A leap of faith

Karna is a character from Mahabharata. He was the son of Kunti, the eldest brother of Pandavas. (As he was born before Kunti was married, he was abandoned as a child and only few people knew of his true parenthood) He was a better archer and warrior than Arjuna, the hero of the Pandava clan. But unfortunately he had a curse on him. On account of this curse, he would lose his faculties and forget his skills when he desperately needs them in a matter of life and death. If we explain this curse in common terms, we can say that though Karna was better skilled, when it came to performance under stress, he was not as good as Arjun..

In real life we come across people who suffer from this Karna complex. When faced with an emergency they freeze over; forget what they are supposed to do and can’t remember what they have learned. They break-down under stress.

In some professions like flying and fire fighting where risk is physical, the importance of performance under stress is well-appreciated and there are various training programs to strengthen this skill. But in many of the normal managerial decisions where the risk is not physical, not immediate and difficult to map to the decisions taken, the importance of this factor is often not properly acknowledged. In these roles we look for experience, intelligence, skills and knowledge; but often fail to recognize the skill for of decision making under stress.

This can be disastrous; especially because most often the risk faced in the managerial roles is psychological and not physical and we don’t realize how such stress can affect the quality of our decisions. Even when we recognize the effect of stress on our health, we ignore how poor decisions that are detrimental to the organisations may be taken on account of that.

Our schools don’t train us on this (in fact these days, we mollycoddle our children so much and we try hard to remove any element of stress they face that they could grow-up expecting fairy godmother to make their life easy), our selection processes do not measure the candidate’s ability to perform under stress and our induction programs and organisational trainings do not teach this either. The priority is given only to skill, knowledge and experience.

Most people will buckle under stress at certain level and behave irrationally or take irrational decisions. The threshold will vary from person to person. At higher levels of responsibility we need people with a higher threshold level. We need to recognize this factor as a critical element in leadership development. This is important because whether in a fire-line or company venue, making quality leadership decisions under conditions of stress and ambiguous authority is not a natural capacity. [1] Natural human reaction in times of risk is ‘fight or flight’. Training and practice can help us to override this natural reaction after due consideration of alternatives, probabilities and resources.

But training cannot guarantee how we will react. It is also a question of how we are made up. That is why we have to be careful in our selection process for assignments that have high element of stress, to ensure that the candidate is tested for this trait.

Very often the organisations do not give due importance to this when they promote people to positions of power and make their selection primarily based on skill, experience or even seniority. The worst case is when elevate a brilliant mind with a very low threshold for stress. When they are faced with stress they get scared and they don’t want to admit it. They get irrational and they don’t realise it. As they are quite bright and articulate they will use these skills to rationalise, argue and even bulldoze with a set of specious arguments , make up all kinds of theories and put forward a collection of highly improbable eventualities; all to run away from taking a decision and owning it up.

They do not want to take any risk, will not take timely decision, set up umpteen committees, surround them with a variety of consultants with high pedigree and take everybody for a merry go around. Their subordinates will be intimidated and colleagues will get frustrated. Eventually the team turns out to be a collection of technicians and clerks with no imagination or creativity.

Organisations will have to be conscious of this critical skill. It has to form a part of our recruitment, part of training and part of performance evaluation. Especially when we select people for leadership positions we need to find ways to judge the threshold stress level at which they will start losing their rationality.


Two roads diverged in a wood, and I... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."~ Robert Frost


Reference: [1] Developing Leaders for Decision Making Under Stress: Wildland firefighters in the South Canyon Fire and Its Aftermath.
MICHAEL USEEM, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; JAMES COOK, U.S. Forest Service and National Interagency Fire Center ; LARRY SUTTON, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and National Interagency Fire Center