September 28, 2026What is Psychological Flexibility and Why Leaders Need It Before a Crisis Hits

Psychological flexibility is the skill that decides how you act when life stops going to plan. I sat down with Dr. Jannell MacAulay to talk about it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about what she said. She flew military aircraft for 20 years. Today she teaches leaders how to perform under real pressure. And she believes psychological flexibility matters as much as any technical skill you own.

Her starting point was simple. Every moment carries uncertainty. Most of us just don’t notice until something forces us to. A pilot hits something unexpected. A leader has to deliver bad news. A comment in a meeting stings more than it should. On the surface, these moments look different. Underneath, they ask for the same thing. Psychological flexibility is what lets you meet them without turning them into a disaster.

What stayed with me is how much of this happens before the crisis. We like to think calm is something we find in the moment. Jannell’s experience says otherwise. Calm is trained, quietly, well ahead of time.

I want to explore what psychological flexibility really means, why it matters so much for anyone who leads, and how you can start building it today.

Jannell is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, holds a Ph.D. in strategic health and human performance, and has logged more than 3,000 flying hours in the C-21, C-130, and KC-10. You can learn more about Jannell MacAulay and her work on her speaker profile. She also co-founded Warrior’s Edge, a mindset training program built with Pete Carroll and Dr. Michael Gervais. That mix of cockpit time and performance science gives her view on psychological flexibility real weight.

🎥 Watch and listen to the full podcast with Dr. Jannell MacAulay here

Psychological Flexibility Starts With Honesty About Uncertainty

The first thing that struck me was how plainly Jannell began. She said, “Life sucks sometimes.” There was no polish in it, and I think that was the point. Before she talked about training or mindset, she wanted us to agree on something true. Hard things happen. Relationships get messy. A boss says something we don’t like. A leader has to share news that will not be welcome. Any of these can grow into a crisis, and most people are afraid of that.

What I appreciate about this honest start is that it removes a fantasy. Many of us quietly hope that with enough planning we can avoid the hard moments. Jannell doesn’t accept that. She says every moment holds two things: uncertainty and unpredictability. We never know for sure what is coming. That is not a flaw in how we live. It is simply how life works. Once you accept it, the question changes. It stops being “how do I avoid this?” and becomes “how do I meet this?” Psychological flexibility is the answer to that second question.

I’ve seen the same pattern in the leaders I respect most. They don’t spend their energy wishing for a calm environment. They assume the environment will shift, and they work on themselves instead. That is a quiet kind of strength. It is also why psychological flexibility is not a trait that only some people are born with. It is a response to reality, and reality is the same for everyone.

Jannell learned this in the military, where uncertainty is not an abstract idea. She served as a pilot, a commander, a special operations consultant, and an international diplomat. In roles like those, the plan rarely survives the moment. The people who do well are the ones whose minds can adjust as things change. Building psychological flexibility in that world isn’t a bonus. It is part of the job, and the lesson carries far beyond it.

What Psychological Flexibility Actually Means

Jannell’s definition was direct. Psychological flexibility means she has trained and prepared her mind to be ready for anything. No matter what comes at her, whether it is a crisis, a challenge, or plain adversity, she can move through it mentally and reach the other side without an emotional overreaction. That is a very different idea from “staying positive” or “being tough.”

Notice what she did not say. She did not say she feels no fear. She did not say she always stays upbeat. She said she can navigate. That tells me psychological flexibility is about movement, not mood. The word flexible matters. A rigid mind meets a surprise with one fixed reaction. A flexible mind bends, adjusts, and keeps going. And a mind that can bend is far harder to break.

The word psychological matters too. This is a skill of the mind, and it lives in the gap between what happens and how we respond. Most of us live in that gap without knowing it. Something happens, and a reaction follows so fast that we think they are one thing. They aren’t. The more time you can create in that gap, the more choice you have. Leadership lives in that gap.

It also changes how we think about strength. Many people picture strength as being tough and unmoved. But a stiff mind snaps under load. Jannell links psychological flexibility with mental strength, and I think that pairing is wise. Real strength is not the absence of a reaction. It is the ability to feel the pressure and still choose your next step. That is the kind of strength people can trust when the stakes are high.

The Story You Tell Yourself Is Usually Worse Than the Facts

Jannell made a point that I keep repeating to friends. She said we can build events up inside our minds until they feel catastrophic. It might be a national crisis, a money problem, or a health scare. The event itself is one thing. The version playing in our heads is another. And that second version is where the emotional overreaction comes from. This is the quiet work that psychological flexibility does.

Think about how this looks in ordinary life. A colleague goes silent after you share an idea. In a few minutes, silence becomes disapproval, disapproval becomes a threat to your job, and the threat becomes a full story with an ending. Nothing new has happened. The facts are still the same: a person has not replied. Yet your body now reacts as if the story were true. I’ve caught myself doing this more than once, and it is humbling every time.

This is why the skill Jannell describes is so practical. In our conversation, I described it as stripping away the emotion and dealing with the facts. That isn’t about becoming cold. It is about asking two simple questions. What do I actually know? And what am I adding? Psychological flexibility gives you the space to ask those questions before you act.

What I find most useful here is that the skill sounds easy and isn’t. Anyone can say “separate the facts from the story.” Doing it while your heart is racing is another matter. That is why it has to be trained. Without that training, our minds default to the worst version, because the mind is built to protect us. With psychological flexibility, we can thank the mind for its concern and still choose a rational response.

Why Panic Spreads Faster Than Any Plan

Jannell painted a clear picture of what she does not want from an aircraft commander in a crisis. Imagine the person in charge saying, “Oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. I can’t do it. I feel like an imposter.” Nobody wants that voice on the radio. And, as she pointed out, nobody wants it from a leader at work either. The stakes look different, but the effect on people is the same.

What I take from this is not that leaders must hide their feelings. Jannell is not asking for a mask. She is pointing to something deeper. Panic spreads. A team takes its emotional cue from whoever is supposed to be steady. If the leader spirals, the team spirals faster, because they were counting on that person to hold the line. Psychological flexibility protects the leader, and just as importantly, it protects everyone who is watching.

This is a lesson I wish more people heard early in their careers. We often treat leadership as a set of decisions, strategies, and goals. But leadership is also a set of signals. Every tone of voice and every pause tells people how worried they should be. A leader with psychological flexibility can deliver hard news, hold a tense meeting, or respond to a failure while sending a signal that says, we can handle this.

That signal has real power. People make better choices when they feel safe enough to think. They speak up sooner. They admit mistakes earlier. They stay focused on the task instead of on their own fear. I would go as far as saying that the emotional steadiness of a leader is one of the most valuable resources a team has. And it is a resource that can be built through psychological flexibility, one small practice at a time.

Building Psychological Flexibility Before the Crisis Arrives

One idea from the conversation has stayed with me more than the others. Jannell believes much of a crisis is decided before it happens. Not by luck, but by whether the mind has already been trained to handle something going wrong. That flips a common assumption. We tend to think that character shows up in the moment. She is saying that character is prepared in advance.

Pilots understand this in a practical way. They rehearse emergencies long before they face one, so the right response is already familiar when it counts. Jannell argues that the mind needs the same rehearsal. If you have never practiced staying steady, you can’t expect to do it on demand. You cannot borrow calm in the middle of a storm. You can only spend what you have already saved. Psychological flexibility is that savings account.

So where do you practice? Jannell points to small moments. A frustrating email. A slow line. A conversation you would rather avoid. These are low-stakes chances to notice the story your mind is telling and to return to the facts. Each time you do, the skill gets stronger. It becomes automatic. And by the time a real crisis arrives, your response does not feel like effort. It feels like habit. This is how psychological flexibility holds up in big moments.

This approach matches how the best performers train. Jannell co-founded Warrior’s Edge with Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks and sports psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais. It is a high-performance mindset program, and it reflects a belief shared across elite performance: the mind can be trained just like the body. Nobody expects to run a marathon without running first. Why would we expect to handle a crisis with psychological flexibility if we never practice it?

Mindfulness Is a Performance Tool, Not a Soft Skill

Jannell was the first leader to introduce mindfulness as a proactive performance strategy inside the United States military. When I think about that, I try to picture the setting. Mindfulness is often seen as gentle, even optional. The military is seen as tough and direct. Putting the two together took courage and a clear argument. And her argument was simple: if you want people to perform under stress, train the mind that has to perform.

I like that word, proactive. Most organizations think about stress only after it hurts someone. They offer support when people are already worn out. Jannell’s approach is to build the skill first. That is where mindfulness and psychological flexibility meet. Mindfulness trains you to notice what is happening now. Psychological flexibility lets you respond well to what you notice. One feeds the other.

Her training also takes a broad view of the person. She earned a master’s degree in kinesiology from Penn State, and her doctoral work looked at strategic health and human performance. That background shows up in her holistic approach. She doesn’t treat the mind as separate from the body. Sleep, movement, recovery, and mindset all shape how someone handles pressure. This is a real point for anyone interested in health & well-being. A mind that is rested and cared for finds psychological flexibility much easier to reach.

There is a lesson here for organizations. Many companies want resilient teams but only invest in tools and processes. Jannell’s work suggests the human being is the real system. Her focus has been on optimizing the human weapon system in rugged, high-stress environments, which is military language for a universal idea. People perform when they are trained, supported, and clear-headed. Psychological flexibility is one of the most direct ways to get there.

Why the Boardroom Needs Psychological Flexibility as Much as the Cockpit

Jannell has more than 3,000 flying hours in three aircraft, and she says the mental skill that got her through the cockpit is the same one that shows up in meetings. I found that easy to believe. The setting changes. The pressure feels the same. There is a decision to make, people are watching, information is incomplete, and emotions are rising. In both places, what matters is the state of the mind making the call.

I’d like to draw out one more parallel. In the cockpit, a mistake can be physical and immediate. In a boardroom, a mistake often looks slower and quieter. A leader snaps at a colleague. A team loses trust after a poorly handled announcement. A big opportunity is missed because someone froze. The damage is different in form, but it comes from the same source: an emotional overreaction to a moment that needed a clear response. Psychological flexibility addresses that source directly.

This is why Jannell now consults for the Department of Defense, the government sector, and corporate America. The audiences are different, and the lesson is the same. As a psychological flexibility keynote speaker, Dr. Jannell MacAulay helps leaders see that pressure is not a sign that something has gone wrong. Pressure is simply what happens when things matter. The task is not to remove it. The task is to learn how to work inside it.

I also think there is something reassuring here. Most professionals will never fly a KC-10 or command an aircraft. But every professional will sit in a room where the news is bad and everyone looks up. That moment will come for you. When it does, the skill you have built will matter more than any title. Psychological flexibility is what lets you look at the room, take a breath, and say, here is what we know.

What Practice Looks Like on an Ordinary Day

It is easy to admire an idea and forget to use it. So I want to make this practical. Jannell’s approach comes down to four habits, and none of them need special equipment. The first is to train your mind ahead of time so you are ready for any outcome. That means thinking, on a calm day, about what could go wrong and how you want to respond. It is not about worry. It is about preparation. This is the foundation of psychological flexibility.

The second habit is to separate the facts of a situation from the story you are telling yourself. When something stings, pause and name what actually happened. Then name what you are adding. Often the gap between the two is wide. Closing it does not make the problem disappear, but it does make the problem the right size. The third habit is to respond rationally instead of reacting emotionally. That doesn’t mean ignoring feelings. It means giving them a seat without letting them drive.

The fourth habit is to practice in small moments so the skill holds up in big ones. I would start with something that happens to you every day, such as a tense email or a delayed meeting. Use it as training. Notice your reaction. Return to the facts. Choose your response. Over weeks, you will find that your baseline changes. Things that used to knock you off balance become manageable. That is psychological flexibility growing in real time.

This kind of learning is also worth teaching earlier. Students, young professionals, and new managers face uncertainty long before anyone tells them how to handle it. Jannell has worked as a professionalism instructor and has spoken on a TEDx stage, and her message fits naturally in education settings. If we taught psychological flexibility alongside math and writing, I believe more people would enter adult life with a steadier mind. The sooner someone learns to separate the facts from the story, the more choices they have for the rest of their life.

Calm Is a Skill You Build Before You Need It

When I look back on my conversation with Jannell, one line ties it together. Life will be uncertain. That part is not up for debate. What we can choose is how prepared our minds are when uncertainty arrives. Psychological flexibility is that preparation.

I keep returning to how ordinary this skill is. It doesn’t ask you to become a pilot or a soldier. It asks you to notice a story, return to the facts, and respond with care. It asks you to practice when nothing is at stake so you are ready when everything is. And it asks leaders to remember that people are watching, and that steadiness is a gift you give a team.

The lesson that stayed with me most is this: a crisis does not reveal who you are so much as it reveals what you have practiced. If that is true, then every small moment matters. Every tense email, every hard conversation, every stumble is a chance to train. Psychological flexibility is not a rare talent. It’s a habit, and habits can be built. Start with the next small moment that unsettles you. That is where your next big moment is being prepared.

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