How Pressure Changes Decision Making

“I thought he was going to hit him.”

I didn’t get to see it, I only heard the observers talking about it afterwards…

“…it was a heated discussion, but I couldn't believe what I saw, Marco reached across the table and grabbed Erik. I was sure he was going to hit him, but luckily he remembered where he was and stopped himself.”

The event was real, but the names have been changed to protect the guilty

Over the years I've seen human behaviour at its best and at its worst in business simulations.

The most extreme behaviour I've witnessed has usually appeared in assessed programmes. And this example was from a high profile programme where career progression and reputation were on the line. All the participants would have felt this.

Why do capable professionals sometimes behave in ways that surprise even themselves? We see the same questions everywhere:

Footballers don't suddenly forget how to take penalties.

Racing drivers don't usually crash because they've forgotten how to drive.

CEOs don't suddenly become unintelligent during a crisis.

Pressure changes how people think… or perhaps more accurately, which habits of thinking people fall back on.

Commercial judgement would be much easier if it could be exercised when the world around us was calm, when we had unlimited time, complete information and no meaningful consequences. In reality, important decisions are usually made when the opposite is true. Time is limited. Information is incomplete. Stakeholders disagree. Careers, reputations and commercial results all feel as though they're at stake.

Under those conditions, something interesting happens.

Pressure doesn't make decisions more difficult. It changes the way we approach them.

Some people become more cautious. Others become more impulsive. Some stop listening to alternative views. Others cling to a failing plan because changing course feels like admitting they were wrong. None of these responses necessarily reflect a lack of intelligence or technical ability. They reflect how judgement is affected when the pressure increases.

This is one of the reasons business simulations can be so valuable.

A well-designed simulation creates enough commercial realism for participants to care about the outcome. They become responsible for decisions, compete with their peers and experience the consequences of what they do. The pressure isn't the same as running a real business, but it is often enough for familiar patterns of thinking and behaviour to emerge.

That creates two opportunities.

For participants, it creates an opportunity for reflection. Why did I become defensive? Why did I stop listening? Why was I reluctant to change direction? What was driving my decisions? Those conversations can help people recognise habits they may never have noticed before and consider how they might respond differently in the future.

For organisations, simulations can also provide a richer picture of how people exercise judgement when conditions become more demanding. Not because simulations reveal someone's "true character", but because they create situations where patterns of judgement and behaviour become easier to observe than they often are in interviews, meetings or knowledge tests.

Perhaps that's why pressure matters so much. It doesn't create our habits of judgement. It makes them easier to see. And if we can see them, we can begin to understand them, reflect on them and, ultimately, improve them.