Perhaps someone challenged your opinion and you immediately became defensive. Maybe you received feedback that was perfectly reasonable, yet something about it stayed with you for the rest of the day. You might avoid certain conversations altogether, become controlling when things feel uncertain, shut down when conflict appears, or find yourself repeatedly reacting to the same type of person.
The interesting part is that you may already know you do it.
You can be intelligent, successful, emotionally aware and experienced, and still find yourself repeating behaviours that you consciously know are not helping you. This is because understanding something intellectually and changing an automatic response are not always the same thing.
Much of the way we respond to the world has been shaped over years of experience. Our brain and nervous system are constantly interpreting what is happening around us, drawing on previous experiences and deciding, often very quickly, whether something feels safe, uncertain or threatening.
Sometimes, the reaction happens before our rational mind has had much opportunity to contribute.
That is what I mean when I say the nervous system doesn’t always know it is 2026. Of course, this is a metaphor. Your nervous system knows you are here in the present, but it can respond to something happening today through associations and protective patterns developed many years ago.
The circumstances may have changed. You may have changed enormously. Yet the automatic response can remain remarkably familiar.
When Emotional Triggers Bring the Past Into the Present
When we talk about threat, most people imagine something dramatic or physically dangerous. In everyday life, however, our stress responses can also be activated by social and emotional experiences such as criticism, rejection, uncertainty, loss of control, conflict or feeling that our competence is being questioned.
These emotional triggers can be different for everyone.
The same situation can therefore produce completely different reactions in different people.
One leader can be challenged in a meeting and become genuinely curious about the other person’s perspective. Another may experience the same challenge as a threat to their authority and immediately begin defending their position. One person can receive constructive feedback and think about how they might use it to improve, while another hears the same feedback and experiences it as evidence that they have failed.
The event itself matters, but so does the meaning our brain gives to it.
Over time, we develop ways of protecting ourselves. Some people become highly independent because relying on others once felt unsafe. Some become people pleasers because keeping everyone happy helped them avoid conflict. Others become controlling because uncertainty makes them deeply uncomfortable. Some withdraw when conversations become emotionally charged, while others push harder, speak louder or become increasingly determined to prove their point.
These responses are not necessarily character flaws. Often, they are learned adaptations that once served us quite well.
The difficulty comes when a behaviour that once protected us begins limiting us.
What Does This Have to Do With Leadership?
Quite a lot.
It is relatively easy to communicate well when we feel calm, respected and in control. The more revealing moments often happen when we are tired, under pressure, challenged, disappointed or uncertain. That is when our automatic patterns and emotional reactions tend to become more visible.
A leader who values high standards can become a micromanager when they feel anxious about an outcome. Someone who prides themselves on being strong and decisive can struggle to admit when they are wrong. A naturally collaborative leader may avoid an important conversation because they are uncomfortable with disappointing someone. Another person may believe they are simply being “direct” without recognising that their communication becomes increasingly aggressive when they feel challenged.
From the outside, we might call these communication problems, leadership problems or personality clashes. Sometimes they are. However, if we only address the behaviour, we can miss an important question: what is driving the behaviour in the first place?
This is one of the reasons I believe leadership development needs to go deeper than teaching people another communication model or management technique. Tools are useful, but a tool is only as effective as the person using it. If someone understands the perfect way to manage conflict but becomes highly reactive the moment they feel criticised, knowing the technique will not necessarily change what happens in that room.
We need to understand ourselves as well.
The Human Side of Performance Is Not a Small Issue
The impact of stress and unhealthy workplace interactions is increasingly visible in Australian workplaces. Safe Work Australia identifies conflict and poor workplace relationships and interactions among recognised psychosocial hazards, alongside factors such as poor support, low job control, bullying, harassment and excessive job demands.
The latest national data also gives some perspective on the scale of the issue. Mental health conditions accounted for 17,600 serious workers’ compensation claims in 2023 to 2024, representing 12 per cent of all serious claims. Over the decade to 2023 to 2024, serious claims for mental health conditions increased by 161 per cent. These claims also involved a median 35.7 weeks of lost time and median compensation of $67,400, substantially higher than the figures across serious claims overall.
Of course, not every difficult workplace relationship becomes a psychological injury, and statistics like these have many contributing factors. However, they remind us that the human side of work cannot be separated from performance indefinitely. How people experience pressure, how leaders communicate, how conflict is handled and how safe people feel speaking honestly all have consequences.
What happens within people eventually shows up between people.
Understanding Your Emotional Triggers: Awareness Is Powerful, but It Is Only the Beginning
One of the most important skills we can develop is the ability to observe ourselves while something is happening, rather than understanding our behaviour only afterwards.
Instead of immediately deciding that they are disrespecting me, they never listen, or I need to prove my point, we can become curious enough to ask, What is happening inside me right now, and why is this affecting me so strongly?
That question creates space between the experience and our response.
This is where self awareness becomes incredibly valuable. When we can recognise our emotional triggers and behavioural patterns without immediately judging or defending them, we begin to have more choice over what happens next.
However, awareness alone does not create change. I meet plenty of people who can explain their patterns beautifully. They know where they come from, they understand what triggers them and they can tell you exactly what they should do differently. Yet when the same situation happens again, the same reaction appears.
Insight is important, but awareness needs to be followed by action.
How Do We Begin Changing an Old Pattern?
The first step is to become curious about the situations that consistently activate you. Perhaps it is criticism, rejection, conflict, uncertainty, losing control or feeling that someone does not respect your expertise.
These situations can help you begin identifying your emotional triggers.
Notice what happens next. Do you defend yourself? Withdraw? Become controlling? Overexplain? People please? Avoid the conversation?
Try to observe the pattern without immediately labelling it as good or bad. You are gathering information about yourself, and you cannot consciously change something you cannot yet see.
The second step is learning to recognise what happens in your body. Your physical response can sometimes appear before you have consciously identified the emotion. You may notice tension in your jaw or shoulders, a change in your breathing, heat rising, a tight chest, a racing heart or simply a strong urge to respond immediately. Learning to recognise those signals gives you an opportunity to interrupt the automatic sequence before it takes over.
This is where emotional regulation becomes important.
Taking a few slower breaths, pausing before responding, briefly stepping away from a conversation when appropriate, or simply giving yourself several seconds before speaking can create enough space to make a more deliberate choice. Regulation is not about suppressing emotion or pretending you are unaffected. It is about allowing yourself to experience an emotion without automatically handing it control of your behaviour.
Then comes one of my favourite questions: How do I actually want to show up here?
Not, How do I win this conversation? Not, How do I prove that I am right?
Instead, ask yourself what response would best serve the person, leader or professional you are trying to become.
Sometimes the answer will be to speak up when your old pattern tells you to stay quiet. Sometimes it will be to listen when every part of you wants to defend yourself. It may mean setting a boundary, admitting you were wrong, tolerating uncertainty, having the conversation you have been avoiding or simply giving yourself permission not to react immediately.
Finally, we have to practise.
Our brains retain the capacity to adapt throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows neural connections and patterns to change in response to experience, learning and repeated behaviour. This does not mean that one positive conversation suddenly “rewires your brain”, as neuroscience is sometimes oversimplified to suggest. It means that meaningful behavioural change is supported by repeatedly practising different responses over time.
This is why I often talk about committing and recommitting until we succeed. Personal growth is rarely a perfectly straight line. We notice the pattern, practise something different, occasionally fall back into the old response, become aware of it again and recommit to the person we are choosing to become.
That is the path.
