If you’re like most people, you wouldn’t want the pressure of being a general in the midst of a heated battle, making life-and-death decisions.

Yet, research tells us there is little difference between the feelings military leaders have under pressure and those of today’s business leaders navigating our complicated fast-paced economic environment. Your decisions may not literally involve life and death, but the feelings you experience can keep you awake at night nonetheless, and leave you feeling weighted and overburdened.

There is a widening gap today between leaders who have learned how to harness pressure and use it as a catalyst to increase effective execution and those who are simply stuck in it. You can see these differences summarized in Figure 1 and the accompanying table shown below.