Issue No. 14 | May 12, 2026 | Dr. Jacqueline Ashley, PCC
What Composure Cannot Do
Regulated leaders are composed. Not all composed leaders are regulated.
The outer work of emotional self-control
FEEL DEEPLY
You’re exhausted, shoulders still tight, and it’s been hard to concentrate. Work this week has taken way longer than usual.
It’s Friday morning and the meeting you’re still thinking about was on Tuesday. You were as cool as a cucumber through every minute of that meeting, and each one since. Well, you always are. But what keeps happening: your mind is drifting back to the colleague who rolled right over your words as if you weren’t even there. And with the torturous silence you had to endure, the moment felt like forever.
Yet you held yourself together while your stomach turned. Three days later, and that meeting is still with you.
The last issue was about creating the internal space between the trigger and the response. This issue explores what happens when the outside looks composed through every meeting, but internally, you’re still carrying Tuesday’s meeting when it’s 2 a.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m. Thursday, or now.
Your body and emotions are giving you data about yourself, so listen. Although that meeting on Tuesday is technically over, it hasn’t finished for you.
It took serious effort to demonstrate that level of composure, but there’s a problem. It happened without emotion regulation.
No one sees all the unprocessed events, the “I’m fine” in the room that turns into feeling spent once you’ve made it to your car, growing resentment that you keep to yourself, or dissociation that creeps in. You’re not sleeping well and self-trust is slowly eroding.
Dysregulated emotions compound and leak at the most inopportune times. Think about every time you’ve ever snapped at someone when you didn’t mean to. We’ve all done it. Or when something feels off in your body, but you can’t quite figure it out. These things happen when the beach ball you were holding underwater pops up unexpectedly.
The performance you’ve been giving for years became the identity you came to know of yourself.
Your impulse control and emotion masking were never optional if you’re a leader holding a marginalized identity. You could never let your face show what you really felt or let your behavior give it away. They had to match. The external execution of being in survival mode didn’t leave enough room for the inner work you needed.
THINK CRITICALLY
You’ve been operating from the assumption that not showing how you actually feel means you’ve got it handled.
The assumption is wrong.
The question you’ve been answering is “How do I stay composed under pressure?” when the better question is: “What’s happening underneath the composure, and am I meeting the (emotional) moment appropriately?”
Sort of, but not really.
Composure is created from emotion regulation and impulse control working together, but the external execution of impulse control and emotion masking create the composure façade. It appears the same from the outside, but internally there’s a difference.
Emotion regulation works with the feeling itself. Impulse control manages the behavior, and emotion masking keeps the feeling from showing up on your face.
In my Forbes article, I talk about emotional self-control as having internal and external dimensions.
Emotion regulation makes composure sustainable, but there’s a cost without it.
LEAD POWERFULLY
If Restorative is a dominant strength, you like to problem-solve what’s broken. In this case, it’s the disconnect between your outer composure and your inner state. Despite paying lip service to it, the system doesn’t reward self-repair over repairing how others see you, so take the disconnect as a signal. Take care of regulating yourself emotionally the way you tend to the perception of others.
If you lead with Communication, speaking with granularity is the path to regulation. You regulate what you’re feeling when you label emotions with nuance and specificity. Speaking about it out loud won’t always be safe to do, but you can always say it to yourself. That’s how you create congruence with your gift for the spoken word.
If Connectedness is a signature theme, you see the interconnectedness of all things. Self-connection is foundational for connection to others. Disconnecting from yourself became a survival mechanism, so reconnect. Emotionally regulate and let the outward connection be built on something real.
The Integration
Impulse control and emotion masking are an illusion of emotional self-control. Although this façade has kept you safe, it takes a toll.
When your external strategies are misaligned with what you need, there’s a physical, mental, and emotional cost. Regulating first lightens the external effort and avoids the cost. Work on achieving sustainable composure that comes from being emotionally regulated and agile.
Effective outer work requires working from the inside out.
This Week's Momentum
📌 What composed moment this week are you still carrying inside?
Simply hit reply to share your response with me. I'd really love to hear from you!