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A massive portion of executives feel insecure. 

A recent Korn Ferry report ¹found that 71% of US CEOs experience impostor syndrome. Imposter syndrome, a flavor of the inner critic, stokes fear and distorts behavior. If your boss falls in this category, when the stakes are high they might spin out over minor details or manufacture false urgency.

Your natural instinct might be to overaccommodate. You want to help, fix, and make it all better. 

But the harder you scramble to appease them, the more you validate their panic.

If you want to manage an anxious leader, stop trying to reason with them and start regulating them.

A recent Harvard Business Review piece ²on managing insecure executives captured this perfectly. The authors point out that anxious leaders desperately need soothing signals—and that a grounded, confident tone paired with a clear message can actually ease their anxiety.

In psychology, there is a biological concept called co-regulation. Our nervous systems are highly contagious. When a leader walks into a room radiating panic, your heart rate naturally speeds up. But the reverse is also true: a grounded, steady presence can lower the heart rate of everyone else in the room.

In other words, semantics (what you say) influence somatics (how you feel). 

The specific words you choose can physically regulate the nervous system of the person sitting across from you. In the classes I facilitate at Stanford Graduate School of Business, we have students experiencing this dynamic experiment with phrases designed to de-escalate anxiety.

Not all calming words work. If you’ve ever told someone (colleague, spouse, sibling) to “relax” and have that backfire, you know. 

This week is about finding the phrases that actually take the temperature down in the room and sound like you. By preparing these ahead of time, when your boss starts spinning, you don’t have to scramble for the perfect response. You already have one in your pocket.

Let’s call them your co-regulation pocket phrases.

Effective co-regulation pocket phrase lean on at least one of these three traits:

1. Grounding: It removes false urgency and creates spaciousness.

2. Connecting: It uses "we" language and focuses on a shared truth.

3. Empowering: It restores agency and frames the crisis as a solvable challenge.

Here are a few that I use:

"We are all doing this for the first time."

"We'll figure this out together."

"It's hard to make everyone happy."

In high-performing sales teams, there is a culture of "sparring." A teammate will throw objections and curveballs at you while you practice demo-ing a product or negotiating a contract, forcing you to learn how to handle the heat with grace. This has been one of my favorite use-cases for AI prompting.

Try AI as a private simulator to spar before your 1:1. Here’s a prompt to get you started:

Act as my highly stressed boss. We are [enter your situation, e.g., 2 days from a big board meeting and the numbers aren’t looking great]. Give me 2 panicked, high-urgency things you would say to me.

I will reply with a phrase to de-escalate tension. Critique my response based on three criteria: 1. Grounding (Did I remove false urgency?), 2. Connecting (Did I use 'we' language?), 3. Empowering (Did I restore agency?). Tell me how my phrase would make a person feel somatically, and then give me 2 stronger options and explain why they are better.

I really believe AI is an enabler, not a replacer. AI can certainly be your sparring sidekick and help you find the right words for a hard moment. However, AI doesn’t know your boss. You are the one with the relationship. It’s still on you to choose the phrases that sound like you, so you can deliver them with warmth and steadiness that help your boss know you mean it. 

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