10 Lessons Learned

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Panic and fear can spread faster than the flu. But so can your composure. 🌡️🤫

When an operational crisis hits, a project misses its deadline, or a major system goes offline, the corporate temperature instantly spikes. Hearts race, voices get louder, and teams start looking around for someone to blame.

In those high-stakes moments, everyone’s anxiety is on a hair-trigger.

On his milestone episode of 10 Lessons Learned, international business attorney and Special Operations veteran Dr. Conan J. Higgins, Esq., KM, Ph.D. shares a psychological reality check from his time leading SWAT operations and prosecuting combat targets in foreign territories:

Lesson #3: Calm is contagious. So is panic.

Dr. Higgins highlights that panic spreads like wildfire if a leader feeds into it. But being calm doesn't mean you are ignoring the magnitude of the problem. It means you are intentionally managing the emotional airspace of the room.

True executive composure requires three precise actions:
🛑 Slowing down the transmission: Watch how you speak under fire. Dr. Higgins explicitly practices slowing down his speech and being incredibly purposeful with his tone when the room starts to spiral. It forces the room's energy to match his.

🧠 Anchoring onto fact-based decisions: Panic makes us emotional, reactive, and irrational. True composure means tuning out the noise, gathering the actual data, and figuring out what "right" is supposed to look like so you can map a path back to it.

🤝 Inquiring before dictating: Instead of barking orders out of stress, a composed leader pauses to ask the team for their direct read on the situation: What are we seeing? What are we supposed to be doing? Once the objective baseline is established, you get them moving.

If a leader isn't actively taking charge of the emotional climate, the chaos of the situation will do it for you—and it is never to your benefit.

Bring the room down. Lower the volume. Be the signal, not the noise.

🎧 Master the elite art of emotional control under fire. Listen to Dr. Higgins’ full, profound masterclass here: https://10lessonslearned.com/conan-higgins

Lesson #2: The Power of Environment -Aye Kari Soe.

Aye Kari argues that your environment is either a catalyst or a cage. If your current professional circle or company culture doesn’t stretch your thinking or offer psychological safety, you are actively fighting an uphill battle against your own potential.

Here is how to intentionally leverage the power of your environment:

🌱 Audit your circle: Look at the 5 colleagues or peers you spend the most time with. Are they pushing you toward strategic growth, or anchoring you in comfort and complaint?

🛡️ Protect your baseline: If you can't change your macro-environment immediately, change your micro-environment. Protect your deep-work hours, seek out cross-functional mentors, and step away from corporate gossip.

🏗️ Design, don’t just react: For leaders, your primary task is ecosystem design. Stop trying to micro-manage output and start fiercely defending a team environment built on trust, transparency, and high standards.

Stop trying to bloom in soil that doesn't sustain you.

🎧 Catch the full, deeply reflective conversation with Aye Kari Soe to re-evaluate how your current surroundings are shaping your career: https://10lessonslearned.com/aye-kari-soe/