How can I recognise when stress is affecting my judgement? (Executive Stress)

Stress is not the enemy of good judgement. A moderate amount can sharpen your attention and get you moving when action is needed. The trouble starts when shifts in your speed, attention or behaviour go unnoticed and the decisions they shape are never tested.

A meta-analysis by Starcke and Brand (2016) of 32 experimental datasets involving 1,829 participants examined decisions made under uncertainty. Under stress, decisions were slightly more disadvantageous, reward-seeking and risk-taking overall. The effect was larger where increased risk-taking was harmful and absent in some other decision settings. The research was laboratory-based rather than a study of senior executives, but it makes an important point about executive stress and judgement: stress does not affect every decision in the same way, and confidence alone cannot tell you whether your judgement has shifted.

Ask whether your own decision-making has changed. Are you moving more quickly than the situation requires? Are you asking fewer questions? Are you looking for challenge or for agreement? Those observations tell you more than confidence does. In my coaching work, leaders often say the first sign was not a poor decision but a shorter temper with their team, with a colleague or with themselves, which is a useful place to start looking. The EQ-i decision-making realm offers a related way to examine problem-solving, reality testing and impulse control.

What stress can do to executive judgement

Stress prepares the body to deal with demand. Attention narrows towards whatever appears most urgent, energy is mobilised and competing signals may be filtered out. This can be useful in a genuine emergency. An executive role, however, often involves complex rather than immediate threats: competing stakeholder needs, uncertain forecasts, political sensitivities, long-term consequences and decisions for which there is no perfect answer. A systematic review by Van Herk et al. (2024) links heightened activity in the body’s stress systems during acute stress with impaired decision-making. My resources on decision-making quality set out a wider set of disciplines for decisions under uncertainty.

In that environment, a narrowed field of attention can create a false sense of clarity. You may give greater weight to vivid or recent information, read disagreement as obstruction, prefer action simply because it reduces discomfort, or delay because no option feels safe enough. Stress can also reduce curiosity. Instead of asking, “What else might be true?”, the mind moves towards, “How do I prove that my reading is right?”

Pressure can push a seasoned leader’s judgement in a predictable direction. It reduces access to the cognitive and emotional intelligence leaders rely on, so the first recognisable pattern tends to win out. That is why awareness, feedback and deliberate interruption matter before a poor decision makes the strain visible.

Ten ways to build awareness of your judgement under pressure

The strategies below are habits you can build, not personality traits you either have or lack. You do not need all ten at once. Start with the two or three that relate to your lowest scores in the quick check, and add others once they feel routine.

1. Step outside your decisions once a day and review how you are acting

When I am busy, I spend far more time making decisions than watching how I make them. At the end of the day, take five minutes to look back at what you decided. Which decisions moved quickly? Which did you revisit? Where did you speak more than you listened?

Keep it free of self-criticism. The aim is a regular checkpoint, so that a change in your pattern shows up while it is still small. Jot down two or three observations and look for repetition across a few weeks, rather than reacting to one difficult day.

2. Ask for feedback from several people, ideally every day

When you are under strain, you are also less likely to notice how others experienced you. So ask a few people, perhaps a trusted colleague, someone in your team and someone outside your reporting line, what they saw in your decisions and conversations this week.

Ask something specific. “What did I do that helped in that meeting?” and “Where did you feel you could not challenge me?” tend to get more useful answers than “Any feedback?”

3. Track how your thinking and emotions are functioning

Awareness improves when you can see patterns over time. Create a simple record of how you are thinking and feeling. Rate your clarity, patience, openness to challenge and confidence in your decisions, perhaps once a day, so that you have something to compare against when you feel uncertain.

Look at the record rather than your memory of the period. Memory tends to smooth out difficult weeks, whereas a few lines written at the time show what is actually happening and when it started.

4. Name what you are feeling before you decide

Before an important decision, take a moment to identify the emotion that is most present. Is it irritation, fear, excitement or a wish to be finished? Naming a feeling is not the same as obeying it. It makes the feeling visible, so that it becomes one input among others rather than the hidden driver of the call.

A precise label helps. “I feel anxious about losing control of this project” gives you more to work with than “I am stressed”. Ask what the feeling is telling you, and what would be true if it were wrong.

5. Track how your stress changes through the day and across situations

Stress is not constant. Many leaders find that it rises around particular people, meetings or times of day. Note when your stress feels highest over a week: early in the morning, after a certain call, in conversations with a particular stakeholder or late in the afternoon.

Once you can see a pattern, you can plan. You might schedule important decisions for the time when you are most reliable, prepare more carefully for a difficult conversation or build a short break between two demanding events.

6. Note how sleep, energy, caffeine and physical tension affect your decisions

Pressure often shows up in the body before it shows up in your thinking. Notice how your sleep, energy, caffeine intake, meals and physical tension line up with the decisions you make. A call made after a poor night or a long run of coffee may deserve a second look.

Keep the note short. You are looking for a link between your physical state and the quality of your judgement, not a perfect dataset. When you spot one, postpone a non-urgent call or ask someone else to check your reasoning.

7. Keep a simple dashboard for the signals that matter most to you

A dashboard is a short list of measures you check regularly. Examples include the number of decisions you have reopened this week, the number of meetings you left without a clear outcome, or how much sleep you have had. Choose three to five measures that reflect your judgement and wellbeing, and review them weekly.

The dashboard does not need software. A notebook page or a spreadsheet is enough. What matters is looking at the same few indicators over time and noticing when they move in a direction you did not intend.

8. Use a short checklist for important decisions

A checklist helps when your attention is narrow. Before a significant decision, confirm the question you are answering, the options you have considered, the evidence you have checked, the people affected and the review point. Keep it to a handful of items you can remember under pressure.

A checklist does not replace judgement. It makes sure the steps that are easy to skip under stress still happen. Revise it when you notice a repeated gap in your decisions.

9. Consider a formal emotional intelligence assessment with professional feedback

A validated emotional intelligence assessment, interpreted by a qualified specialist, can show strengths and blind spots that self-reflection alone may miss. People are often surprised by the gap between how they see themselves and how others experience them, particularly under strain.

Treat the results as a starting point for development rather than a final verdict. A good feedback session should leave you with specific things to practise, not only a profile to file away.

I am EQ-i certified to deliver EQ-i and EQ 360 feedback. If an assessment interests you, I can take you through your results and what they mean for your decisions under pressure. You can find out more on my executive coaching services page.

10. Track your rest, support, exercise and nutrition alongside your decisions

Judgement depends on the wider conditions of your life. Sleep, support, movement and eating patterns all influence how clearly you think. Monitoring them alongside your decisions helps you spot when a dip in judgement is really a dip in recovery.

You do not need to track everything. Choose the one area that most often falls away when pressure rises, and record it with your decision notes.

Use your working environment as an early-warning system

Stress is not only an individual matter. Working conditions can steadily erode judgement even when each demand looks manageable on its own. Back-to-back meetings remove time for reflection. Constant notifications train attention towards interruption. A culture that rewards instant answers makes uncertainty difficult to admit. A team that depends on the executive for every call creates both overload and a distorted flow of information.

Look at the environment around your decisions. Where do important choices happen? At the end of exhausting days, between meetings or in rooms where no one feels able to disagree? Which decisions arrive without clear criteria? Where has “urgent” become the default label? Which responsibilities could move closer to the people with the best information?

Small structural changes can protect judgement: leave short gaps before consequential meetings, separate discussion from decision where possible, define who provides challenge, state the decision criteria in advance, distinguish reversible from irreversible choices and agree which issues genuinely need executive attention.

Match the decision process to your available capacity

Not every decision needs to wait until you feel calm and fully rested. Leadership often requires action while conditions are imperfect. The important distinction is between a decision that can be corrected cheaply and one that creates lasting financial, legal, safety, people or reputational consequences.

When capacity is low, keep reversible decisions small and make the review point explicit. For an irreversible or high-impact decision, improve the conditions before committing where the situation allows. Reduce avoidable interruption, bring in independent challenge, check the evidence and separate the pressure to relieve discomfort from the actual deadline.

Deferring a decision can also carry risk. Record what would be gained by waiting, what might be lost and which missing information would genuinely change the choice. This turns delay into a deliberate part of the process rather than an unexamined response to anxiety. The guide on protecting the quality of your thinking when mentally depleted develops this question of capacity further.

Conclusion

Stress rarely announces that it is about to influence a decision. It works through speed, certainty, attention and habit, so you are more likely to notice it by learning your own shifts than by waiting until you feel overwhelmed. Self-criticism adds little. A deliberate interruption is more useful: pause, check your state, separate fact from interpretation, reopen the options and involve someone who can see what you cannot.

Further reading

• Composure: Emotional steadiness under pressure
• Decision-making velocity: Making timely decisions without over-deliberating
• Emotional intelligence: Eelf-awareness, empathy and self-regulation as a leadership capability
• Asking good questions: Inquiry as a leadership practice
• Feedback responding: Receiving and acting on feedback without becoming defensive

Reflection questions

• What is my most reliable early sign that pressure is narrowing my judgement?
• Which current decision would benefit from a pause or a wider frame, and who could challenge my reasoning on it?
• What would the calmer, more curious version of me ask before acting?

This article is part of a seven-part series on executive stress. You can find the full series on the executive stress hub page.

Sources

• Starcke, K. and Brand, M. (2016) ‘Effects of stress on decisions under uncertainty: a meta-analysis’, Psychological Bulletin, 142(9), pp. 909–933. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000060
• Thompson, H. L. (2010) The Stress Effect: Why Smart Leaders Make Dumb Decisions and What to Do About It. 1st edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Van Herk, L. et al. (2024) ‘Heightened SAM- and HPA-axis activity during acute stress impairs decision-making: a systematic review on underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms’, Neurobiology of Stress, 31, 100659.