In this NeuroLeadership Edge episode, host Claire Hayek interviews cybersecurity veteran and Navy veteran Jana Garber about leading under extreme pressure. The conversation opens with a vivid story of a senior manager who, during a high‑stakes steering‑committee call, chose to pause and tell executives the uncomfortable truth rather than give a reassuring but false promise. Claire explains the neuroscience behind that split‑second decision, highlighting how the prefrontal cortex (the brain’s strategic center) can override the amygdala’s threat response when trained. Jana describes how Navy boot‑camp drills—repetitive, high‑stress tasks like towel‑folding under fire—condition the brain to filter noise and focus, creating a rapid “switch” from survival mode to strategic mode. Together they discuss the “pressure‑proof leadership” framework Claire uses to train executives to maintain clarity, alignment, and calm during crises. The dialogue then shifts to the current AI transformation in cybersecurity: Jana points out the need for human oversight because large language models can hallucinate ("phantoms"), the importance of robust governance, managing machine identities, and protecting data when deploying AI tools. They also touch on practical challenges such as token costs, access controls, and the learning curve for staff. The episode concludes with rapid‑fire questions—Jana’s one‑word description of pressure ("anxiety"), the moment she knows she’s leading well (team autonomy guided by commander’s intent), a career lesson (leadership isn’t about longer hours but about removing noise), and her leadership motto ("Technology changes, people don’t. Great leadership helps to organize and navigate both"). Claire promotes her free Pressure & Performance Scorecard and her new book, "The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Fire in the Age of Disruption," and provides contact information for Jana.
Chapters
Well, here it is. A senior manager is on a call with an entire executive steering committee. CISOs, CIOs, senior partners, all watching, all listening. The project is behind. Everyone wants a number. Everyone wants a promise of some kind. And she could have given them one. It would have been easy. It would have been the safe thing to do. Instead, she stopped the call And told them the truth. What happens in your brain in that half second before you choose truth over comfort? Today we find out. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge. I'm Claire Hayek, NeuroLeadership expert, TEDx speaker, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. I spent more than 20 years leading high-stakes projects and teams under pressure. Today, you'll learn why clarity beats speed when everything is on fire. You'll learn how military training rewires the brain to cut through the noise, to get rid of the noise. And you'll also learn why the smartest response to chaos when there's a lot going on is not speed is not to act faster, but to see clearer. My guest today is Jana Garber. She's a cybersecurity leader with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations modernize security, identity, and technology while navigating complex change. She's a Navy veteran, and she has spent her career in the exact meetings most people never see, the ones where a company's biggest risks get named pretty much out loud. Jana, welcome to the show.
Thank you. And thank you very much for having me, Claire.
Lovely having you. I'm glad you're able to make it. Now, let's dive right in. Take me back to that moment where in your career, you obviously told me this before. And so there was a very high-stakes project, high pressure. And that moment pretty much changed how you lead. Tell us what happened. Walk us through it.
Yeah, no, it was great. So that was exactly it. There was a project that had been going on for a while. And we were getting ready to— we were preparing for this steering committee that had all the executive leadership team on it. And, you know, we had the meeting for the meeting, we had the prep, what was going on, we had the slides. And so we all— we got on a call, because this is during COVID So all of us were remote. And I was leading the call and, you know, addressing the questions that they had. And so finally someone stopped, I think it was the CIO, and he said, tell me, Jana, what it's going to take. What's the amount of time and money to get this project through? And so I stopped. And all the noise I had in my head went away, and I just said, Look, I said, I can tell you, I can pull out charts, I can show you what it is, but at the end of the day, I think you need to pause and reflect on what it is that you really want to get out of this program. I see that there's a lot of folks that are not aligned. Everyone has different expectations, and I don't think it's, you know, the— project team that can define that for you. Only you guys can define that for yourself. And it was very powerful. Of course, I was scared. I was like, oh my gosh, I got all these big bosses on the phone and I'm telling them what they don't—
they want to hear and they don't want to hear at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's where you have to be, um, you have to be comfortable in being able to— I'll not say comfortable, but you have to have the courage to be able to tell folks things that are uncomfortable, the right thing.
So what happened after you hung up that call?
I think I put my head between my legs for a second. I was taking a deep breath and I was nervous. And then I started to get text messages and, and my company had asked me to get on a call and they were very supportive because the, the The culture of the organization I worked for was do right by the client. And so I spoke with authenticity. I was transparent and it was everything that was needed to be done. And that's how you build those client relationships.
Absolutely. I mean, the pause that you took says it all, you know, that was pretty much your brain running a threat check for maybe a split second. And every person on that call You know, representing status, reputation, risk in a way, right? I mean, the easy way was to say what they wanted to hear and maybe come up with some kind of, sorry, BS of some sort just to smooth things over. But the harder path, which is the one you took, required for you to tap into your prefrontal cortex, which is the brain CEO, your strategic brain.
Right.
to stay in charge instead of handling control, right? And just controlling the whole situation and maybe not being— saying the right things or making the right decision or the right call because you would've been in your threat brain, in your survival brain. You had clarity under pressure. And it's a trained regulation. I know that, which brings me to my next question. You're a Navy veteran. Now tell us a little bit how that experience shaped your ability to stay calm under pressure, stay steady in a moment like that steering committee call.
Yeah, no, definitely. It starts out early when you're in boot camp and they put a lot of stress on you, especially the first 4 weeks of boot camp. And it's about Folding a towel, you're on a timer, you know, they're yelling at you, you're folding a towel, you got to get it right. And it's repeated over and over again. And so what that does— it's not just the towels, it ends up being a lot more— but what that does is that it helps you to take out the noise and just focus on the task at hand. So when you get into something, it sounds very small. But when you go to a ship and we were running a drill, I didn't know it at the time, and they called general quarters, I knew exactly where I needed to go. I knew what my spot was on the ship and what I needed to do. And so it just, it just, it's incredible how it does that switch. And I don't think everybody has that ability to do it, but the military was definitely instrumental. And helping through that.
Well, here's the good news. We all have the ability to do it. It's just that we need to train for it. And that's exactly what the Navy did or what the Navy does. It's not coincidence. And this is the fascinating thing is proof. What you're saying is proof that we can train this ability. There's like a switch because it's real. It's real. The switch is real. It's learned. It's trained. And Repeated exposure to those high-stakes drills basically trains the brain to shift the blood away from your survival response, which is your amygdala, and towards the strategic brain, towards the reasoning center, much faster than someone who has never practiced that shift before. And that's why there are these drills. And the Navy understood this. Actually, I've spoken to many guests that had an army background. And they were the most steady. And it's brilliant. I think it's a huge gift that you took on from that training. And this is what's fascinating. I think a lot of people don't believe that's trainable, that's possible. But it is. And this is when we talk about— I often talk about pressure-proof leadership, the framework that I install in organizations. That's exactly what we're doing. We are training the executive and the leadership teams to how to strategize under pressure. And it's a drill and it's a framework. It's not random because otherwise people might go and default to their survival pattern, which could be pulling in different directions. Imagine a navy, you know, pulling in different directions. You have to be aligned, right? And focused. Now, how do you— if we talk about what's happening right now, you know, you work at the Center of Cybersecurity and Technology. leadership right now. What is the biggest struggle you're seeing in organizations as they try to adopt AI? I had to ask. I mean, this is the biggest transformation. And we're talking about pressure. We're talking about drills. We're talking about training. We're talking about how do you get rid of the noise and stay focused and do the right thing and show up with alignment and calm authority? And I think you know a thing or two about that, specifically that this is your expertise. Now, how do you see it? What you're observing, what do you see people struggle with? And what can we do about it? It's a lot of questions, but yeah.
No, no, no, it's good. So what I see with it is that folks are reacting and they're not necessarily responding. And the way that I would put that is, you know, let's say you're in a car accident. everyone involved is reacting to what happened. But when, you know, the fire department or the EMS show up, they're responding, they're drilled into what needs to happen. And these technology, you know, technology changes over— it's changed so much in my lifetime. And but the leadership should not change, it should stay the same. And that's really about, you know, taking a step back. I say pause, Mm-hmm. Take a deep breath, analyze the situation, and then kind of develop a plan. Who do you need to be— to help you get through this? And the best leaders, what I see is that they provide clarity, which is more valuable because people want to know, you know, what is their mission? What is the desired outcome? What is their role in this? And with that, teams can navigate moving forward with confidence. And so leadership then is more about we're creating the condition for people to move forward together.
OK. We're talking about alignment. We're talking about being able to get rid of this noise and train for it in a way. And with AI transformation, though, if we dig a little bit deeper, what are the specific struggles that you're seeing right now across organizations? Because I think there's Different organizations, many organizations that are at different levels of adoption, some that are really proactive and they really have it down to a certain extent. Because, I mean, AI is changing every day. It's evolving every day. So, what are you seeing organizations struggle with nowadays? I speak to a lot of clients and a lot of them are— some are really advanced into the AI transformation. Some, they're just trying to wrap their head around it. They don't even know where to start. Not only with cybersecurity, I mean, how do you adopt, get people to adopt it, to what extent? And now there's the whole talk about tokens and the actual cost of use. Do you really want to dispatch this to the whole organization? Who gets to use it? Who gets not to use it? To what level? There's so many questions. I would love to know your take. How do you see this?
So what do you see anyway? Yeah, from a cyber perspective, I think— from a business perspective, I think it has a lot of benefits that can go through and actually take away some of those, um, tasks that you continuously do, more operational, the repeatable tasks, and it makes things a little bit faster. But you always have to have the human at the center of it. And what I mean by that is you've got to validate, you've got to double-check what's happening because as great as AI is, it doesn't know everything. And so when it doesn't know, it's going to make up answers and we call them phantoms. And so yeah, it makes it fantastic.
That's very creative. I can do it.
Yeah. And then at the end, then it becomes— so now you have this technology, you know, the business is getting better, the technology is being rolled out. But the other thing is that from a cyber perspective, we are no longer just managing people, right? We are managing AI agents and machine identities and who has access to what. And so you— an ideal situation, which is where you want to be, is that people just, they have the access that they need at that time. And so there's that piece and it's about understanding the landscape. And so you have this AI that you're putting through and you need to have a really good governance around it and what it's doing, why it's doing it, who owns it. And so that you are able to, if you know everything that you have, you're able to measure and protect and do measurements against that, like how safe you are.
Right.
So it does, it opens up a lot. And then the other thing And 2, it's a learning curve for people. They need to know what they can and cannot put into, you know, their local, we'll say, whatever ChatGPT that they have used within the corporate where they've, you know, secured it. And you just can't dump in an Excel spreadsheet with everybody's salaries in it. You have to be very smart with what you do because you don't, you have the possibility of losing some intellectual property, whether you meant to or not, if vendors have access to your systems. And it just, it's just, it's got a lot of benefits, but it's got a lot of opportunities for us to be able to review and secure it.
Yeah, it's a lot of work. I think there's a lot. I think that's where people feel really overwhelmed when it comes to AI. Where do you start? And I know that, you know, the LLMs out there, they're a bit more accommodating the corporate enterprise packages, where all of these security and tech kind of related issues or risks are, you know, are protected. And I know there's different levels of security levels, like obviously, it'll cost more, the higher the security is. But I mean, I remember when this whole thing first started, there was none of that. So I think we're getting there, especially that now, People are starting to. This is moving forward, right? This is no longer if I'm going to adopt AI, it's when I'm going to adopt AI at this point. Jana, this has been really interesting. Now, I'm going to be throwing some rapid-fire questions your way. Here's the first one. One word to describe pressure.
Anxiety. Anxiety. Everyone gets anxious.
It's true. It's true. Absolutely. And then, some of us, I think when we're under pressure, we get really swallowed in by all the noise and the chaos. And I guess my word would be overwhelm. So, being able to get rid of that, that's just so key. But the good one, anxiety is definitely on top of the list. Here's the next one. The moment you know you're leading well.
Is when your team is able to— it doesn't require you to be in the middle and organizing it. Your team just naturally takes over and they run with it. It's interesting because in the military, I would say you have a thing about commander's intent.
Right.
And so it's about, here's what I would like to see things, or this is how we're going to move forward. And it's very well aware. And then it gives the individuals that they know that they can work— I wouldn't say autonomously, but they can make decisions without having to come back and get approval because it's meeting what you were looking for.
Yes, I love that. I mean, responsibility, accountability. And that's just such a great way to motivate and get people to be engaged, that trust, right? All right, one thing you wish someone had told you earlier in your career.
That working harder, working the long hours, putting all that time in is not necessarily what a leader is or what you need to do to get through life. It's more about really sitting back, removing the noise, and being intentional with the way that you move forward.
I bet that makes you way more productive, right? Definitely, yes.
Yes, this is pressure-proof leadership for you.
That's exactly what it is. One last one. I'm picking your brain today. Your leadership motto in 5 words or less, 4 or less. I'm not going to count them. Don't worry about it.
Technology changes, people don't. Great leadership helps to organize and navigate both.
All right. This is great. This has been very insightful. Now, if you're a cybersecurity or technology leader wondering, where pressure is quietly costing your team right now, I built a free 4-minute diagnostic called the Pressure and Performance Scorecard. It maps exactly where pressure is limiting your leadership and your team's performance and gives you instant results. Now, you could just scan the code that you see on screen now. Head to clairehayek.com/pp-scorecard in case you're listening to this on audio or check the description. And some of you may know or may not know, my book is basically out. This was launched on September 9th. It's called The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Fire in the Age of Disruption. If today's conversation hit home, that's exactly what the book was built for. So, you can scan the QR code for more info or check the description again for access links. And if this conversation gave you something to think about, hit subscribe. It helps this show reach more leaders who need to hear it. Now, my guest today, Jana, she's an expert in cybersecurity and technology. And if you're navigating that transformation that we talked about today, again, cybersecurity and specifically in cybersecurity and tech, please do reach out to Jana. You can find her on LinkedIn. Jana, maybe you can elaborate a bit more if you want to tell us how else we can reach you besides LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the number one right now, but I'm also developing a website with information coming soon where you can also reach out to me if you have any questions or just want to chat and catch up.
If you're navigating transformation in your organization right now, specifically with cybersecurity and tech, do reach out to Jonna on LinkedIn or via her website. We'll be sharing this in the description. You can find it right below. And Jonna, it was great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. Any last words? Anything you wanna say to our audience or listeners today?
Yeah, as you're navigating this disruptive time with AI, just remember that every major shift you have still requires trust, clear communication, thoughtful governance, and helping people embrace that new technology.
Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. Thanks again, Joanna. Now everybody else, thanks for joining in. Don't forget to subscribe Subscribe and share this episode if somebody's navigating this transformation. I mean, quite honestly, who isn't? But do share it if somebody's looking for some expertise in cybersecurity and technology, and reach out to Johnna. Now lead boldly. Don't forget, stay human, and turn every challenge into a win because there's always a gift you can find in every challenge, every failure. Have a good one, and see you all next week. Bye for now.
