"The pressure conversation"

Not long ago, I told an engineer they needed to become more like a psychopath.

That got their attention.

Of course, I didn’t mean it literally. What I meant was they could learn something from how certain people stay calm under pressure.

They’d come to me saying the workload felt unmanageable, too much pressure, too many expectations, and no space to breathe. I’ve been there too, that tight-chested feeling that something will slip, that you’re carrying more than you can hold.

And as a manager, it’s tempting to try and soothe it away: “Don’t worry, you’re doing great.” But reassurance rarely helps. It can make someone feel unseen, like their experience is being smoothed over.

So instead, I shared a story from The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton. He argues that many so-called “functional psychopaths” (not the criminal kind) have mastered certain traits, fearlessness under pressure, the ability to stay present, a laser-like focus on what they can control.

What fascinated me wasn’t the psychology, but the perspective.
When pressure mounts, most of us experience it as something happening to us. But what if we treated it as information instead, a sign that something matters, that we care?

When I said this, the engineer paused and laughed.
“Right,” they said, “so maybe the goal isn’t to feel less pressure, but to meet it differently.”

That was it. Nothing in the project changed, but something in how they faced it did.

In my last email, I wrote about how you can’t make your people happy, that happiness can’t be given or taken away, only nurtured.
I think the same is true for pressure. We can’t remove it entirely. But we can help people see it differently.

And sometimes, that shift in perspective is enough to help them breathe again.

Until next time,
Dermot
​The Messy Middle.

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