Why Many Managers Get Pressure Wrong

The new season of the documentary series “Drive to Survive,” Netflix’s behind-the-scenes look at Formula 1, portrays a world where everything is pushed to the limit. In that environment, managing pressure makes the difference between performance and failure, and offers a management lesson that extends far beyond the racetrack.

Two team principals – Flavio Briatore (Alpine) and Christian Horner (Red Bull) – embody the belief that pressure imposed on teams (in their case, on drivers) is the key to performance. They rely heavily on private humiliations (albeit in front of Netflix cameras), public criticism, heightened tension created by uncertainty about drivers’ futures, and demotions for those judged less effective (as in the case of Liam Lawson, after only two races, despite the time required to master every dimension of this sport). The principle is simple, even simplistic: The more pressure drivers feel, the faster they drive.

This idea may seem intuitive because it is deeply rooted in the collective managerial imagination. But it is wrong. A manager should not add pressure to make teams succeed. On the contrary, the manager’s role is to prevent pressure from undermining performance.

In the vast majority of professional environments, pressure exists naturally. Career advancement, or even job security, depends on employees’ results. Their self-esteem, and sometimes even their identity, may depend on those results as well.

In this context, what is the benefit of adding artificial pressure to this intrinsic pressure? In Formula 1, as in most professions, performance relies on precision, clarity of judgment, and consistency – three qualities that excessive pressure tends to erode. Managers who add pressure to their teams, supposedly to improve effectiveness, are actually making their work more difficult.

In reality, individuals who excel as pressure increases are rare. Elite sports make this obvious: How many athletes crack at decisive moments for every Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, or Carlos Alcaraz who raises their level as tension rises? As Billie Jean King famously said, “Pressure is a privilege,” a quote displayed at the players’ entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open. Many are given access to that privilege; very few master it.

Why is this reality, so obvious in sports, not better recognized in the professional world? It seems that many managers’ reliance on pressure as a management method stems from confusion between high standards and pressure. High standards clarify priorities, objectives, and feedback. Pressure creates uncertainty around those same elements. One establishes reference points; the other creates mirages.

Psychology confirms this observation. The Yerkes–Dodson law¹ shows that performance increases with mental arousal up to an optimal point, after which it declines. Moreover, the optimal level of arousal depends on task difficulty: Simple tasks may benefit from higher arousal, whereas complex or unfamiliar tasks must be performed under lower arousal levels to achieve the best results. Paradoxically, managers who favor pressure most often prescribe it for the most difficult objectives.

Other | research has shown that stress negatively affects planning, reasoning, and decision-making. In particular, it encourages automatic responses rather than adaptive decisions – a disadvantage in normal times and an even greater liability in urgent or crisis situations.

Last but not least, science teaches us that the highest-performing teams are not those under the greatest pressure, but those in which individuals can raise concerns without excessive fear. Psychological safety is a stronger driver of continuous improvement and innovation than pressure.

Pressure may be exceptional, but it cannot serve as a management strategy. The best managers do not seek to increase endogenous pressure; they strive to make exogenous spikes of pressure as manageable as possible. Properly balanced, high standards, care, and trust reinforce one another and can even be mutually sustaining. While pressure understood by an employee may occasionally produce a heroic performance, trust produces sustainable performance.

That is why managers must act as pressure regulators. They absorb part of the uncertainty instead of passing it on. They clarify rather than obscure. They stabilize rather than emotionally disorient. The more complex or uncertain the work environment, the more essential this channeling of pressure becomes.

As the examples of Flavio Briatore and Christian Horner in “Drive to Survive” illustrate, the specious pressure imposed by managers often reflects their ego as much as anything else. Applying pressure allows leaders to display their authority and decision-making power. But this often reflects a personal need for recognition, or even compensation, more than the orchestration of collective performance. Needless pressure may become an artificial paradise for the leader, but it remains the opposite of leadership. The situation is even worse when leaders translate their own fear or stress into pressure on their teams.

Ultimately, the respective fates of these two swaggering bosses last year provide the clearest lesson. Flavio Briatore began the season with the goal of placing Alpine among the top six teams in the Constructors’ Championship; he led them to tenth and last place. Christian Horner, meanwhile, was dismissed during the season by Red Bull, in part because he failed to get the most out of a second driver alongside Max Verstappen, undermining the team’s chances in the same championship. He was replaced by Laurent Mekies, a model of demanding yet supportive leadership, who engineered a spectacular turnaround for the team.

Flavio Briatore and Christian Horner show us that, while imposing pressure on subordinates is easy, creating the conditions for performance is far more difficult. Yet that is precisely where a manager’s real value lies: Focusing on the emotional dynamics and the capabilities of their team members, not on their own.

Pressure is not a management tool. Managing pressure is, and often decisively so.

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¹ The principle was first described in 1908 by American psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson.