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Load-Tested Leadership: Maintain principled credibility under pressure
PRESENTED BY
Hunter Milligan
Developer-Turned Productivity Coach for Devs & Leaders
When the pressure is on, your team stops listening and starts watching. What they see is your operating system under load. Human hardware runs emotion before logic finishes loading, so under stress even smart, decent leaders fall back on factory defaults: ego, fear, fight, flight, freeze. Add AI-accelerated output that moves faster than anyone can fully audit, and you get asked for answers you don't have yet, at the moment your defaults are loudest. Some days that's exhilarating. Other days you wonder whether you're still the right person to ask.
In this two part, co-taught session, Robert Harris and Hunter Milligan pair a systems view of leadership with practical skills for the moment itself. Through stories of leaders under increasing load, from a well-meant intervention that backfired to a boss who lost it in front of the team, you'll learn a simple loop for choosing your response (signal, default, interrupt, principle, response) and the core leadership principles worth deciding before you need them. Then you'll practice: a breathing reset that settles your body, a way to stop spinning on a problem you can't solve yet, and a method for getting through the dread of a hard conversation. You'll work real scenarios with the people around you and leave with something steadier than certainty: one honest sentence for when the answer isn't there yet, and the ability to stay clear, consistent, and credible while it arrives.
Hunter Milligan
Technical leaders and developers are under more pressure than ever — tighter deadlines, shifting priorities, and now an AI landscape that's moving faster than anyone can fully keep up with. When the pressure is constant, even sharp, experienced people start reacting instead of leading. That's where Hunter comes in.
As a former developer and Fortune 500 consultant turned performance coach, Hunter works with technical leaders and developers who are done running on fumes. For 15+ years he's helped analytically-minded professionals stay clear-headed under pressure, lead with steadiness instead of adrenaline, and actually get more done — without the grind that burns people out.
When not traveling the states or the rest of the world, Hunter enjoys mountain biking, snowboarding, and practicing tai chi—often in unexpected places.
More from Hunter
ALL SESSIONS ↗Staying Sharp in the Chaos
The scope keeps expanding. The team still needs direction. Leadership wants more output. And the AI landscape is moving faster than anyone can fully keep up with. For a lot of technical leaders, somewhere along the way the job quietly shifted from leading to just keeping up. Decisions get made from whatever state you happen to be in when the next thing lands — and it's been costing you focus, clarity, and probably sleep. Most leadership training addresses what to do. Less often does it address the skill of staying clear-headed while you're doing it — under real pressure, in real time, with a team and boss looking to you for answers. This full-day workshop is built around that gap. You'll work through real pressure situations — the kind you actually face — and develop practical skills for staying grounded when they spike, so you can lead with steadiness instead of reaction. You'll learn as much from the honest conversations in the room as from the content itself.
Delegation Without Guilt: How to Hand Off Work and Actually Let It Go
AI has increased what your team can produce. Which means more output to review, more decisions to make, more places where everything runs through you. The leverage is real — and so is the growing pile of work that was supposed to be off your plate. Part of that is systems. But a bigger part is the pull to just do it yourself — because it's faster, because it's easier than explaining it, because if something goes wrong you want to have been the one who touched it last. That pull is costing you. Not just time — the kind of work you actually want to be doing, and the headspace to do it well.
From Chaos to Chill: Bringing Order to Life Outside of Work
Does your life feel like non stop motion with never a moment to chill, as if you're always reacting to shifting priorities? You’re not alone, and it’s time to bring your A-game beyond the code. In this groomed talk, you'll learn how to use similar concepts—roadmaps, backlogs, and more—from your professional life in analogous ways to bring order to your everyday life.
Load-Tested Leadership: Maintain principled credibility under pressure
When the pressure is on, your team stops listening and starts watching. What they see is your operating system under load. Human hardware runs emotion before logic finishes loading, so under stress even smart, decent leaders fall back on factory defaults: ego, fear, fight, flight, freeze. Add AI-accelerated output that moves faster than anyone can fully audit, and you get asked for answers you don't have yet, at the moment your defaults are loudest. Some days that's exhilarating. Other days you wonder whether you're still the right person to ask.
Who's Accountable When AI Wrote the Code?
You've basically stopped writing significant amounts of code. AI does it — you check it, direct it, and sign off on it. The leverage is real and so is the uneasy feeling that comes with it. You're now responsible for output you didn't fully produce, at a volume you can't fully review, while leadership pushes for more speed. And nobody — not your org, not the industry — has figured out yet who's actually on the hook when something goes wrong.
Two and a half days with the people writing the playbook.
Insightful sessions, inspiring ideas, and meeting your peers — the skills and methods that take your organization to the next level.