In today’s business climate, pressure isn’t an occasional visitor. It’s a constant force that can sharpen a team’s performance or expose fractures. For small business leaders navigating tight deadlines, limited resources, and ever-shifting demands, building a resilient and trusted team is not optional. If the foundation is not set up properly, teams will struggle to withstand the weight of pressure, much less thrive in it.
High-performance teams aren’t just skilled. They are emotionally strong, adaptable, and able to execute consistently even when conditions aren’t ideal. Building this type of team isn’t by default and doesn’t happen overnight. It takes careful planning and deliberate efforts across hiring, leading with intent, cultural reinforcement, promoting and trusting those who deserve it, as well as ongoing development and training.
Make no mistake, though, hiring the right people is three-quarters of the battle. The rest: how they are treated, led, and trained is one quarter. You can’t just take any college athlete and turn him into the Super Bowl MVP.
During periods with fewer resources and leaner teams, every decision and every person matters. Business leaders must be committed to long-term excellence and never lose sight of the human element. By doing this, businesses will have a team that catalyzes growth.
What follows is a practical guide for business leaders looking to develop teams that perform better because of pressure, not despite it.
Hire for Resilience, Not Just Experience
You cannot teach resilience in a crash course. It’s a mindset. Unfortunately, resumes rarely reveal how a candidate responds to pressure. Hiring managers must look beyond where someone has worked and what they have achieved. Dig deeper into the credentials neatly typed on that piece of paper. Interviews should unveil qualities that a candidate brings to the table. Resilience, emotional intelligence, dedication, and experience in problem-solving under stress are all traits that demonstrate an individual’s performance, especially when things become unpredictable.
Ask questions about how someone navigated a difficult team dynamic or adapted to unexpected changes. For example, ask, “Can you give me an example of a protracted emergency or crisis at a company and how it affected your work and how the company benefited from you?” Often, candidates give an example of a short-term obstacle that was resolved in a way that would’ve happened with or without their specific efforts.
However, in looking to hire those who truly should carry the ball in a crisis, you must ask about their experience with long periods under stress, where they were valuable as an individual and integral as part of the team in finding the way past it. This question is difficult because you don’t want to ask it in such a way that people can figure out what the correct answer is and just give that, true or false.
So often I find myself asking this question over and over in different ways that don’t give away the answer. A magnificent answer, for example, would include a situation in which 2/3 of their department left the company unexpectedly, in a coup d’état or raid. They had to step up to lead, cover responsibilities, work long hours, and take on additional tasks until the department was re-staffed and normalized, bringing the department in for a crash landing rather than a crash and potentially saving the company. One of the worst answers I’ve gotten was, after circling and asking over and over in different ways for different examples the best the candidate could do was to lament that her job in a crisis was to deliver termination or layoff messages to employees when a company was doing poorly, as if to say she had still done a basic element of her job despite not getting the utopia she deserved. Respectfully, that’s little more than a ministerial function, and she seemed to think she should get a Medal of Honor, but was no hero. I lament my decision to hire her. Look for those who frame setbacks as stories where they were able to contribute to turning a negative situation into a positive outcome, rather than blaming the company for the difficulties.
The truth is that skills can get you through a typical day. But when things get uncertain, the steady, adaptable, committed, and loyal people shine. You want teammates who lean in, keep morale high, and look for solutions when the easy answers fall apart.
When you hire people who have already demonstrated their ability to recover, recalibrate, and refocus, you add more than just skills. These qualities often distinguish between someone who merely performs and someone who leads from any seat.
On a practical note, your best bet is to hire resilient, loyal, clutch-hitting zealots directly out of universities and develop them. Of course, the gestation period for this route is very long. Hiring mid and lower-level people in the aftermarket provides a lower chance of this, but there are indeed diamonds in the rough. Expensive retained searches for top executives are hit or miss; a significant number of hires will carry the ball in a crisis, and a considerable number will pack their bags. Who is more likely to stick through a crisis in a marriage, somebody on their first marriage or their 5th?
Build Trust Early and Reinforce it Often
In high-pressure environments, trust becomes your foundation. Without it, even the most skilled teams stall. A team cannot function effectively under pressure if colleagues are uncertain about each other’s reliability.
Trust empowers teams to communicate quickly, take chances, and stay aligned during fast-moving situations. On top of everything else, trust builds confidence in individuals and the team’s ability to work together to respond to high-pressure situations.
On the other hand, you have accountability. And when you have accountability, everyone knows what is expected and is committed to delivering results. To do this, leadership must set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and ensure shared responsibility for outcomes.
When trust and accountability are established, teams work cohesively and are better equipped to stay focused during moments that require their best work.
Train for Change, Not Just Performance
The markets are unpredictable. So are most industries these days. If teams only know how to perform under perfect conditions, then they will struggle. That is why technical skill alone is not enough. Teams must be flexible and ready to adapt when conditions change. Adaptability is not only a natural talent to some degree, but it is also a trainable skill that requires the right mindset.
Leaders who encourage a growth mindset across teams can foster openness to learning and drive continuous improvement. No one has all the answers, and mistakes will inevitably occur. When leaders treat mistakes as opportunities and encourage curiosity, the result is resilience.
Some of the ways leaders can help build these habits include:
- Offering cross-training and stretch assignments.
- Celebrating curiosity and initiative.
- Framing feedback as a tool for development, not discipline.
- Encouraging reflection after high-pressure events.
These practices will help turn these habits into everyday operations, and eventually, adaptability will become second nature.
Lead with Clarity Under Stress
Pressure reveals leadership. During high-pressure moments, people look to leaders for direction and reassurance. How leaders show up will impact how teams respond, and a composed leader creates stability.
That doesn’t mean leaders must be unshakable or pretend everything is fine. It means to show up calm, with direction and perspective. Tone matters. Words matter. So does presence. This kind of leadership helps reduce anxiety and keeps attention on the work that needs to be done.
Leaders who maintain emotional steadiness and create psychological safety enable their teams to stay focused and unified when it matters most.
To maintain cohesion amongst the team through stressful times, it is imperative for leaders to meet with the relevant team members to set the tone. In-person communication is best, as the ability for the team to read the leader and vice versa helps establish mission bonding, line of sight empathy, and a clear exchange of information and ideas. Emergencies can wind up being rewarding adventures. Which is more rewarding, an easy win or a victory grabbed from the jaws of death?
Clarity is important. Teams under stress often do not need more information. However, they do need the right information. Leaders must communicate clearly about what needs to happen, the priorities, and what success looks like. As a leader, make sure that you have an honest and fair plan. Ask yourself, if people could read your mind, would they be happy with what they learn? And then allow yourself to be analyzed; people have an amazing ability to read and assess others. When the direction is clear and leadership is steady, teams are far more likely to stay unified and effective.
Protect Performance by Protecting Your People
Sustained performance requires more than grit. If a team is constantly working under pressure with no form of relief, burnout is inevitable. Leaders must pay close attention to their teams’ mental and emotional energy. High performance and well-being aren’t opposites. They fuel each other. A high-performance culture is only sustainable when it values rest, recovery, and psychological safety.
Leaders must encourage employees to take breaks, know that flexibility is an option, and that appreciation is not a sign of weakness. They are strategies for preserving long-term effectiveness. Leaders should be mindful of prioritization and avoid declaring false emergencies. Instead, set priorities with your team and give them realistic timelines and instructions without unnecessary rigidity or variables. When team members feel supported, they are more likely to engage fully and deliver consistently.
Pressure will always be part of the job, especially when running a business. It’s part of life, but doesn’t have to erode performance or morale. The goal isn’t to remove it. It’s to build a team to move through it with clarity and strength.
You create something rare when you hire for resilience, lead with intention, and put people first. Teams that can meet high demands grow stronger in the process. For small business leaders, the ability to build this type of team is more than a leadership skill. It is a true competitive advantage.
A final word to leaders and their teams in crisis: Remember, nobody wants you dead as much as you want to live. In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Gregory Hold is the Founder & CEO of Hold Brothers, a direct-access trading firm established in 1994. He is a seasoned financial industry CEO and engaging public speaker with over 20 years of expertise in trading regulation, compliance, anti-manipulative trading, broker-dealer management and market structure technology. As the founder of Hold Brothers, Gregory developed the innovative Graybox™ software platform, propelling the firm to prominence in the U.S. financial markets with headquarters in New York City.
Photo courtesy Unsplash
