A 6-WEEK GROUP PROGRAM FOR LEADERS UNDER PRESSURE
LEADERSHIP UNDER PRESSURE™ LAB
6 Weeks to Steady
(Even Under Pressure)
Build the Internal Capacity Behind Better Decisions, Stronger Relationships, and Sustainable Performance...
Without Waiting for Your Organization to Change First
The full Leadership Under Pressure™ System, delivered live over six weeks with a small group of leaders carrying responsibility similar to yours.
You'll learn why your nervous system pulls you into survival mode under sustained pressure, what it's costing you and the people around you, and how to build the internal stability that makes clear judgment available when you need it most.
Taught by Dr. Christina Pate, psychologist, leadership strategist, and executive coach, drawing on two decades studying how people function under pressure.
Kickoff is September 17, 2026 | 10:30 AM PT / 1:30 PM ET
Six live sessions to follow. Days & Times TBD based on participant vote.
Enrollment Closes September 17.
THE PROBLEM
"I can't keep leading and living like this"
From the outside, you look like you have it together. You're still delivering, still making the calls, still holding things steady for everyone around you. Inside, you're running on urgency and old patterns that used to work and no longer fit the pace of what you are carrying now.
The gap between how capable you actually are and how unsteady you feel most days keeps getting wider. And you have mostly stopped saying that out loud to anyone.
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone:
✓ You're working harder than you ever have and somehow still feel like you are falling further behind.
✓ You're awake at 3am replaying the day and dreading the morning.
✓ You feel scattered or internally unanchored, like the ground beneath you keeps shifting.
✓ Decisions that used to feel straightforward now feel heavy and overwhelming.
✓ You're overthinking, second-guessing, or freezing on next steps.
✓ You feel pressure to have clarity while everything around you is changing.
✓ You're asked to operate in ways that sit at odds with who you actually are, and holding that gap takes more out of you than anyone sees.
✓ You're tired of proving yourself and wonder if you've lost touch with what actually matters.
You already know the way you're operating right now is unsustainable.
Where to start is the part that's unclear.
Here's why nothing has worked (yet)
You've already tried the obvious things. Maybe your company gave you access to a coaching program. Maybe you built a solid wellness routine. Maybe you read the mindset books, listened to the podcasts, took the courses, went to the retreat, downloaded the apps.
Here's what tends to happen. It helps. And it isn't enough. You are still having the same conversation with yourself at three in the morning that you were having a year ago.
Effort has never been your problem. Every one of those approaches worked on the top of the system while leaving the foundation underneath it untouched.
You’ve been trying to solve a state problem with thinking and performance. When your nervous system is in survival mode, your best intentions don’t get traction. Clarity becomes inaccessible. Self-trust goes offline. And direction feels lost or forced instead of grounded.
When your nervous system is running on alarm, the best tools in the world have nowhere stable to land. That's how human beings are built, and it's why willpower keeps coming up short here.
This program teaches you a different starting point.
The shift that changes everything
Steadiness under pressure doesn’t come from controlling uncertainty or pushing harder. It comes from creating internal stability first.
When your nervous system shifts out of survival mode, sound judgment comes back online, your communication clarifies, and your team feels it before you say a word. Direction becomes accessible even if your external circumstances haven’t changed.
The old belief: "I should be able to push through this on my own. I've made it this far on discipline and effort."
The new truth: "Nothing has held long-term because nothing I've tried started with my nervous system first. Once it does, everything I already know how to do finally has somewhere to stand."
Clarity is state-dependent. When your system is braced, activated, or shut down, your best thinking is out of reach in exactly the moments you need it most. This program shows you how to access it again.
And yet, insight alone runs into the same wall.
Understanding what's happening underneath your leadership is the necessary first move, and plenty of leaders get that far. Then Monday arrives. The week is hard in the ordinary way. The thing you were going to work on gets pushed to next week, and then to the week after, and by the end of the month nothing has changed.
Application under real conditions is where this falls apart, because the conditions don't pause while you integrate.
This is What The Lab Is Built For
✓ You want a structure that turns understanding into how you actually operate.
✓ You need this to work inside the job you already have, at the pace you're already moving.
✓ You've done programs before and watched the impact evaporate within a month.
✓ You want other leaders in the room, because carrying this alone is part of what makes it heavy.
✓ You want practices you can reach for in the moment rather than concepts you understand in theory.
✓ You're ready to stop spending your remaining capacity on the parts of this that were never yours to move.
Ready to make a meaningful shift?
Why This One Holds
Most leadership development starts at the top of the system, with mindset, strategy, and skills. Those approaches work on the layer that goes offline first when you're under sustained strain.
The Leadership Under Pressure™ System starts one layer underneath, at the level of your nervous system, and works upward from there. That sequence is the reason change holds. When your internal state stabilizes, everything you already know how to do finally has somewhere stable to stand.
Six weeks matters for the same reason. Your patterns were built over years of repetition under real conditions, and they update the same way. You need enough weeks to try something, have it go badly, bring it back to the room, and try it again. That cycle is where the change actually happens.
This Changed How Mike Saw Everything...
"The impact of baseline physiological responses on my behavior was pretty powerful. Seeing how it affected the other aspects of my interactions at nearly every level was very eye-opening for me.
The circles of control were probably my favorite light bulb moment. The realization that most of the rocks I was pushing were not mine.
I've noticed that I am able to stay much more grounded, even when the situation is stressful. This will change how you see everything. It's not hyperbole."
Michael Myers | Co-Founder & Lead Engineer, Leitwolf
What We Do Together
The Lab moves through three levels of your leadership ecosystem, in the order that makes each one work.
We begin with you, the Leader. Change is inside job.
The first stretch of the Lab is about how you operate under sustained pressure. You'll identify your own patterns and the early warning signs that precede them, build a reliable way to shift your state in real time, and surface the narratives running underneath your reactivity. This is the highest-leverage work in the program, because when you change, everything downstream of you changes with you.
Then we look at your Team. Regulated leaders create regulated teams.
From steadier ground, we examine how your presence, your communication, and your behavior are landing on the people you lead right now. You'll get clear on what's creating trust and what's generating the strain your team is absorbing, and you'll leave with specific changes to how you communicate, where the boundaries sit, and what rhythms your team runs on.
Then we look at the System around you. Regulated leaders build systems that sustain performance at scale.
The final stretch addresses the conditions you didn't create. You'll learn to read how organizational structures are shaping behavior around you, sort what sits in your control from what sits in your influence from what sits outside both, and decide where your effort actually moves something.
By the end of six weeks you'll be operating differently inside the same conditions, with practices you reach for automatically and a clear read on where your leverage is.
By the end of this program, you'll be able to:
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Recognize your own pressure patterns as they're happening, in the meeting or the conversation, early enough to do something about them
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Leverage a set of in-the-moment tools you've already tested in your own work, along with a resource library organized so you can find what you need when your thinking is at its narrowest
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Shift your state in real time using practices you've tested under actual conditions, so clear judgment is available when the stakes are highest
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Name the narratives driving your reactive behavior, and work with them instead of being run by them
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Walk into hard conversations prepared rather than braced, with language you've practiced for the asks you've been avoiding
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Set boundaries that hold, in a way that strengthens the relationships and health you're protecting
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Read what your team is absorbing from you, and adjust your communication, your expectations, and your rhythms so they get clarity instead of your strain
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Sort what's yours to control, what's yours to influence, and what sits outside both, so your effort lands where it actually moves something
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Recognize how the structures around you are shaping behavior, and decide where to act, where to escalate, and where to adapt
"As I navigated a major career transition into a challenging new leadership role, Dr. Christina Pate's program gave me exactly what I needed - a structured yet personal process to slow down and reconnect with what was happening beneath the surface. Christina's calm, deliberate approach created the space to explore the fears and anxieties that naturally emerge during significant change. If you're looking for someone who understands that lasting change starts from the inside out and can guide both you and your organization through complexity with wisdom and care, trust Christina's process"
Kerry Leidich, Senior Director, Human Capital Management
What this looks like in your actual week...
✓ You handle a high-stakes situation without it blowing up, and you can feel yourself doing it differently in the moment.
✓ You make a difficult call and feel confident in it, without replaying it that night.
✓ You go a full week without losing sleep over something you already decided.
✓ Someone on your team tells you, unprompted, that something has shifted in how you're showing up.
✓ You leave work tired rather than depleted, and the day ends when you close the laptop.
This Masterclass Is For You If:
- You carry real responsibility for people, performance, and outcomes, and the stakes of getting it wrong are high
- You're successful on paper and feel trapped in constant urgency, stretched and reactive, struggling to stay steady as demands keep changing
- You’re in a season of transition, uncertainty, or change and nothing feels stable or aligned
- You've already tried harder work, more discipline, pushing through, mindset work, and productivity systems, but effort alone isn't the answer or nothing seems to hold under pressure
- You know the cost of staying here is too high, for your performance, your people, and your own longevity
- You want steadiness and sustainable performance that doesn't require you to hold the entire load together by sheer will
This is for leaders who are already delivering and want to sustain their work, their teams, and themselves without the cost of breakdown.
Meet Your Guide:
Dr. Christina Pate
Dr. Christina Pate is a psychologist, strategist, and executive coach, and the creator of ALCHEMI™ and the Ecosystem model, the two frameworks behind the Leadership Under Pressure System™, a science-backed, integrative approach to lasting transformation.
For more than two decades she has worked across psychology, neuroscience, leadership, and organizational development, studying how people function under pressure and why capable, high-performing people so often struggle in ways that don't match how competent they actually are. She's designed and led transformational initiatives for thousands of people, including senior leaders in high-pressure environments across public and private sectors including technology, education, financial services, and healthcare.
She teaches this from the inside. After two decades of watching this pattern in other people, she lived her own version of it, and what she built on the other side is the system she teaches now.
Her approach is body-first, nervous-system-informed, and built for people who have already tried thinking their way through it.
let's do this!
you might be thinking...
"I don't have time for another thing."
This is 2 hours, not 12 weeks. And what you walk away with is designed to work inside the day you're already having, at the pace you are already moving
"I've tried coaching and leadership programs before"
Most leadership development and most coaching starts at the top of the system, with mindset, strategy, and skills. This starts one layer underneath that, at the nervous system level, which is the piece that determines whether any of the rest of it holds under real pressure. One CTO described this work as "reaching a depth no previous executive coach, mentor, or therapist had gotten to."
"What if I do this and nothing changes?"
You will feel a shift during the masterclass itself. This is built as an experience, with live reflection and real-time application, so you leave with a felt sense of the difference and your own pattern named, not just a set of notes.
"My work environment is the problem, not me."
You may be exactly right, and this masterclass doesn't pretend otherwise. Performance issues, turnover, conflict, and chronic stress are usually symptoms of systems that haven't evolved to match the complexity of what they now demand from people. What you'll learn here is where your actual leverage sits inside conditions that stay hard, and why the environment being difficult makes this work matter more rather than less.
"I'm too depleted to 'work on myself' right now."
This is built for exhausted leaders. It asks you to stop spending your limited capacity on things that were never going to move, so you can put what you have left into the part that is actually yours.
YOUR NEXT STEP
You don't need another cycle of knowing something has to change and then getting pulled back into the same patterns the next time pressure hits.
You need a different starting point. One that works with your biology, not against it.
And one that accounts for the fact that you, your team, and your organization are one interconnected system rather than three separate problems.
This masterclass is that starting point.
August 12, 2026 | 3:30 PM PT / 6:30 PM ET
Free to join. $47 for replay.
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