50 Countries, 26 Years What Pressure Actually Does to Leaders at the Top with Gillian Muessig

Her husband died. She was still running a company, still showing up, still leading. And she had no idea she was being carried. That is the part nobody talks about. What happens to a leader's nervous system when the floor disappears and how the people around them respond in that moment shapes everything that comes right after. My guest today has spent 26 years working with founders across 50 countries. She has watched what pressure does to decision-making at the top, up close and over time. And she has lived the version that hits hardest. This episode is about what calm authority looks like when you are in the middle of the worst year of your life, and why the leaders who survive it are never the ones who went through it alone. 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. This podcast exists because pressure does not have to break leadership. It can build it. In this conversation, you will walk away with 3 things. First, why the leaders who who hold it together under real pressure are the ones who learn to separate themselves from the situation. Second, what it means to be carried by someone when you are too deep in it to know you actually even need it. And finally, why the words you use as a leader are more than just communication. They are very powerful. They build or collapse the people around you. Gillian Moosig is Managing Director at Masters Fund VC. She has spent over 2 decades working with founders and investors across 50 countries, watching leaders navigate the full spectrum of what venture capital and entrepreneurship demands. She's actually one of the research voices in my upcoming book, The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Pressure in the Age of Disruption, because what she has witnessed in those rooms and what she has lived personally, speaks directly to what this book is about. I am very glad she is here. Gillian, welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge.

How are you doing? It's a pleasure to be here.

I was so happy that you said yes. Let's dive right in. So you've watched leaders under pressure for a long time across different industries, countries, and across very different kinds of crises as well. What have you observed about what pressure actually does decision-making at the top?

It actually affects decision-making at every level from the top to the bottom. But particularly at the top, it affects so many other lives and so many other elements of a company, for example, and so on. But pressure is personal. It's not corporate. So knowing that it affects the physical being, It affects the mental being and the emotional being. And it makes us less than optimal. There is no such thing as a perfect decision, but we are performing optimally or not. We talk about that when we get out and exercise, for example, and if it's moving and so on, all of that's fine. When you take a massive hit, such as losing a spouse or, I don't know, any other kind of hit, right? People don't tend to acknowledge it. You get flowers, you get a card. You know, most of the flowers will die quickly because you have no mindshare for it. Those kinds of things happen. But I've also seen leadership, for example, when a company is in quite dire straits, what the leader does then and how they respond is critical to the success of that company, right? To its survival. Sometimes there are things out of your control. Things are going to happen. And in that case, they have to wind it down with grace and compassion and so on. And whether they can do that or not is also affected by this personal experience. I find that the leaders who do the best are not necessarily old and seasoned. Even young can do well. But those youngest have very strong, how should I say, emotional support.

Right.

social support behind them. Those that don't, who have to go it alone, who don't have, I don't know, a spouse, a lover, good friends, family, something, anything, right? And it's got to be anyone really, or a group of ones. Those that have to go it alone don't do as well.

I love what you said about pressure being personal because we always talk about the business landscape and professional pressure is pressure. You hold it in your nervous system, in your body, in the way you show up. It affects everything. You might bring it from home to work, bring it from work to home. It doesn't stop existing.

Oh, it does. You know, there are parables about the man who, I don't know, has a terrible day and his car breaks down, this and that. And some guy gives him a lift. And it's about wiping the hands on the leaves of a tree or a bush before he walks inside because he leaves his day behind. Those are the kinds of parables we talk about and so on. These are real. I just read this morning that most of the autoimmune diseases are affecting women. And the physician, a fellow, was explaining why. He said, because in the society at large, all over the world, the women are taught to carry everybody else's stress. And stress leads directly to those autoimmune responses. They carry other people's disappointments. It's their job to make somebody else happy. They have to do things if somebody else drops the bucket, physically, emotionally, whatever, right? They constantly do for others. And because that's being taught so often to more women than men, more women than men will suffer from this. And I thought, nobody else has ever drawn such a direct line between the physical outcome of these stresses from childhood through adulthood as this fellow had. I thought it was quite interesting. I guess I should dig in a little more.

I would love to get a link to that article. We can even share it in the description. People listening that are interested in reading this article will probably look under the description. I'm pretty sure it'll be there by the time we're done. But yes, thanks for sharing that. We talk about pressure as a thing that is outside. And like I said, you mentioned that it's personal. We carry it whether it's for business or in our professional life or in our personal life. And actually, What you shared with me inspired me to write a whole chapter on that. And your insight was so relevant for the book. And I can't wait for readers to go, oh, which chapter is she talking about? But it's in chapter 5. There you go. But Jillian, you described as well, when we both spoke and we're doing the research call, you also described as the leader who can see the whole chessboard. Tell me more about what you have actually observed And the people who do that well. What I'm referring to here to listeners or people watching this is that we talk about that pressure and handling pressure and being able to show up with calm authority and being able to pause. It is a trainable capacity. And what Jillian shared with me is that the vision, the image of the chessboard. So I will let you elaborate and share a bit more on that.

Well, from a perspective with business in particular, one puts together a good board of directors, right? And that board of directors brings different viewpoints, different educational backgrounds, different lived experiences, and different superpowers, if you will, right?

Right.

People who report to the board will come in during a board meeting, somebody from marketing, somebody from technology, and so on. And they will provide perspectives and a better understanding of whatever's going on. Good leaders don't just have a board of directors and rubber stamp it, if you will.

Right.

They really learn how to report to their board, which means gathering all the information from all the parts of their business. And they really take it, if you will, to heart. So, beyond the business of reporting, they lay it out on the table. They look at all of the elements. And the best ones are the ones who can weave it together to a single fabric. They understand how all the pieces are interconnected. And then as they think about that, because they must report it, teaching somebody is the best way to learn it. That's what they do on a regular basis. There are statistics that indicate that company leaders who form their boards of directors early will succeed more quickly. They succeed more regularly. They succeed at higher valuations. And yet most people will listen to the advice that says, no, no, no, wait for the Series A investor to show up.

Right.

and help you form the— nonsense. You begin on the back foot. The only one with board experience is your investor.

There you go.

Right? Yes. Yeah.

Very interesting. I started the episode with your story. Basically, you lost your spouse and you wrote about your business partner, Anne, and the way she showed up for you in that period that was very difficult for you. Can you tell us what happened?

Yes. I have the great pleasure to work with Anne Kennedy. Anne Kennedy is also an author. She wrote what is still the Bible in international marketing for search engine optimizers. She ran one of the world's largest consortiums of digital marketing companies, at the time the largest. And she followed me into venture capital as well. The two of us formed Masters Fund and we run it together. So we are co-managing directors.

Okay.

Co-CEO. Nevertheless, in doing so, on the evening that my spouse died, I let her know and she was not there the next morning. There were others who showed up the next morning, right? Boys. Signal is what she brought. The knowing whether to make the decision to travel or not travel. She let me make the decision, but she laid out the chessboard for me. She knew that my mind couldn't do it. And she quietly, without ever saying that's what she was doing, well, the pros are this and the cons are that. Yes, I could have said those words. In a normal conversation, she was fully aware that I could not. Number 2, she traveled with me, right? Anne is 5 years older than I am, and I am not young. I wrung her out physically to the last drop by the time we were done with this, and she did not flag, right? That's consistency. It's showing up whether she wanted to or not, whether she could or not, for heaven's sake.

Mm.

Until it was done. And for that, we made 5 trips around the world. We did other ones that were just here and there. It was insane in terms of raising the capital for Masters Fund II and for doing this kind of work. Nevertheless, the consistency was there. Her ability to quietly do what I could not do, to be there to back it up, and then to now and then tell me. It's time to sleep. Eat that.

Right.

You're on in 5. What do you need to do next? Literally, have you gone to the loo? You are up in 5 minutes.

Wow, right?

Little things that you don't think about your own body, your own mind, or whatever. You're floating through space and totally unaware of it. I was fine. Sure.

Wow.

I was barely fine. Because somebody right beside me was constantly telling me and carrying me and moving me through space. We're going this way, we're going that way, we're doing the other. Ordinarily, I'd be saying, you know, I'll set the schedule and we'll do this. But nope, she just picked it all up. Each of us had our tasks, right? Look back over it, she had 7/8 of the tasks and I barely floated over the top.

That's amazing.

You know, I work, I'm the front face, right? Wizard and executor. In this particular situation, I'm the wizard. I have always before been the executor. In this case, the executor stood up, made sure that wizard got through what she had to do.

She carried you. She carried you through it.

She carried me every step of the way.

And thanks for sharing that. What Anne did in those months, basically, as a name in neuroscience, even if she never probably used that, when a person's threat system is in full activation, which is where you were, grief, shock, disorientation, probably You probably weren't even aware of what's going on or what's actually happening. The presence of another person who is regulated, steady, produces a biological response. Your nervous system at that point was reading safety from another nervous system before they even said a single word or asked you, are you okay? Did you eat? So you were self-regulating just with her presence and how her nervous system was acting around you. And it's pretty much, we call it co-regulation. And it's one of the most powerful things one human can do for another. And she did not try to fix it. She just created a connection. And that is the most powerful thing that she could have done for you. And she did it.

And she did. That's right. And that's what extraordinary friendship is about, but also extraordinary leadership. It's interesting that you talk about the regulation, self-regulation and others' regulation. I have noted even 2 years hence that over 50 years, we had become— my spouse and I had become a single microcosm, essentially.

Right.

Any marriage is so, even if it's only a few years. When to eat and when to sleep and when you feel this and when you're quiet and when you're busy, that happens as part of that structure of a couple. And when that's gone, the body doesn't know what to do. I was unaware of it at the time. I only became aware of it by looking back on it. And I realized she is the one that regulated what had to be the absolute minimum, just got it done. So quietly filling in, that's servant leadership. That's extraordinary servant leadership.

And it is biological. And we don't fathom how powerful that is, how you show up and how you're being around people and who you need to be around certain people that are going through something. So focused on our own world. That's why we talk about empathy. And this is what true servant leadership is, that you're conscious and self-aware enough to understand what the room needs right now. Do they need me to start yelling? Do they need me to control every single detail now? Or maybe I need to just show up with calm and listen. And then the whole room will probably calm down without me saying one word. And that's the power of self-regulating. And that's the power the pressure has. So you can use that power and learn from it as opposed to let it run you. You are taking that pressure and working with it because it's always going to be there one way or another in different forms, different times, right?

I know that Anne was with me and guiding me the whole time, literally from, have you eaten or something? She didn't have to ask. She would simply push food towards me or tell me that it was time or whatever it was, right? Those kinds of things. She made sure that we had, I don't know, a hotel with a swimming pool and we got in there and we moved. Those kinds of things, right? She simply took care of everything. Right now, that was one. What happened when I wasn't in the room? What did she tell others? Did she make reports to others? Did she tell others I was fine or wasn't? Did she— I don't know. Did she tell them what to say or not to say? I have—

I guess we're going to have to invite Anne to the show and ask her those questions.

Extraordinary leader, right? But I have the sense that there was a lot more going on than I'm aware of.

Yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting.

With 20/20 hindsight.

So you wrote something else about the words of leaders, something you shared when we booked the podcast episode. And I want to read it back to you if you're okay with that. You wrote, Teens are crushed by crippling words from a careless teacher, fellow student, or adult in the family who make snide comments or worse. People of all ages are uplifted when someone acknowledges their value to another person or to their community. The words of leaders set the tone of families, schools, communities, enterprises, and entire nations. You have watched this pretty much across 50 countries. What have you seen words do?

I've seen them both lift and turn, break apart. Absolutely.

Why was it so important for you to bring this forward?

I think I had in mind the idea that I talk about often with the CEOs in our portfolio companies, and even those that we don't take in as portfolio companies at Masters Fund. I talk a lot with these people about understanding that they're about to shoulder the mantle of being a CEO of a fast-growing company. The tenor, the tone, the culture of a company comes from the top down. And if that leader holds the hard line, they don't hire, I don't know, managers who are deprecating. They will hire managers who understand that their job is to give the workers, if you will, all the tools and toys they need to play at the top of their game and get out of their way.

Right? It's different. Right?

So it comes from the top down. And I think about that quite often. I've seen functional boards and dysfunctional boards. But I've also seen functional cultures and dysfunctional cultures.

Mm-hmm.

And when the culture is about lifting up others, then people perform not only at the top of their game, they exceed their own expectations. It's often said you cannot hope for more than somebody hopes for themselves. I disagree. You can let them know that they can hope for a whole lot more. You can open doors and people actually take advantage of that. So I'm 72 years old this year, and I've been at this game for a long time, from raising children to raising CEOs and so on.

The other types of children. Thank you very much. I mean, as a mentor, I'm assuming, and as an investor, no disrespect there for the CEOs.

Of course, you know, you get a CEO who is, you know, it is, it's like our babies.

You know, this is our ventures. They're our babies. You know, we care a lot about them.

The venture is their baby and they're just learning how, and they are new at being CEOs. They don't have to be young in years, but they are young in this role. And so with all of that, yes, I, I do help to raise them because I'm engaged at the earliest stages and helping them to understand what that means to have this tiger by the tail. It's yours to win or to lose and so on. They need to understand the power that they wield because it doesn't necessarily come naturally. And they certainly weren't always born to it. They're beginning something new.

Mm-hmm.

And often, especially if the person is young, it's the first time they've been in a leadership role.

Yeah.

But they have to step into it and they have to work quickly. They have to understand the full game, as I said, the full chessboard. All of these things need learning, but mostly how you communicate with your own team will illuminate whether you're a leader who can take this to the finish line.

Absolutely.

A revolving door of, I don't know, let's say you're a solo CEO and now you've got a COO and a CTO, but you know, the COO just keeps being a revolving door. In other words, you cannot share. The world, and that's an important thing to know. VCs look for that to see whether or not there are teams building this or a single person building it. We have a name for it; it's called founderitis. They cannot. The founder cannot get rid of their own mind. Founderitis.

Okay.

We call those and founderitis, and if they got founderitis, this is going to be a lifestyle company. It's not bad. I mean, it may be. Who knows? But it is not scalable. Sometimes these CEOs don't have time to learn.

That's unfortunately the case. And that's why training is good. But it's really all about practice because you know how training works. You can train all you want. But if you're not putting it into practice, that's where you're going to be able to transform and change the habit and instill a different, a better type of level of communication is actually going to serve you as a leader, as opposed to a theory workshop that you forget about by the weekend. You really need to show up and be self-aware enough as a leader to want to do better. And I think most leaders underestimate this because they are focused on what they are saying rather than what the person across from them is receiving. And the minute that you are able to kind of get out of your, you know, zoom out on yourself, listen to yourself speak and listen to the— and watch the other person in front of you, This is where you're able to communicate in a very open, empathetic, and present way. Presence, it's so important.

Authenticity is important as well. There's truth and authenticity. For example, we have an expectation of leaders. And then we put that expectation on ourselves. And people rarely talk about anything vulnerable, if you will, right? If it's vulnerable, the whole thing falls apart. That too is rubbish. And it puts on, we talked about stress and pressure, it puts unreasonable amounts of stress on these young CEOs of early-stage companies. Depression, burnout, it's a huge issue. It's a constant issue. It's debilitating. Sometimes they know they've got it. Sometimes they don't. Those who acknowledge it or even just acknowledge, I'm not up for it now. Right. Just whatever it is to take that break. And then self-care. Self-care comes very hard to those who give a lot. It certainly comes hard to women.

Mm-hmm.

And knowing that, that's so difficult. I struggle with it. I am always the last on the list of my own lists. That's not good. And I know that if I am The last on the list, I'm not going to be there at optimal value for anybody.

Exactly.

I remain on the last of the list. Yeah, hard thing to cut. I've seen it with other CEOs too. Those who do take time for themselves, those who are honest about being up or down, those who are transparent about these things, they lead better. are more empathetic to others. Others are more comfortable opening up to them. It isn't only about being able to express what isn't good, or I feel bad, and so on. That would be— I don't know, that's mollycoddling, right?

Right.

It's not only about that. It's knowing when you are at your optimal strength, if you will, and you actually get the work done. And then knowing that you don't have to wait until you're falling apart to step back. That's the difference. You're going to step back whether you want to or not because you're going to fall apart, right?

Please don't make it to that, right? Make sure that you're pausing and you're pacing yourself and self-regulating before you get to that part. And this is why we're having this pressure conversation to start with. Because I don't find a lot of people are talking about this and it's not something you train for when you are being taught leadership. I don't know if that is even a thing. But even in executive MBAs, MBAs, even as you're growing within a company. You know, nobody talks about that. It's more about push, push, not self-stop. Let's pause. Nobody's talking about pausing. No time to pause, right? No time. What is self-regulation? What is that? You know, what does that mean?

Yeah. Leadership training is a thing. It's a massive industry, right? Whether they're good at it is another thing. But there are more people now talking about not just the pause, but about self-regulation and taking that One of the largest voices is my own son, Rand Fishkin, with whom I co-founded the company together. He talks about it all the time. He's written a book called Lost and Founder, a painfully honest view of this experience. And he speaks about it publicly constantly.

That is such a breath of fresh air. I, you know, I do come across brilliant experts out there, coaches, leaders at different levels that, you know, when they're on the show, it's because they do talk about this. They've gone through something. They learned a thing or two. So, there's definitely hope. And that's the idea is just to talk about it more. There's just not enough of us out there, I believe. I think this is a conversation that should be just part of the curriculum, period. It's not some of us talk about it. It's like we all have to talk about this. This is Leadership 101, right, in my definition of things. But Gillian, the time flew. And quite honestly, I had a whole bunch of rapid-fire questions for you. And the brilliant thing about it is that you answered most of them without me asking them. So, I will ask one though. One thing every leader should stop saying immediately.

You need to. Aha!

And there we go. Before I close this episode, a couple of things. If you're a senior leader and you want to to know exactly where pressure is costing you and your team right now, there's a free diagnostic at clairehayek.com/pp-scorecard. You're going to see a QR code here. You can scan it. It takes about 4 minutes. You get instant results. It maps where the pressure is entering your leadership system and basically how pressure-proof you are personally as a leader and how pressure-proof your team is. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, I am writing a It will launch on September 9th, 2026. It's called The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You. If you're interested in joining the early readers group with exclusive access to the book before it actually hits the launch, you know, get to the launch, do go to clairehayek.com/book to sign up. We will be closing the sign-up soon. And finally, subscribe to the NeuroLeadership Edge. Every subscriber helps the show grow, reach further, and bring you the caliber of guests guests that we have— we're having today, like Gillian. And so we can have these conversations that actually move the needle. So you're— you hitting that subscribe button matters more than you think. Gillian, I want to give you the last word for the leader who's in the middle of it right now, the hardest year, the hardest quarter, the moment when the floor is uncertain. I mean, I think we're— all of us are going through it right now. It's the age of disruption. What do you want them to hear?

It's okay to dissociate yourself from the situation at hand. The situation is going to happen whether you're there or not, right? If you removed yourself, there would be somebody else in your shoes. However, if you're going to survive it, it takes that separation so that you can see this whole chessboard, right? Step back.

Right.

Take some quiet time, get all the information you need, and remember, you do not follow everybody's advice. The whole idea is that you receive it, you sit with it, and trust me, tomorrow morning it will become clear.

And I can definitely second that. Wise words, very relevant. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, and I cannot wait for our listeners and people watching us now to read a little bit about Jillian in the book. I'm just teasing this because I am way too excited about it. And as always, lead boldly, stay human, and turn every challenge into a gift because it is a gift. See you all next week. Jillian, lovely having you.

Thank you.