership skills you can develop is the ability to

classify your moments correctly, green light, routine, yellow light,

important, but not urgent, red light, high consequence, time sensitive,

act now.

Most leaders are operating with everything stuck on red.

That's not strength.

That is miscalibration.

Here is what happens when you stop living like everything is an emergency.

You start thinking again.

You begin asking better questions instead of reacting to surface noise.

You pause before responding.

You notice patterns instead of chasing problems.

You look ahead instead of staring at the immediate inbox, your clarity returns.

Your team also changes.

They begin to trust that when you say something critical, it truly is your

words regain weight, your tone carries intention instead of tension.

There's healing in that healing does not mean you become passive.

It means you become precise.

Leaders who treat every issue like a five alarm fire eventually burn out

their credibility.

There are people stop feeling urgency because they're numb to it.

You cannot run an organization in permanent crisis mode unless it is

actually in crisis.

And even then you need structured calm.

I want to give you something tactical today.

Here's a simple practice you can implement starting tomorrow morning.

Before you open your email, before you respond to a text before you jump

into a meeting, take two minutes and ask yourself, is this truly urgent or

does it feel urgent because I have trained myself to respond instantly?

That question alone will change your leadership posture.

Now, let's go deeper.

Why do leaders live like everything is an emergency?

Sometimes it's ego being needed feels powerful.

Responding instantly feels important.

Speed creates a sense of relevance.

Sometimes it's fear, fear of missing something, fear of looking slow, fear of

being outperformed.

Sometimes it's a habit, years of reactive behavior that went unchecked.

And sometimes especially for high achievers, it's identity.

You built your reputation on being the first to respond.

The one who fixes everything, the person who never drops the ball.

That identity can quietly become your prison.

You do not have to be in a constant sprint to be effective.

In fact, the strongest leaders I know move with deliberate calm.

They're not rushed.

They are not frantic.

They are not sending panic through the room with their body language.

They assess a classify.

They decide that is red key discipline, recognizing when a moment

truly carries weight and when it is routine noise.

If your team sees you flinch at every small issue, they will lose confidence in

your judgment.

If they see you measured and composed, even when something matters, they feel

steadier.

Leadership is emotional transfer.

Your pace becomes their pace.

If you want a healthier organization, you need a healthier operating rhythm.

So let me give you a practical framework, create three categories for your

daily work, category one, truly time sensitive and high consequence.

Category two, important, but can wait category three, administrative noise.

Commit to spending the majority of your day in category two.

That is where strategy lives.

That is where improvement happens.

That is where culture is shaped.

Category one should be rare.

If category one is your default, you're either misclassifying under planning

or tolerating chaos.

And that brings us back to healing.

The most healing thing you can do is stop living like everything is an emergency

healing for your nervous system, healing for your team's morale, healing for

your credibility.

You cannot lead well if you're always bracing for impact.

There is a difference between being alert and being alarmed.

Alert leaders are aware.

Alarmed leaders are reactive.

You get to choose which one you are.

So if this episode hit you today, here is your seven minute challenge.

For the next week, label your moments, green, yellow, and red.

Write it down if you have to force yourself to classify instead of react.

Watch what changes in your tone, your breathing, and your clarity.

Leadership is not about moving fast all the time.

It's about moving right at the right time.

Stop living like everything is an emergency.

You will think clearer.

You will speak calmer and you will lead better.

This has been the seven minute leadership podcast.

And I thank you for listening.

For more Paul Felle Valito podcasts, visit PaulFelleValito.com.

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