How to Make the Best Decisions When the Pressure Is On, What 40 Years of High-Stakes Leadership Taught Major General Jack Briggs

Major General (Ret.) Jack Briggs spent 40 years making life-or-death decisions as a fighter pilot, a defender of North America, and a crisis leadership consultant. In this episode, he shares the exact framework that separates great decision-makers from everyone else.
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What do the best decision-makers in the world actually do differently? Jack Briggs has seen it from a cockpit over Iraq, a command center defending North America, and a university campus in a snowstorm. He shares three core qualities, a four-question framework, and one analogy that will change how you think about pressure forever.

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When the Pressure Is On, Most Leaders Get It Wrong

Here is the uncomfortable truth about leadership under pressure, the higher the stakes, the more likely you are to fight the battle you wish you had instead of the one in front of you. You pattern-match to a solution that worked before. You bend the problem to fit what you already know. And then you wonder why it did not work out.

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Jack Briggs has spent over 40 years in situations where getting it wrong was not an option. He flew 225 combat sorties across Desert Storm, Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom. He commanded the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, at the height of the 2010-2011 surge. And as Director of Operations at U.S. Northern Command, he helped lead the decision-making process responsible for defending North America from its most serious threats.

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Today, Jack is a crisis decision-making consultant, keynote speaker, and the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Safety Operations at the University of Colorado Boulder. He advises university presidents, chancellors, and government leaders on how to navigate the decisions that turn the dial, the ones with real financial, operational, and reputational consequences.

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What Jack has learned across four decades is worth paying attention to. Because, as he puts it plainly, pressure is pressure.

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The Three Qualities Every Great Decision-Maker Shares

After 40 years of observing leaders in the most demanding conditions imaginable, Jack has identified three qualities that the best decision-makers share. They show up consistently, regardless of whether the pressure is military, corporate, or nonprofit.

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1. Principle-based, The best decision-makers have already done the work before the crisis arrives. They have asked themselves, what does our best self look like? What does our best organization look like? Those answers become principles, and principles act as a compass when every option looks bad. "Don't chase outcomes," Jack says. "When you do that, you compromise your principles. Over time, that erodes confidence, trust, and credibility."

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2. Humble, Being humble does not mean being soft. Jack makes a sharp distinction. He describes himself as "disagree-able", not disagreeable, but able to be disagreed with. "If everybody in the room always agrees with me," he told his colonels, "you're extra, because I always agree with me." Welcoming dissent is how a leader fully pulls the bow back. It gives you information, context, and perspectives you did not have before.

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3. Decisive, This is the one people underestimate. Smart, experienced leaders are often surprisingly indecisive when the pressure is highest. They spin, consult endlessly and wait for certainty that never comes. Jack's reminder is clear, your job is not to find a great option, it’s to pick the least worst one, own it, and move.

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Put these three together and you get what Jack describes as the archer analogy. The archer walks onto the field surrounded by targets. Her principles point her in the right direction, eliminating the options that contradict who she is and what she stands for. The input she gathers from others pulls the bow fully back, adding power and precision. Then she shoots.

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Four Questions That Calm Any High-Stakes Situation

Generals do not run. Jack is serious about this. When the pressure hits and the instinct is to react visibly, the leader's job is to stay grounded. The way you do that is to have a framework so well-practiced that it activates automatically in the moment you need it most.

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Jack teaches four questions for every high-stress decision,

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  • What do we know? Just the facts. Even if you only have two, state them clearly.
  • What don't we know? This is the most important question. Jack is explicit, "I am giving you permission to not know stuff. You don't have to make it up."When people know you will ask what they do not know, they stop inventing answers to fill the gap. The information you receive becomes more trustworthy.
  • What are we doing about it? This bridges awareness to action. It moves the conversation from diagnosis to response.
  • Who else needs to know? This is where relationships pay off. The leaders who reach out to the utility company CEO before the snowstorm hits are the ones who get a call back during the crisis. It also gives the senior leader something to do, which keeps them from micromanaging the people who are actually solving the problem.

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These questions work because they replace panic with a process. And when you practice the process before the pressure arrives, it becomes second nature.

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Why the Words You Use Under Pressure Change Everything

Jack does not like the word "crisis." He is not being pedantic. He is making a point about how language shapes thinking.

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"We don't solve crises. We solve problems."When you hear the word crisis, your nervous system responds. The emotional charge goes up. Your options feel scarcer. Your thinking narrows. Rename it a problem, and something shifts. Problems have solutions. Problems are workable. Problems are what you do every day.

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CU Boulder got eight to nine inches of snow in May. To someone watching the news, it looks like a crisis. Inside the operations team, it was a series of problems with solutions that had already been prepared. Are the roads and parking lots cleared? Are the trees a hazard? Each one goes into a bucket. Each bucket has a plan.

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This is the result of practice. And it applies directly to the pressured moments most leaders face every week. The financial decision that could reshape the organization. The reputational situation that has to be handled carefully. The operational choice where every option has a downside. When you call it a problem, you give yourself permission to think clearly and act precisely.

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Jack's closing insight for every leader is worth carrying with you. Stop chasing the outcome. Start in the three feet around you. Be a positive influence on the people directly in your orbit. "The ripple effect of that could be world-shattering. But that's not where you start. You start at the inner ring."

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"I may not take what you have offered me, but I want you to know I heard it. That's the important thing. I want you to know that I have heard what you have said and I'm thinking about it." -- Jack Briggs

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The Decision-Making Practice That Starts Today

The leaders who perform best under pressure are the ones who have done the preparation. They know their principles before the pressure hits and have built relationships with the people they will need during the worst moments. They practice the four questions until those questions fire automatically.

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Jack's framework is disciplined. Complexity gives you something to hide behind. Discipline requires you to show up and do it.

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The question worth asking right now, before any pressure arrives, is simple, what are your principles? The ones that will hold when the decision is hard and the options are all bad. Those are the ones that matter.

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When you know your principles, you know which direction to aim. When you ask for help, you fully pull the bow back. When you are decisive, you take the shot. And when the outcome does not go the way you hoped, you can defend what you did, learn from it, and refine your next decision.

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Ready to make better decisions?

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Did you like this article on how to make better decisions? Does it help you become a better leader? Then check out these articles to help hone those skills even further:

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Craig Dowden

CEO
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