Presence Under Pressure
You make good decisions. Your team respects you. The business is working.
So why does Sunday evening tighten around a Monday morning meeting?
Why does exhaustion persist through rest?
Why do you snap at the people closest to you after holding it together all day?
And why, despite all the coaching, all the frameworks, all the work on yourself, does something still feel like performance?
Like, if you stopped managing the image for even a moment, would something essential collapse?
Not because you lack skills.
Because there’s a mechanism running underneath them you haven’t seen clearly yet.
The Hidden Cost
Most leadership erosion doesn’t come from the actual demands of the role.
It stems from the constant, invisible effort to defend a sense of “me” that feels separate and under threat.
You experience it as: The tightness in your chest before speaking in the board meeting. The mental rehearsal of how your decision will be received.
The exhaustion that no amount of sleep fixes. The distance you feel from your own life while living it.
The sense that you’re performing competence rather than simply being competent.
This isn’t stress. It’s not imposter syndrome. It’s not a personality flaw.
It’s what happens when you confuse a challenge with a threat to who you are.
When pressure on the work becomes pressure on the self.
When every decision carries the weight of proving or protecting something you can’t quite name.
The mind exists in the present. Perception distorts around fear and self-interest. Energy drains into invisible defence.
And you keep leading—successfully, even—but at a cost you can feel but can’t quite locate.
What Changes
Consciousness itself, your capacity to be aware, isn’t personal. It doesn’t need defending.
But experience is personal.
You feel pressure.
Make decisions.
Carry responsibility.
Navigate conflict and uncertainty.
The friction arises from treating these situations as threats to “who you are” rather than simply as situations that require a response.
When that defence is seen clearly—not managed, not overcome, but recognised for what it is—it loosens naturally.
What remains isn’t new. It’s what was already there when you weren’t in your own way:
Presence. Being here and available, rather than mentally elsewhere, when pressure rises. In the meeting, your body is in the chair but your mind is three moves ahead. You miss the moment someone actually needs you to see them. When defense relaxes, you’re simply here.
Clarity. Seeing what is actually happening, without distortion from fear, urgency, or self-interest. You know the right decision, but you’re running scenarios about how it will be received, what it means about your judgment, whether you can afford to be wrong. When the noise drops, you see clearly.
Service. Orienting decisions beyond ego toward what genuinely serves the work and the people involved. You tell yourself you’re protecting the team, but you’re protecting your image of being the person who protects the team. When the distinction becomes visible, service becomes clean.
Conversation. Relating attentively and truthfully, so understanding can emerge rather than be forced. You’re listening, but you’re also managing—how you’re perceived, whether you’re safe, what you need to correct. When that managing stops, conversation opens.
Discernment. Choosing well in complex situations where rules and certainty no longer apply. Uncertainty feels dangerous because being wrong feels like evidence of inadequacy. When you’re not defending against being wrong, discernment sharpens.
Measure. Acting in proportion—neither too much nor too little—given what the moment truly requires. You overfunction or withdraw, not because the situation demands it, but because something in you does. When that “something” is seen, proportion returns.
Integration. Being the same person across roles, contexts, and pressures, without internal contradiction. You have a work self and a home self and a self you can’t quite be anywhere. When there’s nothing to protect, there’s no one to perform.
Renewal. Restoring energy and perspective so leadership can continue without erosion. Rest doesn’t renew you because you never fully stopped defending. When defence drops, rest actually rests you.
These are not traits to acquire or techniques to apply. They are conditions that emerge naturally when internal interference clears.
This recognition is what the day is for.
The Day
A small-group immersion. Ten people. All carrying sustained stakes.9:30 am – 4:30 pm.
Quiet venue in Manchester.
No slides.
No techniques.
No performance of insight.
Just guided inquiry into actual leadership moments you’ve experienced.
Paired exercises that surface the hidden mechanics.
Shared conversation where defences become visible not through confrontation but through careful attention.
You’ll work with real material, your decisions, your relationships, and your patterns under pressure.
Not as case studies. As lived experience, examined together in a container that’s quiet, unusually honest, and sharply focused.
The value isn’t just in what you see about yourself. It’s in recognising your own patterns reflected in someone else’s moment. In having your tightness spoken back to you by someone who doesn’t need you to be different.
Seeing happens in a relationship, not in isolation.
We test the lens as a group:
What exactly is being defended?
Where does the mind exit the present?
What remains when the defence is unnecessary?
Seeing often quiets the grip. Decisions clean up. Relating softens. Energy renews.
Not as concepts to understand. As relief you can feel.
The day is demanding because it asks you to look directly at what’s usually invisible.
It’s consequential because if the recognition lands, your relationship to pressure fundamentally shifts—not as a belief you adopt, but as a lived change in how experience moves through you.
Who This Is For
Founders, executives, and senior leaders carrying real consequences—successful, driven, yet sensing the hidden cost of defended identity.
You’ve done the executive coaching.
You’ve learned the frameworks.
You’ve worked on emotional intelligence.
And still—under real pressure—something tightens.
You arrive, recognising the tightness that returns.
The performance you can’t quite stop performing.
The exhaustion persists despite rest.
You leave with a more straightforward way of seeing, tested in real consequence—supported and sharpened by the reflections of others in the room who know precisely what you’re carrying.
Who This Isn’t For
This isn’t for leaders looking for techniques, confidence-building, or validation.
It’s not therapy.
It’s not team-building.
It’s not a networking event with insight added.
It’s for people who’ve succeeded by most measures but sense they’re paying a hidden cost—and are willing to look directly at the mechanism creating it.
If you’re interested in leadership ideas, this will feel too slow.
If you’re willing to examine the actual texture of your experience under pressure, with others doing the same, it will feel exactly right.
Details
Date: January 21st
Time: 9:30 am – 4:30 pm
Location: Manchester
Group Size: Limited to 10 participants
Investment: £295
What’s Included:
Full day immersion with Andrew Sillitoe
Light refreshments and lunch
Course materials
Post-workshop integration note
About Andrew Sillitoe
Andrew Sillitoe is a leadership advisor based in Prague.
He played and coached professional inline hockey, leading Great Britain to promotion in international competition. He later built sales teams, consulted for organisations including Pfizer, the BBC, and Virgin, and wrote three books on mindset and performance.
Success came. A hidden tightness remained—until personal losses and sustained pressure revealed its root: the unconscious defence of a separate identity.
One ordinary day, he saw directly: Consciousness is not personal. Experience is.
That recognition loosened the tightness—not through new tools, but through simple seeing.
He now works with a small number of founders and executives each year, facilitating one-to-one days and group immersions where the same mechanics are noticed together.
The outcome is quieter: clearer decisions, softer relationships, steadier presence under real stakes.
Nothing dramatic. Just relief.
Apply
This is not a registration. It’s an application. Because the work is group-based, we have a brief conversation with each potential participant before confirming their place.
Email andrew@andrewsillitoe.com
“Most erosion under real stakes comes from the quiet defence of a separate ‘me.’ When that defence is seen as unnecessary, it loosens. What remains: clearer perception, steadier presence, proportionate response. Not as new skills. As relief.”