Pressure rarely defeats a leader. The reaction to it does. Here is what to build before the crisis arrives.
Half of Europe’s leaders say their stress has climbed sharply since they stepped into their current role. Half also call decision making essential to the job. Fewer than one in seven has ever been trained in it.
Ouly Reymond has watched what fills that gap, from two environments where the answer arrives quickly.
A University of Melbourne experiment published last year put the question to a laboratory. Participants solved the same set of problems twice, once calm and once with a stress response confirmed by saliva samples. Stress on its own did modest damage. Stress combined with running out of time did something else. On one class of problem, accuracy fell twenty-five percentage points, down to roughly the level of guessing.
The pattern behind that is older. In 1983 the Center for Creative Leadership compared executives who reached the top of large American companies with those whose careers stalled, and found two groups that were difficult to tell apart. Both were bright, both were spotted early, both carried strong records. What separated them was conduct when things went wrong: the ones who arrived stayed composed, and the ones who derailed were irritable under pressure and defensive about their failures. Reymond learned the same lesson in a setting with a far shorter feedback loop, and what follows is what he brings from it into a boardroom.
From the Diary of Ouly Reymond
Ouly Reymond is a Conthey-based leadership coach who runs his practice through MAXIMIUM SA.
Through MAXIMIUM SA he runs Leadership Alpha, a 90-day program for executives and entrepreneurs covering presence, authority and decision making under pressure. He practiced as an osteopath and coach for men at Alpha 4 Performance from 2004 to 2019, and was ranked first worldwide in the Martial Arts and Leadership category by Favikon in April 2026. The line he works from is his own:
“Respect yourself, and you will be respected.”
The Match That Ended Without a Throw
Ask an executive what nearly cost them a quarter and they will describe a market, a competitor, a supplier, a hire. Reymond thinks they are describing the wrong object.
In judo, the athlete who loses emotional control frequently loses the match before losing technically. I remember one particular fight in the Swiss First Division. During the match, my opponent deliberately pushed me outside the competition area after the referee had already stopped the action. Because he lost control of his emotions, he was immediately disqualified.
The opponent was not beaten. He removed himself.
Reymond’s argument is that the boardroom version of this happens constantly and is simply harder to see, because nobody blows a whistle. “Managers and executives are rarely defeated by the problem itself,” he says. What defeats them is their reaction to it. They become reactive, defensive or impulsive, and they forfeit credibility and authority while the original problem sits exactly where it was. The situation did not change. The leader did.
An Emotional Problem in a Business Suit
That reading produces a diagnosis most executive training never reaches, because most executive training works on judgment and Reymond works on what happens upstream of it.
The most common mistake is that leaders try to solve an emotional problem with a business decision. When pressure increases, many executives become consumed by urgency. They feel they must act immediately, speak immediately or decide immediately.
What needs to happen first, he says, is regulation. Stress narrows perception. Fear creates tunnel vision. Ego seeks validation. Uncertainty pushes people toward a poor decision for no better reason than to stop the discomfort of not having made one.
He came to the body before he came to the boardroom. For fifteen years before he took his first coaching client he ran an osteopathy practice in Conthey, treating the same demographic he now advises, and he had been competing in judo since childhood before that. Discipline, respect, resilience and emotional control, he has written, “continue to shape both my personal life and the leadership principles I teach today.”
Four Questions, Asked Before You Need Them
The move nobody makes is preparation. Under pressure, Reymond’s clients are not asked to think faster. They are asked to run something built earlier, when nothing was at stake.
“The leaders who consistently perform at a high level prepare before the crisis arrives,” he says. “They establish principles, decision-making frameworks and trusted advisors when they are calm, not when they are overwhelmed.”
Each of those three is a decision made in advance rather than a quality summoned on the day. Principles settle in ordinary conditions what you will and will not do. A framework is written when you have time to write it, because you will not have time later. A trusted advisor is nominated before you need challenging, since a leader in the middle of a bad week rarely goes looking for someone to disagree with him.
The technique he teaches most often he calls creating distance from the emotional event. Before an important decision, he has leaders answer four questions. What are the facts. What are the assumptions. What would this situation look like six months from now. What advice would you give someone else facing the same challenge.
“Very often, clarity emerges immediately,” he says.
The fourth question does the most work, because it moves a leader out of his own chair and into the one he occupies competently every day, advising somebody else.
The CEO Who Explained Himself Four Times
Reymond serves as ethical advisor to a fast-growing startup, and watched its chief executive prepare for a board meeting and then, inside it, defend the same ethical position four separate times.
Afterward he told him one thing: “Every time you repeat yourself, you reduce your authority.”
The work that followed was on conviction rather than content. State the position once. Support it with facts. Stay composed when it is challenged, and stop treating a challenge as a request for the argument again. Reymond’s reading is that repeated justification broadcasts precisely the uncertainty a leader is trying to conceal, and that a strong leader does not seek approval for what he believes to be right.
The change held. Board members responded differently and his interventions carried more weight. In the part Reymond values most, the CEO stopped needing external validation to hold a position he already believed.
Why This Coach
He has a question for anyone weighing coaches. Preparing to climb a difficult mountain, would you rather be guided by “someone who has studied maps for years or by someone who has already climbed the mountain multiple times?”
He has climbed it in two directions. As a vice world champion in veterans judo he competed where years of preparation are judged in minutes and excuses carry no value. As an entrepreneur running companies in health, real estate and investment he meets payroll, makes hiring calls and carries financial risk, which is why he insists the advice arrives tested rather than theoretical. He co-authored a book on succeeding in business with Brian Tracy, holds an osteopathy diploma equivalent to a master’s from the Ecole Suisse d’Ostéopathie de Belmont-sur-Lausanne and a Certified Expert Coach credential from the International Authority for Professional Coaching and Mentoring, and topped Favikon’s global ranking in Martial Arts and Leadership in April 2026. A former client wrote that through the coaching he improved his personal discipline, developed a clearer view of his objectives and increased his self-confidence, in both his professional and personal life.
Which brings him to the word his market sells worst.
Confidence is one of the most misunderstood concepts in leadership. Many people believe confidence comes from positive thinking, motivation or self-belief. In my experience, confidence is earned. Confidence comes from evidence. It comes from repeatedly doing difficult things and proving to yourself that you can handle discomfort, uncertainty and pressure.
Where Ouly Is Now
He works from Conthey in the Valais, coaching executives, entrepreneurs and business owners one to one and through Leadership Alpha, and speaking to corporate audiences on performance under pressure. He has coached children at the Judo Club Chamoson for seventeen years, planning their seasons and preparing them mentally for competition, and he graded to first dan under Paul Werlen in 2015. His second book, The Ultimate Man: Become an Alpha Male and Build Your Empire, is due in October.
“Through my coaching, speaking and books, I want to contribute to developing a new generation of leaders capable of remaining calm under pressure, making better decisions and inspiring those around them through their example.”
The Ouly Reymond Playbook: Five Moves for Deciding Under Pressure
Regulate first, then decide. Urgency is a feeling, and obeying it immediately is how an emotional problem ends up solved with a business decision.
Write the framework in calm. A decision framework built on an ordinary day is the only one that will still be usable on a bad one.
Name your challenger in advance. Choose the person entitled to test your judgment before you commit, and choose them while you still want to be tested.
Ask what you would tell someone else. Advising yourself is hard, and advising a colleague in the identical position is something you already do well.
Say it once, then hold. Restating a position you have already argued does not reinforce it, it advertises that you are unsure of it.
Ouly Reymond coaches executives and entrepreneurs in leadership under pressure at alpha4performance.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
