Innovating Leadership:
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Hosted by Maureen Metcalf

Conversations with global thought leaders on leadership, culture, and innovation—designed for executives navigating complexity and building resilient organizations.

Mental Toughness: How to Embrace Stress for Greater Success

Episode Description

Colonel Deb Lewis, a West Point graduate from its first class to admit women and a 9/11 Pentagon survivor, reframes stress not as a threat to avoid but as a tool to harness. Her core message is simple and hard-won: stress isn’t bad, it’s how you deal with it that matters. She explains how emotional triggers collapse our options into fight, flight, or shutdown, eliminating creative problem-solving, and argues that mental toughness training is what lets leaders maintain decision quality under pressure and turn adversity into opportunity.

Key Takeaways

Stress itself is not the problem; how you respond to it is what determines the outcome.
When emotionally triggered, people default to fight, flight, or shutdown, losing creative options.
Only about 9 to 10 percent of companies leverage adversity strategically.
Negative emotional responses erode trust and damage relationships, especially in a crisis.
Even brief, consistent stress management practice can meaningfully shift a leader’s perspective.

Why This Episode Matters

Executives come away with a mindset and practical tools for turning stress and adversity into an advantage, preserving decision quality when pressure is highest.

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Featuring

Colonel Deb Lewis

Episode Topics

Culture to Performance • Leadership Capability & Maturity • Team Effectiveness Under Pressure

Podcast Air Date

July 6, 2021

Episode Duration

52min

Watch the episode

Season 7

Episode Number 27

Episode Content:

Mental Toughness: How to Use Your Stress for Good

Deb Lewis, founder of Mentally Tough Women (MTW), provides this week’s article as a companion to her podcast Mental Toughness: How to Embrace Stress for Greater Success.

Have you ever felt that SPECIAL SATISFACTION when you achieve what others thought impossible?

I graduated from West Point in the first class to EVER accept women. 174 years of them saying NO to all the women who wanted to attend and now our 62 women graduates from that first class have grown to over 5000 today.

It wasn’t easy. Important lessons rarely are. Those early days taught me a LOT.

Some years later, I was hand-picked to lead a $2.1 billion engineer construction program IN COMBAT! Today, I’m very involved with non-profits, businesses, schools, and government offices to make it possible to work closely together to succeed under the toughest conditions. I lead a couple of non-profits, which include one with 4,200 members as Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars for Hawaii, and as Hawaii’s ambassador for the Military Women’s Memorial, encouraging women to sign up and share HERstory.

What’s been my KEY TO SUCCESS… that’s helped 1000s of women and men do AMAZING things EVERY day against the odds?

Answer: STRESS

It can break you, making your life miserable…or…

With the right training, YOU face whatever the future holds and enjoy what’s truly possible.

What better time to learn how to use stress to your advantage than today?

Think about the huge challenges we face -from climate change (drought, floods, melting ice caps & sea rise), to aggressive nations or combative groups to COVID and deadly variants.

Consider what’s happening to our businesses.

A Harvard Study found that in a recent recession only 9-10% of companies use adversity to their advantage. (Gulati – HBS)
A Harvard Business Review report found that 70-90% of business mergers and acquisitions fail. (HBR, 2019)
Gallup studies for 2020 indicate a workforce struggling to live up to its potential. Only 1 or 2 employees in 5 are engaged at work (highly involved), 43% are stressed out daily, and 15-20% are actively DISENGAGED (actively discouraging others to perform).

What employees in the US face at home:

70% of adults have experienced a traumatic event – that’s Pre-COVID. (thenationalcouncil.org)
50% of marriages end in divorce, and up to 73% for subsequent marriages. (worldpopulationreview.com)
66% of people are seeking a real relationship, a meaningful partnership that is built on commitment and love (eHarmony)

When important issues at work and at home are wrapped in toxic and divisive perspectives, we magnify problems and solutions become elusive.

It’s natural to mistakenly view stress as a threat. In fact, we’re hard-wired and conditioned/soft-wired to do so. Threats trigger most people into survival-mode thinking.

In survival mode, unmet expectations are judged harshly and quickly. In this mode, a large range of options dramatically narrow to three strategies: Fight, Flight (run away), or Shut Down (disengage).

It’s a lot like walking into a pie shop that normally offers 50 mouth-watering options. In survival mode, you narrow your options to three ordinary-looking pies…which you don’t realize until later. And those limited choices all make you sick.

A lack of stress skills can be easy to spot. Have you ever sat in a restaurant when someone you’re with has an issue with an order? How do they treat the server? Shouting or getting upset may get movement and lots of unintended consequences. Outcomes that exceed my expectations – never happen when I’m in survival mode!

In one case, a client enthusiastically signed up for both of my Extreme Stress and Stress Basics courses. Two weeks later, I noted she had not started either one. Upon questioning, she stated, “I’m in such a dark place. I really don’t think I have the energy or desire to even start because I won’t finish.”

Rather than be disappointed, I became excited and challenged her to watch just one of my 5 minutes videos. I promised she’d have more energy and feel better right away. Two weeks later, I checked back. and she shared, “I watched the video and finished both courses by the next day.”

I knew the toxic environment she worked in and asked if she wanted to talk more. She said, “I’m great now… really!” We did talk later. Her situation was even worse than I imagined. Today, she’s in a dream job.

With a better perspective and a few stress tools, you can walk through fire. And won’t waste time in survival mode whenever your emotions are triggered. Without that training and discipline to handle stress, it’s easy to forget the wisdom that’s available to us.

Remember when Wonder Woman took on the world after her early years of intense training? My own mental toughness journey in and out of the military continues to give me the power to transform incredibly difficult situations into opportunities and to help others do the same. It hasn’t gotten easier. I’ve gotten better!

TV, newspapers, magazines, books, radio, social media, and daily conversations bombard our beliefs, conversations, and choices we make every day. Recognize that a growing number of people refuse to listen to or restrict the “News” they receive or have even sworn off social media entirely. It comes down to how well you handle life’s challenges, no matter how tough things get. Stress isn’t bad. It’s how you deal with stress that matters.

Do YOU want to stand out as a better leader? If so, your real test won’t happen when things go as planned. It’s those moments when a turn of events tests you – disappoints, frustrates or potentially angers you and those around you. With survival-mode thinking, keep in mind that:

Once you go negative, you break the trust and shake the foundation of your relationships.

What you do matters. When you’re lucky enough to be placed in leadership roles, use them to make a difference. The more challenging the job, the bigger your potential impact.

Go to our website Mentallytoughwomen.com to find out more about MTW’s Powerful Stress Tools. You’ll enjoy being tested to your limits!

Use stress to fuel your success

Resources:

Women (and men) face unhealthy stress and anxiety on a daily basis – it’s a wonder we’re still standing. Too few of us have stress tools powerful enough to put stress to work for us so we can enjoy the journey. Once you’ve learned how to be mentally tough, you will use stress to your advantage. It becomes your superpower!

Colonel Deb Lewis learned the importance of mental toughness as part of the very first class of women to graduate from West Point. The lessons learned there, and in her subsequent Army career, inspired her to develop her unique Mentally Tough Women program to teach people how to handle stress, not simply de-stress. She joins the show to share her experiences, and how you can learn to effectively use stress to your advantage, too.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy

Staying Cool in Challenging Situations with Janet Fouts
Ignite Your Leadership Game with Dre Baldwin
High-Performance Medicine: Healthcare’s Lesson for Your Elite Teams with Brian Ferguson

Guest(s):

Colonel Deb Lewis

Guest(s) Bio:

Colonel Deb Lewis is a West Point graduate from its first class with women. A retired Army Colonel and Harvard MBA, Deb commanded three US Army Corps of Engineer Districts, including a $2.1B reconstruction program in combat. She survived the 9/11 Pentagon attack while serving on the Joint Staff antiterrorism team. Colonel Deb’s experiences leading while under fire inspired her unique ‘Mentally Tough Women’ (MTW) program. MTW prepares women (and enlightened men) to handle more stress – not de-stress – in good times and times of crisis. Once you ‘Armor Up’ with mental toughness, your daily battles turn into sweet victories.

Transcript