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.
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.
About Robert Harris
Robert N. Harris is the Founder of Coded2Lead, a coaching practice dedicated to transforming software engineers into emotionally intelligent leaders. A 4x software engineering executive based in Houston, TX, Robert draws on 20+ years of pragmatic leadership experience - alongside a unique academic background in psychology and anthropology - to tackle the toughest problems in technology: the human ones.
His claim to fame is helping small engineering teams punch above their weight. He’s helped companies shrink product cycles from months to weeks, launch new products in months instead of years, and scale revenue by 10x.
He’s mentored tech leads, managers, and founders across industries, blending technical rigor with surreal metaphors, visual storytelling, and deeply empathetic insight. Whether he's refining a brand identity or helping a developer navigate imposter syndrome, Robert’s approach is iterative, creative, and always human-centered.
When he’s not coaching, you’ll find him in the garden, under the stars, or behind the wheel - using race cars, astronomy, and nature as unexpected mirrors for leadership growth. His mission: to help engineers debug themselves, lead with courage, and build systems where people thrive.
If a business is willing to invest in software engineering, he’ll make sure they get the most out of that investment.
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About 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.
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