Clarity Under Pressure: What a Rip Current Taught Me About Leadership

I got caught in a rip current the other day.

It was a hot day. Hot enough to want to be in the water to cool my body. But the waves were big. Big enough for me to know not to go far from shore. So, I went in just up to my waist, where I could still feel the sand beneath my feet. I splashed my body with the ocean water, and felt the breeze cool my skin. Safe, I thought.

Out of nowhere, a wave knocked me off my feet. I went under, caught in a washing machine of foam and bubbles. When I came back up for breath, I could no longer feel the safety of the sandy ocean floor. I had been swept out and over towards the rocks. Another wave came. I duck dived under it. And another. One more big wave, and I would be on top of those rocks. I knew I needed to swim away. Fast. It took me only seconds to realize I was at the mercy of the rip current. Swimming directly to where I wanted to go was impossible. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I was not making progress.

As I looked back to shore, I heard my son calling out to me: “Swim out and around”. Of course. Swim further out to sea so I could eventually make it back to shore. Completely counter-intuitive, and yet exactly right. Out where I could tread water, ride the waves, and wait for the lull, I could think clearly again. I could reconnect with my stamina, courage, and presence of mind.

I turned towards the shore to see my son swimming out towards me. “Here, take my fins. I’ll surf back.”  We swam back together. I crawled up the beach. Grateful to be back on land. Grateful for my son. Grateful to have made it to safety.

Since then, I have been reflecting on the experience, how it could be relevant to my work and what my clients face in theirs. While the realities they deal with are highly complex, sometimes the essence of an urgent moment can bring newfound clarity.

When efforting is the obstacle

Many of the leaders I work with have built successful careers by pushing through obstacles. Work harder and smarter, move faster, double down. As we transition to a world with AI, the “grit and grind” mentality seems to be ever more prevalent. Do more with less (people). Stay ahead of the game. Work weekends, evenings. Be strong, don’t let up the pace. This approach can work, until it doesn’t. 

I learned that a rip current doesn’t care how strong you are. The harder you fight against it, the more exhausted you become. Organizational life can be like that too. When market conditions shift, new technologies arrive, cultures are not fit for purpose, and the old playbook no longer works, effort alone is not enough. Our initial response may be to push harder. A better question may be, where am I fighting forces that I cannot overcome? How might I think about this differently?

The wisdom of the indirect path

The words that saved me were quite simple: “Swim out and around.” The way forward was not to fight harder toward my destination but instead to temporarily move away from it. As leaders, it can often feel as though we need to make decisions urgently and logically. How do we most quickly transition the business to the world of AI? How do we need to reorganize the team to meet the moment? Sometimes, the fastest way forward is far from obvious. Sometimes, clarity in decision making means taking a detour, one that entails more listening than action, at least at first. What may initially look like hesitation or acting indecisively may open up a clearer and more aligned path forward.

Clarity returns when the nervous system regulates

My favorite quote is by Viktor Frankl, from his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Frankl writes, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” And I might add, even our survival.

When we are under pressure, our attention can narrow. We can become reactive, myopic. We can lose awareness of the options before us and latch upon the first thing that comes to mind. Leadership pressure can have the same effect. When the stakes are high, leaders risk losing access to their best thinking. The nervous system is overly activated, focused on immediate survival rather than perspective. Fight or flight. Our ability to self-regulate, to take a breath, pause and allow the dust to settle and the mind to clear, is a powerful leadership skill. It allows us to get to a place of internal safety and wisdom, even amid fear and uncertainty. I recently created a library of short guided grounding meditations and breathing practices, which many of my clients have found helpful to self-regulate during the workday.

We all need people who can see what we cannot

What struck me once I was back on safe ground, was that from where I was in the ocean, the solution wasn’t obvious. But for my son on shore, it was. “Swim out and around.”

Leadership can be lonely. The higher you rise in an organization, the fewer voices you hear that are both honest and helpful. We cannot see our own blind spots. We all need people who can stand on the shore and call out what we cannot see from the water. A trusted colleague, mentor, coach or friend. Someone who can see clearly and help us find the way forward.

Strength includes accepting help

I did not hesitate in accepting my son’s offer of his fins. Even if I in theory could have swum back alone, his offer of practical and emotional assistance was nectar to me. Many leaders that I work with are much more comfortable giving than receiving help and guidance. Being self-sufficient can be a strength, and equally, the strongest leaders know when to ask for help.

Closing thoughts

What stayed with me most about this experience was what it taught me about getting through intensely challenging moments. In a crisis, our first instinct is often to fight harder; to react, defend, and force our way through. But what I learned is that the most important first step is often something else entirely: to self-regulate so that we can see clearly. To calm the nervous system. And then to assess the forces at play. To stop wasting energy fighting what cannot be overcome directly. Only then can we respond wisely. Often, getting through the hardest moments depends not only on our own strength, but on our willingness to receive support. Sometimes the way through is not linear. Sometimes, you have to swim out and around.