After the reading · FOUNDATION™

The reading told you what runs under pressure. This is the work that changes it.

Eight weeks of practice, sequenced, with one system change per phase. Short daily repetition, one deliberate interrupt, and a change to how the work is actually run — because a pattern you can name but not interrupt still costs the same.

You have arrived without a reading. The path below still runs as written. To have it framed against your own score and patterns, complete the two instruments first — start the Mental Fitness Read.

The standard this path is held to

Individual awareness is never counted as an intervention on its own. Every phase of this path ships a system change alongside the practice — decision rights, standards, cadence or role clarity — and the phase is not complete until that change is visible to someone other than you.

Start here, this week

Daily repetition

  • Two to three minutes of PQ Reps, three times a day, anchored to routines you already have.
  • Name the pattern out loud the moment you catch it — labelling is what creates the pause.
  • Choose one recurring trigger and rehearse a single Sage response for it.
  • Two-line evening note: what triggered me, what I chose instead.

The one interrupt to rehearse

Name your patterns in the reading and this becomes specific: the Sage capability to run deliberately, the sentence to say instead, and the question to carry into the week.

Eight weeks, four phases

Each phase carries a practice, a system change and the evidence that closes it. The phase is not finished when you feel different; it is finished when the evidence exists.

01

Notice it while it is happening

Weeks 1–2 · FOUNDATION™ · Face Reality

Move the catch from hindsight into the moment. Nothing else in the path works until the pause exists.

Practice

  • PQ Reps: three sets of two to three minutes a day, attached to existing routines (first coffee, car, end of day).
  • Log your pressure pattern for two weeks: trigger, what you did, what it cost. Three lines, no analysis.
  • Where am I asking 'who is wrong?' when the useful question is 'what is true?'

System change that ships with it

Put a standing five-minute slot at the top of one recurring meeting where risk and error are reported without consequence. You go first.

Evidence that closes the phase

Fourteen days of entries, and one instance you can describe where you caught the pattern before it shaped the conversation.

Guided practice and exercises for this phase

  • Audio

    The ninety-second rep (2 min guided audio)

    The training dose. Three of these a day is what builds the pause the rest of the path depends on.

  • Audio

    Catch it and name it (3 min guided audio)

    Rehearse the label on last week's exchange, so the name is available when it is happening rather than afterwards.

  • Exercise

    Pressure Load Read

    Written exercise: where the load is actually coming from — volume, ambiguity, conflict or consequence — before you decide what to practise against.

  • Article

    The Brain Under Pressure

    Why the reps are physical: what narrows under threat, what repetition changes, and what the evidence does and does not support.

02

Interrupt it and choose the other response

Weeks 3–4 · LEAD™ · decision quality and accountability

Replace the practised response in one recurring situation, deliberately, until the alternative is available under load.

Practice

  • Choose one Sage response and rehearse it before the situation, not during it.
  • Pick one weekly meeting and change one behaviour in it for four weeks.
  • Before any hard conversation, write the one sentence you intend to say first. Say that sentence.

System change that ships with it

Name the decision rights in the situation you keep reacting to: who decides, who is consulted, who is informed. Write it down and circulate it.

Evidence that closes the phase

Two hard conversations you entered deliberately, and a written decision-rights line someone else can quote back to you.

Guided practice and exercises for this phase

  • Audio

    Rehearse the interrupt (4 min guided audio)

    Four minutes rehearsing the replacement response before the situation, so the alternative is available under load.

  • Exercise

    Emotional Judgment Read

    Written exercise: how your judgment shifts under pressure, and which of your recurring decisions is most exposed to it.

  • Exercise

    Debrief Architecture

    Structure for the hard conversation and the review after it, so the interrupt is practised inside a format rather than improvised.

  • Instrument

    What is inside the reading

    What each instrument measures, what it does not, and how the Sage capabilities map to your named patterns.

03

Take the cost out of the operating rhythm

Weeks 5–6 · SIMPLIFY™ · capacity and standards

Stop paying for the pattern structurally. Most of its cost sits in re-litigated decisions, held work and unclear standards — not in feelings.

Practice

  • List the work you are holding that the pattern explains. Choose one item to stop, one to hand over, one to finish.
  • Ask two colleagues one question: what do I do under pressure that makes your work harder? Do not defend the answer.
  • Re-read your log. Name the single trigger that accounts for most entries and design around it.

System change that ships with it

Publish one standard and one cadence: what good looks like for the handed-over work, and when it is reviewed — by someone other than you.

Evidence that closes the phase

One item stopped, one handed over with a written standard, and a review date on the calendar.

Guided practice and exercises for this phase

  • Audio

    Put down what you are carrying (3 min guided audio)

    Separate work that genuinely needs you from work the pattern makes you hold, before the hand-over conversation.

  • Exercise

    Drivers Read

    Written exercise: the drivers underneath the holding — recognition, control, certainty, approval — and what each one costs in capacity.

  • Exercise

    Time = Life

    The arithmetic of what the pattern has already cost in weeks, and what the remaining weeks are worth. Bring the number to the hand-over decision.

  • Summary

    Brain summary (PDF)

    Printable one-sheet on the regions, their role and what training changes — useful when you explain the hand-over to someone else.

04

Make it renewable

Weeks 7–8 · ARC™ · Analyze · Refine · Commit

Convert eight weeks of effort into something the operating system keeps doing without your attention — the ARC™ loop: Analyze, Refine, Commit.

Practice

  • Re-take the reading and compare movement, not the snapshot.
  • Analyze: what changed in behaviour, what changed in the system, and what is still explained by the pattern.
  • Refine: keep the two practices that held, drop the ones that did not survive a hard week.
  • Commit: one practice and one system change you will still be doing in ninety days, with a review date.

System change that ships with it

Add the practice and its measure to an existing review you already hold — quarterly business review, one-on-one or leadership-team cadence. Never a new meeting.

Evidence that closes the phase

A second reading, a ninety-day commitment in writing, and the measure sitting inside a review that existed before this path.

Guided practice and exercises for this phase

  • Audio

    Commit for ninety days (3 min guided audio)

    The closing review: analyze what moved, refine what held, commit to what continues for ninety days.

  • Instrument

    Repeat the reading

    Take the two instruments again and read movement rather than the snapshot. Same instruments, same conditions, eight weeks apart.

  • Exercise

    ARC Working Board

    Put the practice and its measure onto the renewal board — Analyze, Refine, Commit — inside a review you already hold.

  • Programme

    Mental Fitness Pods

    Small-group practice with peers, virtual or in person, when ninety days of solo repetition will not hold on its own.

Where it lands in the architecture

With a score and three named patterns, this section becomes one priority per discipline — FOUNDATION, SIMPLIFY, LEAD, GROW and ARC — drawn from your own reading rather than a generic list.

What you measure

Leading

Days in the last fourteen with PQ Reps completed, and catches made in the moment rather than in hindsight.

Lagging

Recovery time from a hard exchange, decisions that stay decided, and work held by you that is now held by the system.

Exercises, reading and support

Article

The Brain Under Pressure

Why the practice is physical: what narrows under load, what repetition changes, and what the evidence does and does not support.

Article

The Team Under Pressure

How individual pressure patterns produce the five dysfunctions of a team — read this before taking the practice to your leadership team.

Summary

Brain summary (PDF)

One-sheet summary of the regions, their role and what training changes. Printable.

Instrument

What is inside the reading

What each instrument measures, what it does not, and how the reading is interpreted.

Programme

Mental Fitness Pods

Small-group practice with peers, virtual or in person, when solo repetition is not holding.

Programme

Team Reading

The same practice at leadership-team level. The team sheet reports patterns, never a comparison of named individuals.

Instrument

Team Health Assessment

The five-tier read of the team behavioural contract, so the system change has a scoreboard.

Conversation

A conversation with Steve

Twenty minutes on what the reading suggests and which system change is worth making first.

Positive Intelligence®, the PQ® Score, and the Saboteur model are trademarks and the work of Shirzad Chamine and Positive Intelligence, LLC. Compass Performance, Inc. does not own them and claims no rights in them; Compass is an independent user of these licensed instruments. The Compass service is Mental Fitness™, and the reading, interpretation and commentary here are Compass's own.

Instruments and attribution

Positive Intelligence®, the PQ® Score, and the Saboteur model are trademarks and the work of Shirzad Chamine and Positive Intelligence, LLC. Compass Performance, Inc. does not own them and claims no rights in them; Compass is an independent user of these licensed instruments. The Compass service is Mental Fitness™, and the reading, interpretation and commentary here are Compass's own. No affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement by Shirzad Chamine or Positive Intelligence, LLC is implied.

Not sure where to start?

Three questions, and we point you to the right instrument.

Under a minute. From this page, most leaders begin with The organization.