The leadership cost of being the one who always absorbs the urgency
Chaotic environments that pride themselves on being “action oriented” lean heavily on one kind of leader when things get intense
They’re not the loudest. They’re not the most senior. They’re not the most forceful. They’re the ones who can absorb urgency:
The ones who can take a leader’s anxiety, a team’s overwhelm, a stakeholder’s pressure, a deadline’s intensity, and turn it into something calm, structured, and actionable
The ones who can turn “we need this yesterday” into “here’s what we can realistically deliver”
The ones who can turn “everything’s on fire” into “here are three things that actually matter”
The ones who can turn “this is critical” into “let’s define what critical actually means”
This is a rare capability. It’s also one of the most invisible and most draining of them all because when you’re the person who absorbs urgency, you become the organisation’s secret weapon when it comes to turning panic into progress. And that comes with a cost
The pattern: you become the system’s regulator of pace
Every organisation has a natural rhythm, and it’s rarely healthy:
There’s the leader who escalates everything
The stakeholder who panics early
The team that underestimates complexity
The executive who wants speed without trade offs
The function that delays decisions until the last minute
The project that’s been under resourced for months
The initiative that’s politically important but operationally unclear
All of this creates urgency, real or manufactured, and you’re the one who absorbs it. You’re the one who:
Slows the panic
Clarifies the priority
Reframes the timeline
Reduces the noise
Holds the emotional temperature
Prevents urgency from becoming chaos
Turns pressure into progress
You don’t do this consciously. You do it because you can
Your steadiness is strong. Your judgment is sharp. Your instincts are calibrated
But here’s the part no one names. When you’re the one who absorbs urgency, the organisation stops regulating its own pace because it knows you will
Why product and transformation leaders become the urgency absorbers
Your role sits in the organisational terrain where urgency accumulates. You’re navigating:
Cross functional dependencies
Shifting priorities
Technical constraints
Customer expectations
Executive pressure
Delivery timelines
Political sensitivities
This environment produces urgency constantly, and often irrationally
And because you can stay calm, think clearly, prioritise effectively, communicate crisply, hold ambiguity, manage pressure, and translate expectations, you become the person who absorbs the urgency so others don’t have to
This is competence. This is leadership. But it’s also how you become the person who regulates the organisation’s pace. They don’t need to do it themselves if they know you are doing it for them. Why would they do 90 day planning properly when they know things will change anyway and you will come in to fix things when they go off track from week 1?
The emotional cost: you carry the weight of everyone else’s pressure
When you’re the one who absorbs urgency, you start to carry things that don’t belong to you. You carry:
The executive’s fear of missing a deadline
The stakeholder’s anxiety about visibility
The team’s overwhelm
The organisation’s lack of planning
The consequences of decisions made too late
The pressure created by unrealistic expectations
You become the emotional buffer between:
What leaders want
What teams can deliver
What reality allows
This is invisible work. It’s unmeasured. It’s unacknowledged. And it’s heavy
Urgency is contagious and you’re the one who stops the contagion
The identity cost: you become the stabiliser of pace, not the shaper of strategy
When you consistently absorb urgency, people start to describe you in ways that sound like praise, but subtly narrow your leadership identity. You hear things like:
“You’re so calm under pressure”
“You’re the one who keeps us grounded”
“You’re great at managing crises”
“You’re the one who can handle the heat”
“You’re the one we call when things get intense”
These are compliments, but they’re also constraints because they position you as the person who manages urgency. Not the person who defines direction
You become the stabiliser not the strategist, the buffer not the architect, and the regulator not the visionary
Your leadership becomes defined by how well you absorb pressure, not how powerfully you shape the future and that limits your perceived range
The opportunity cost: you lose time, altitude, and strategic capacity
When you’re busy absorbing urgency, you lose access to:
Deep thinking time
Strategic altitude
Creative bandwidth
High impact opportunities
Enterprise level conversations
Work that stretches your range
Space to shape the future instead of managing the present
You’re contributing at a high level, but you’re not being positioned at a high level because your time is consumed by the organisation’s pressure
You’re solving problems you didn’t create. You’re absorbing urgency you didn’t generate. You’re stabilising situations you didn’t cause. And that keeps you from the work you’re actually meant to lead
How high impact leaders stop being the default urgency absorber
They stop responding at the pace of the escalation
Urgency thrives on reaction. You break the pattern by slowing the tempo. You respond at the pace of clarity, not at the pace of panic
They return urgency to its source
You say:
“What’s driving the urgency?”
“What changed?”
“What’s the actual deadline?”
“What’s the consequence of not doing this now?”
You make people own the pressure they’re creating
They distinguish between real urgency and emotional urgency
You ask:
“Is this time critical or emotionally critical?”
“Is this urgency because of impact or because of anxiety?”
You separate signal from noise
They create shared responsibility for pace
You say:
“We need to align on what urgent means”
“Let’s define the real priority”
“We need to agree on the trade offs”
You distribute the responsibility for tempo
They reposition themselves as a strategic leader, not a pressure valve
You shift from:
Absorbing urgency to shaping pace
Managing pressure to defining priorities
Stabilising crises to preventing crises
Responding to escalations to designing clarity
This is the identity shift that unlocks your next level
If you’re the one who absorbs urgency, you’re not overreacting. You’re over relied upon
This moment isn’t a flaw. It’s a signal. A sign that:
Your leadership instincts are strong
Your emotional steadiness is advanced
You’re ready to lead with more altitude, not more absorption
You don’t need to stop being calm under pressure. You just need to stop being the one who carries everyone else through the storm
If you want to lead with clarity, influence, and strategic range without absorbing the organisation’s urgency, then let’s work on this together. Here are three ways:
Influencing for Impact: This practical 2-day workshop is for you if you want to influence a decision maker, influence a change in customer or colleague behaviour, or influence someone to buy something from you
Executive and Leadership Team Coaching: Work directly with Lai-Ling to problem solve for your specific situation in a confidential setting. This is for you if you want to develop and execute on a game plan that is 100% tailored to you
Leadership Development: Invest in the product and transformation leaders in your company with leadership development that is customised for their role. This is for you if you want your people to learn about people and politics