A 6-WEEK GROUP PROGRAM FOR LEADERS UNDER PRESSURE
LEADERSHIP UNDER PRESSURE™ LAB
for Individual Leaders
Pressure doesn't create a different leader.
It reveals the patterns you've learned to rely on.
6 Weeks to Shift from Survival to Steady
Enrollment for 2026 has closed!
NOTE:
This page is for individual leaders looking to join a cohort of your own.
If you're an organization looking to enroll a group of leaders for a private cohort, the Leadership Under Pressure™ Lab for Organizations is the right page.
Join the Waitlist!The Leadership Under Pressure™ Lab for Individuals is a six-week group program.
Patterns shape your decisions, your relationships, and the way your team experiences you. Most leaders never see them clearly, because the moments that reveal them are the moments they have the least capacity to observe.
You will learn why your nervous system pulls you into survival mode under sustained pressure, what your patterns under pressure are, practice a different way of meeting pressure in real time, and build the internal capacity that makes steady leadership sustainable.
You'll work through live sessions with a small group of leaders carrying responsibility similar to yours, applying everything to the situations you're actually navigating that week.
Taught by Dr. Christina Pate, psychologist, leadership strategist, and executive coach, drawing on two decades studying how people function under pressure in complex, fast-moving organizations.
Six live sessions following kickoff.
Days and times set by participant vote.
Enrollment for 2026 has closed!
You can learn more by reading below and join the waitlist to be first in line for the Winter 2027 cohort.
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 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.
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
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 layers 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, try it out, bring it back to the room, and try it again. That cycle is where the change actually happens. In experimentation, reflection, and improvement.
Mark now has real specific tools for managing himself...
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 outward.
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 zoom out further.
The System.
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
What this looks like in your actual week...
✓ You handle a high-stakes situation without it blowing up or shutting down, 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, but not depleted, and the day ends when you close the laptop.
"My only worry going in was that the day would just be about mindset and less about strategies. I already knew there was an issue and was bought into changing it. I just needed help making those changes. What surprised me most was how practical and immediately applicable the strategies were. They were things I was able to implement right away.
Since then I have been more successful delegating work to create more space to focus on leadership, have been a good role model for my team about creating boundaries, and have been more thoughtful about my yeses to ensure I am putting my time and energy into the right things."
Ashley, Senior Director, Research & Development
What's Included
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The Full Leadership Under Pressure™ System, Delivered Live
Six modules taught in live facilitated sessions, with dedicated space for application, reflection, and shared accountability alongside other leaders. (Value: $9,000)
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Session Recordings and Materials for 12 Months
Every session recorded and available for a full year. A hard week at work won't cost you the program. (Value: $1,200)
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12 Months of Community Access
Ongoing connection, support, and integration with the leaders who were in the room with you. (Value: $500)
Core program value: $10,700.
Bonuses
BONUS #1
The Well: Resource Hub
Value: $10,000
People fall off because when they're overwhelmed, their brain goes offline. Language disappears. Decision-making narrows. Old patterns take over. Leadership gets tested in the real moments, and the real moments are exactly when you have the least access to what you learned.
The Well is built so you can find what you need without having to think clearly first. It's organized by state, so when you're activated, shut down, or running on fumes, you open it and find support for where you actually are. It's also organized by level, so when the question is about you, your team, or the organization around you, the tools are already sorted.
BONUS #2
Boundaries Mini-Course + Scripts Resource
Value: $1,400
Most leaders know they need boundaries. What stops them is the fear of hurting someone, being rejected, or losing a relationship that matters. Boundaries fail because the nervous system reads a limit as danger, and your body responds before you ever get to the words.
This mini-course teaches boundaries as a regulation skill, so your limits strengthen your relationships, performance, and wellbeing. The scripts library gives you actual language for the conversations you've been avoiding, including workload, availability, scope, and the ask you keep rehearsing and never making.
"I am more intentionally leading with the end in mind. I am finding opportunities to share agreements with the team as a natural progression of our work together. I would say that you are worth the investment in yourself. The right investment at the right time can be game changing if you put the work in."
Rosemary Reilly-Chammat | Director, State Agency
This 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
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You want to learn alongside other leaders who understand the position you're in
This is for leaders who are already delivering and want to sustain their work, their teams, and themselves without the cost of burnout or breakdown.
Meet Your Guide
Dr. Christina Pate
Christina 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.
Join the Waitlist!
you might be thinking...
"I don't have time for another thing."
Each session is 90 minutes, once a week. Between sessions the work happens inside the day you're already having, applied to the situations you're already navigating. The reason this program is built the way it is, with practices you use in real moments, is that the leaders it serves don't have spare hours to add.
"What if I have to miss a session?"
Every session is recorded and posted within twenty-four hours along with that week's materials, and you keep access for twelve months. The community space stays open the entire year, so you can bring your questions there and stay connected to the group.
"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."
"I've done group programs before and gotten lost in the crowd."
The Lab is built around live facilitation and structured discussion, so every session includes time to apply the material to your own context and hear how other leaders are working with theirs. If you want individual work on your specific situation, private options are available and you can reach out about those separately.
"What if I do this and nothing changes?"
You will feel a shift during the live sessions themselves. 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.
"Christina was able to immediately get to a depth of my leadership foundation that no previous executive coach, mentor, or even therapist has ever done. She helped me recognize patterns that have supported me over my career and, better yet, how to become more available for broader impact more consistently, and under more conditions from where I typically retreat.
She heard everything I said during our time together and reflected back more nuances than I could have imagined. I am more centered and can see the arc of my work more clearly now."
Jenny Moshea | Former CTO & VP of Enterprise AI
Structure
How The Lab Is Structured
Every session is live and facilitated by Dr. Christina Pate. You work through the material in live teaching and structured group discussion, applying it to your own context alongside other leaders. You won't be handed off to someone else, and you won't be working through prerecorded content on your own (unless you choose).
Enrollment closes September 17, 2026. Please review the details on this page before enrolling, as all sales are final.
For Groups
Enrolling More Than One Person?
Leaders often want to bring their team through this together, and the work compounds when a group learns it at the same time.
Discounted rates are available for multiple enrollments from the same organization. The more you enroll, the greater the discount.
Private cohorts are also available for organizations that want the Lab delivered to their own group, with a maximum of thirty participants per cohort. The Leadership Under Pressure™ Lab for Organizations is the right page.
For either option, send us message! We're happy to work with you.
YOUR NEXT STEP
You've spent a long time managing this by working harder, and working harder has taken you as far as it takes anyone.
Six weeks from now you can be inside the same conditions with a different internal experience of them, making decisions you trust, walking into hard conversations prepared, and going to bed without replaying the day.
The conditions may not change. What changes is who you are inside them, and what your team gets from you as a result.
Enrollment has ended!
When we start up in 2027, there will be a short kickoff call and then we'll decide together our weekly meeting time and day.
Join the WaitlistIf a fellow leader were on the fence about this program, what would you say?
"You don't understand your operating system as well as Christina does. The program will make you more effective as a leader and more productive as a person."
Mark Mydland | Engineering Executive, Medical Technology
"Do it, 100%. It's cathartic in some ways to have a safe place to talk through all this stuff, but it also feels very productive because the lens is - how do we make this better? How do we strategize? And then there are actual strategies."
Ashley | Sr. Director, Research & Development
"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"
