Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

I Didn’t Realize What I Was Doing to My Team

28 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief excerpt from his YouTube video, Cameron Herold shares the hardest leadership lesson he learned: the importance of pausing before reacting. He explains how his impulsive, angry reactions created negative ripple effects that worried, frustrated, and angered his employees, often lingering for weeks. By reflecting on the experience, he realizes that a mindful, responsive approach—taking a breath, considering the whole situation, and remembering that workplace stress is temporary—could have prevented those harmful shockwaves and allowed him to address serious issues without adding unnecessary stress.

Chapters

The hardest leadership lesson that I ever learned, and I wish I'd actually learned it so that I didn't cause some of the mistakes, was to pause and think and maybe take a little bit of a breath before I react instead of responding to situations. One of the big lessons was that my reaction to things caused huge ripple effects throughout the organization. And at times I would get pissed off about situations that were real, they were serious, but my reaction caused all of these negative ripples inside of the organization. It worried my employees, it frustrated my employees, it pissed off my employees. It sent these negative shockwaves throughout the organization that often lasted 2 or 3 weeks. Had I actually learned to respond, to pause, maybe to consider the entire situation, and to remember that none of this stuff actually matters, we're just walking each other home, I would've been able to approach the serious conditions without that serious stressful nature. So I wished I was able to respond versus react as a business leader.