How Leaders Break Through Instead of Breaking Down
Three disciplines to stay grounded when the pressure mounts
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl
The difference between leaders who break and those who break through isn’t what hits them. It’s how they respond when everything falls apart. The market shifts. The numbers slip. The team loses confidence. What once looked like an opportunity now feels like a threat.
I know this because I lived it – and nearly crumbled under it.
When Mindset Breaks a Team
In The Planning Paradox, I shared how my company stalled at $4 million while aiming for $15 million. What I didn’t share was how my mindset made it worse.
On paper, everything looked perfect: hot market, strong team, borrowed to fuel growth. But month after month, we stayed stuck at $4 million. Excitement drained into exhaustion as profits bled, debt mounted, and sleep vanished.
What I didn’t realize was that my team was watching. And what they saw wasn’t confidence or determination. It was a leader who had lost faith in the plan, and in himself. People began to leave. Not everyone, but enough to send a message: no one wants to be on what feels like a losing team.
That’s when it hit me: a leader’s mindset becomes the team’s mindset. Project anxiety and desperation, and you won’t inspire breakthrough thinking. You accelerate the very problems you’re trying to solve.
A Turnaround with Lessons
Eventually, I found a strategic partner. Together we grew from $13 million to $40 million and sold in an all-cash deal to a publicly traded firm. It worked out better than I imagined. Yet I still wonder: What if I had stayed grounded and optimistic? Could we have broken through on our own?
We’ll never know. But I do know this: when leaders remain grounded and project confidence in the outcome, their teams follow with focus and resolve.
What I’ve learned since is that resilience isn’t a personality trait. It’s a mindset.
These three frameworks will help you stay grounded, sustain optimism, and turn adversity into progress – the difference between leaders who break down and those who break through.
1. Let Core Ideology Be Your Compass
When times are tough, leaders need a compass. It’s easy to panic, get distracted, or chase quick fixes. The leaders who endure root their decisions in core ideology and a clear long-term goal.
As Jim Collins taught us, protect the core and stimulate progress. Your compass - core ideology plus long-term goal - does both.
Protect the core
Values: who you are; the behaviors that define your culture
Purpose: why you exist; your deeper cause or passion
Niche: what you do; the space where you can be the best
Stimulate progress
Long-Term Goal: where you're going; the future you're working toward
If you haven't yet established your core ideology and long-term goal, there are proven tools and frameworks to help (topics for future articles). What matters is this: when done well, your compass becomes the guide that gets you through a storm. Done poorly, it becomes a false compass, which is worse than useless.
Compass In Action: Death & Company
I saw this with Death & Company, the James Beard Award-winning hospitality group behind some of the world’s most respected cocktail bars. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down their industry overnight. Three locations, 150 employees, and more than a decade of reputation paused in a single day.
Many companies panicked and chased quick revenue in unrelated ventures. Death & Company chose a different path: they leaned on their compass.
Protect the core
Values: Curiosity, Pursuit of Excellence, Contagious Joy, and Connection
Purpose: Creating experiences and connecting people
Niche: Cocktail-anchored hospitality
Stimulate progress
Long-Term Goal: Become the most sought-after cocktail brand in the world
Anchored in these principles, they made identity-driven choices rather than fear-driven moves. They launched a fund to support laid-off staff, published a free reopening playbook for the industry, and used the shutdown to reimagine operations.
Instead of scrambling for survival, they stayed true to who they were while adapting with purpose. When reopening began, they raised capital and expanded into 9 US and international locations. What could have been collapse became the catalyst for their strongest growth.
Use Your Compass Under Pressure
Your compass will not eliminate the storm, but when it is built right, it will keep you moving in the right direction.
Name it: Capture your values, purpose, niche, and long-term goal on one page with your leadership team. Do not rush this. It is collaborative work that evolves through honest discussion and testing.
Test it: When pressure mounts, run every major decision against these four elements before reacting.
Decide with it: When options conflict, choose the path that aligns with your compass, even if it is harder in the short term.
A strong compass will not give you calm seas, but it will keep your team aligned and moving forward when everything else feels uncertain.
But clarity of direction alone isn’t enough. When the storm hits, leaders also need the discipline to face harsh truths without losing confidence in the outcome.
2. Embrace the Stockdale Paradox
When everything goes wrong, leaders often feel trapped between two bad options: tell the truth and crush morale, or stay positive and ignore reality.
But that’s a false choice. The strongest leaders do both.
This is the Stockdale Paradox. Named for Admiral James Stockdale – who endured years as a prisoner of war – the principle is stark but powerful: confront the brutal facts while holding absolute faith you’ll prevail.
My Failure with the Paradox
When my company stalled at $4 million, the signs were obvious: losses piling up, debt mounting, our strategy failing. Instead of confronting reality, I looked the other way.
I had plenty of faith we'd prevail. Too much, in fact. I told myself next month the big deal would land, utilization would rise, and people would improve. I refused to acknowledge reality. Losses mounted as I clung to blind optimism.
That wasn’t the Stockdale Paradox. It was denial dressed up as optimism.
By the time I faced the truth, what could have been corrected early had ballooned into an existential threat. If I had honored the paradox – confronting hard truths while staying confident – I could have shifted course far sooner.
Denial drained my energy, and my team felt it.
Optimism without truth is denial. Truth without optimism is despair. Leaders who hold both build resilience in themselves and belief in their teams.
Grounded Optimism in Practice
Most leaders don’t think of truth and optimism as partners. But once you adopt this mindset, the path forward becomes clear.
Anchor: Hold fast to your long-term goal – this challenge is a bump, not the end.
Identify: Be brutally honest about what’s not working.
Act: Generate solutions and execute those with the greatest impact.
This is grounded optimism: clear-eyed about the present, unshakable about the future. It’s the discipline that keeps you moving forward and the belief that gives your team the confidence to follow.
Once you’ve faced reality with clear eyes, the next challenge is finding the courage to move forward, and that almost always means stepping into discomfort.
3. Embrace Discomfort as Growth
The biggest breakthroughs rarely come when things are easy. They happen when you’re stretched beyond what feels comfortable.
Most leaders avoid discomfort. They duck tough conversations, postpone difficult decisions, or delay the hard work that really matters.
But the leaders who build resilient organizations understand something different: discomfort is the training ground for growth. It’s where you develop the capabilities not just to handle today’s challenge, but to take on bigger ones tomorrow.
The 4 C’s Formula
Dan Sullivan calls this The 4C’s Formula: Commitment leads to Courage, which builds Capability, which creates Confidence – and that confidence fuels your next commitment.
Commitment: Take on something meaningful, even without knowing exactly how you’ll pull it off.
Courage: That commitment forces you into the messy middle – setbacks, discomfort, and doubt.
Capability: Stay the course and you build new skills, systems, and strengths.
Confidence: With those capabilities, what once felt impossible becomes your new baseline.
In Practice
I see this cycle play out with nearly every leadership team I coach. Early in the journey, almost all realize they don’t have all the right people to reach the next level. Sometimes it’s a new hire who isn’t performing. Sometimes it’s a long-time employee who’s been with the company for decades. Either way, performance stalls, accountability slips, and leaders spend more energy picking up slack than driving the business forward.
At first, most leaders avoid the issue. They hope things will improve, but avoidance only prolongs the pain. Eventually it becomes undeniable. The leaders who grow choose courage. They have the tough conversations, give direct feedback, reset expectations, and, when necessary, help someone move on to a role where they can thrive.
In the process, they build new leadership capabilities: setting clear expectations, giving regular feedback, and creating accountable, high-performing teams. They stop retreating from the tough stuff. That pit in the stomach becomes a signal of growth – a prompt to lean in, not pull back.
Stay in the Growth Zone
Discomfort is not a signal to stop. It is proof you are building the muscles for what is next.
Recognize: When discomfort hits, do not ignore it.
Reframe: Ask, “What new capability might this situation allow us to build?”
Model: Show your team that leaning into discomfort is how growth happens.
Leaders who lean into discomfort turn resistance into resilience.
The leaders who embrace this mindset don’t just get through hard moments – they transform them into strength. And when you layer this discipline with a clear compass and the Stockdale Paradox, you have a complete mindset for grounded optimism.
Choosing Grounded Optimism
Every leader will face moments when the pressure feels overwhelming. Some will retreat, deny reality, or let their teams absorb their despair. Others will anchor themselves, confront the truth, and use the challenge as fuel for growth.
The difference isn’t personality. It’s discipline.
Compass: Stay rooted in your values, purpose, niche, and long-term goal.
Paradox: Confront brutal facts while keeping unshakable confidence you’ll prevail.
Growth: Reframe discomfort as proof you’re building the muscles for what’s next.
These practices won’t calm the storm, but they will keep you moving through it. They will give your team clarity when everything else feels uncertain. And they will turn adversity into advantage.
Your mindset becomes their mindset.
Choose grounded optimism, and you won’t just help your organization survive the storm.
You’ll lead it to thrive because of the storm.
Footnotes & Sources
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946).
“Protect the Core and Stimulate Progress”, as cited in Jim Collins, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994).
Admiral James Stockdale, as cited in Jim Collins, Good to Great (2001).
Dan Sullivan, “The 4 C’s Formula: Commitment, Courage, Capability, Confidence,” Strategic Coach.
Death & Company, Reopening Playbook for Bars & Restaurants (2020), available via Death & Co. Hospitality Group.
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