From the Boardroom to the Beach

I just spent the last seven days in business planning for two current and one brand new business. Rather than hole up in a hotel conference room, we decided to do things differently.

Attending boardroom (conference or classroom) meetings was standard practice for me as a leadership team member for years. But these spaces can unconsciously put us into survival states cutting off our neural networks from operating at their best. 

When leaders are expected to stay composed while navigating high-stakes decisions, unresolved tensions, or interpersonal dynamics, it can push the body into survival mode – whether we realize it or not.

That’s because the nervous system shifts into survival mode—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—hindering our curiosity, connection, and action-taking. As a result, we don't make the best decisions because we aren't being the most creative, compassionate, and courageous humans we can be.

Have you ever walked out of a leadership meeting feeling completely exhausted, emotionally drained, or mentally overwhelmed? Have you sat through meetings where the tension was so thick you could feel it—where unspoken conflict lingered just beneath the surface?

• Did you find yourself bracing for confrontation, holding your breath, or walking on eggshells?
• Have you ever left a meeting wondering, “Why did that feel so heavy?” or “Why can’t we seem to get on the same page?” Where are we going from here?
• Have you questioned whether it’s the people, the pressure, or something deeper that’s draining your energy?

If so, you aren’t alone. My husband used to say I needed at least 12 hours to decompress and recover from the stress of these meetings. You might think I’m just sensitive, but the truth is these types of meetings address challenges that can trigger tremendous stress. 

Making decisions about financial, business direction, and people are not insignificant. Add in business or market challenges and they become downright debilitating, even traumatizing to the nervous system.

The Pyramid of Dysfunction

Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, is one of my favorite books of all time. It speaks of how toxic and terrible these team meetings can be when teams are not operating in a healthy and functional way. While I love his work, Lencioni’s model is only the tip of the iceberg.

Lencioni’s pyramid of the five dysfunctions of a team model doesn’t go deep enough. While it illustrates five common issues that undermine team effectiveness, it fails to address everything that impacts the bottom layer of the pyramid—trust. Here are the five layers:

1. Absence of Trust (base)
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results (top)

At its foundation, Patrick Lencioni’s model begins with trust—but building real, lasting trust doesn’t happen by default. It requires more than just team-building exercises or surface-level vulnerability. 

Before we can truly build trust, we have to address and overcome the past patterns that prevent trust from forming in the first place and create the safety required for it to be built.

Many of us carry experiences—both personal and professional—that have taught us to be guarded, to self-protect, or to expect the worst. These patterns show up as defensiveness, avoidance, control, or people-pleasing, and they quietly erode the possibility of genuine trust within a team.

Trust can only grow in an environment of safety. Psychological safety, in particular, is the key to allowing people to show up fully, speak openly, admit mistakes, and ask for help. 

But safety doesn’t magically appear—it has to be intentionally cultivated through conscious leadership, consistent behavior, and systems that reinforce care, respect, and mutual understanding.

In other words, trust isn’t the first step—it’s the first outcome. And to get there, we must do the deeper work of healing what blocks it, rewiring how we relate to others, and creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and valued.

While Lencioni identifies important dysfunctions that happen at the surface, we have to look beneath those dysfunctions to see what’s truly driving them. It’s not just about what people do, it’s about what’s going on inside of and between them, at a much deeper level.

Beneath the Surface

What exists beneath the iceberg or layer of trust?

Imagine a leadership iceberg: above the surface are our strategies, meetings, and visible behaviors. But beneath that waterline live our nervous systems, emotional patterns, beliefs, and somatic memories—the real forces driving our leadership effectiveness.

When we think of trust in an organization or team, it's often like the tip of an iceberg—highly visible, frequently discussed, and critical for success. But like any iceberg, what lies beneath the surface is far more expansive and powerful. If we want to build real, lasting trust, we must go below the surface to understand and address what’s hidden underneath.

Beneath the surface, we find two fundamental layers that shape whether trust can truly be formed and sustained:

Individual Ways of Being (Personal Patterns)

Every member of a team brings their own internal world into the room—what we call “ways of being.” These influence how they interpret, react, and relate in any given moment. Trust is also built—or broken—by the internal states of the individuals in the room:

• How we think: Our beliefs, assumptions, and internal narratives about others and ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves, our mental models, biases, and beliefs, especially about safety, trust, power, and worth.
• How we feel: The emotions we’re carrying (especially unprocessed ones) and our capacity to regulate them in the moment. Our emotional landscape—what we feel, how we express or suppress it, and our ability to regulate intense emotions like fear, anger, or shame.
• How we behave: The protective strategies we default to—control, defensiveness, avoidance, people-pleasing—especially under stress. The outward expressions of our inner world—how we cope with stress, show up under pressure, engage in conflict, and pursue connection or protection.

These internal patterns are often shaped by past experiences, especially those that taught us it wasn’t safe to be vulnerable, speak up, or rely on others. Without awareness and healing, these patterns unconsciously drive our behaviors in ways that create misalignment and mistrust.

Many leaders have never been taught to examine these internal patterns, yet they show up in every meeting, decision, and relationship. If unresolved, these ways of being undermine even the best intentions and most well-designed strategies.

The Collective or Organizational Ways of Working 

These include the ingrained patterns, processes, and cultural norms that shape how the organization functions:

• Execution and Action: How the team moves things forward, follows through, and responds to urgency or setbacks. How work gets done—urgency, follow-through, accountability, and how people respond to demands or obstacles. Is there clarity? Is there chaos?
• Strategic Thinking and Decision-Making: How information is gathered, shared, and used to make plans or solve problems. Are people invited into planning or excluded? Are decisions transparent or top-down?
• Relationships and Collaboration: How people connect, communicate, and work together—or how they avoid, protect, and isolate. How people engage, communicate, and co-create. Are connections authentic and supportive, or guarded and transactional?

These collective dynamics form the operating rhythm of the organization. If they’re disjointed, inconsistent, or fear-based, they generate instability that erodes trust before it can ever take root. When these organizational ways of working are dysfunctional or inconsistent, they create tension and instability—making trust fragile or impossible to build.

Why This Matters:

If we try to build trust without addressing what lies beneath, we’re simply layering strategies over stress, and policies over protection mechanisms. Real trust doesn’t come from better tools—it comes from transforming the underlying conditions that shape how people think, feel, and act in the workplace.

We must explore beneath the surface to:

• Rewire the personal patterns that create self-protection instead of connection.
• Rethink the collective ways of working that drive disconnection and dysfunction.
• Rebuild the relational culture with intention, safety, and awareness.

Trust is not just a starting point. It’s a result. And it only becomes possible when we have the courage to look beneath the waterline—to what’s been hidden, unspoken, or stuck—and begin to shift the way we work and the way we are.

Meetings Absent of Trust

What happens when leaders get in a room together if there isn't trust?

REFLECT: If you are a leader or even an individual on a team, ask yourself what happens when you get into a room of people without trust. What do people think, feel, say, and do? Does the following sound familiar?

Without trust as a foundation, the room can quickly become tense, guarded, and emotionally charged. Leaders, often under immense pressure, enter these meetings in a heightened state of stress. Their nervous systems are already activated, and without a sense of psychological safety, their focus shifts from collaboration to self-preservation.

Instead of working together toward shared goals, leaders may become hyper-vigilant, scanning the room for threats, protecting their own interests, and positioning themselves to appear competent or in control. 

Conversations become more about managing perception than solving problems. Conflict simmers beneath the surface, innovation stalls, and decisions are driven by fear or ego rather than collective wisdom.

When leaders are operating from this hyper-aroused state—focused on performance, appearance, and survival, true connection, vulnerability, and cooperation become nearly impossible.

Trust isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the only way to create a space where leaders can regulate, relate, and rise together.

What Happens When Stress walks into the Room

How does stress impact the effectiveness of the meeting and team?

When we step into a room with others, whether it’s a leadership meeting, a team discussion, or a high-stakes conversation, our bodies are doing something before our minds even engage: They’re scanning the environment for cues of safety or threat.

When we enter a meeting in a stressed or dysregulated state, we might not realize it, but it changes everything. It shifts the emotional tone, impacts how people relate, and disrupts the potential for true collaboration.

In a survival state, our tolerance for perceived threats is significantly lower, so we’re far more likely to feel triggered, take things personally, or react from a place of protection instead of presence.

This is an unconscious process called neuroception—our nervous system’s way of determining whether we are safe, in danger, or need to protect ourselves. And here’s the critical piece:

If even one person (especially a leader) in the room is dysregulated—anxious, withdrawn, defensive, or aggressive—their nervous system can shift the entire group.

We are biologically wired to attune to others’ emotional and physiological states, so when someone in the space enters a survival response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn), it can unconsciously pull others into a similar. 

Stress is contagious. 

Without even realizing it, we move from collaboration to protection.

In this state, what might otherwise be a healthy conversation, differing perspective, or constructive challenge, can quickly start to feel unsafe or even like a personal attack. 

Here's how it can play out:

• A leader questions your progress or a team member’s performance, and instead of engaging with curiosity, you feel defensive or humiliated.
• One person dominates the conversation with constant interruptions, while another is repeatedly overlooked or ignored, triggering feelings of frustration, invisibility, or resentment.
• A disagreement escalates into a battle of egos, with both sides trying to prove their point—eventually devolving into blame, shaming, or personal attacks.
• Some team members visibly disengage, stop contributing, or default to silence—not because they don’t care, but because their nervous systems are in freeze or fawn mode.
• There’s an unspoken rule to “leave your feelings at the door,” so grief, fear, or stress is buried—only to resurface as irritability, burnout, or unexpected outbursts.
• Click here for more examples: Examples of How Stress & Dysregulation Can Show Up in Meetings

When the business is struggling, the pressure intensifies. Discussions become heavier, emotions run high, but no one talks about it directly—so people leave meetings feeling emotionally drained, overwhelmed, or numb, having buried their stress just to get through the conversation.

These aren't just bad meetings, they're missed opportunities. The true cost of stress isn’t just emotional; it’s relational and strategic. Teams lose access to creativity, connection, and wisdom. Trust fractures. People shift their focus from shared purpose to self-protection.

The solution isn’t just better agendas or tighter facilitation. It’s creating the conditions for nervous system regulation and psychological safety.

Because meetings aren’t just cognitive—they’re deeply embodied experiences. And if we don’t create the conditions for regulated, safe, coherent, and connected states, the room can quickly become a silent battlefield of unspoken stress responses where even the best strategies won’t land. 

To have effective meetings, we must first create the conditions for safety and regulation, so that everyone in the room can show up grounded, open, and ready to contribute—not just survive.

Redefining the Boardroom

Regulated Bodies, Wise Business

How do we implement a better approach to meetings?

My new partner and I made a conscious decision to do things differently. After years of leading in high-pressure corporate environments, we both knew one fundamental truth: the human body is the foundation of performance, collaboration, and ultimately results.

We’ve spent years studying not just business strategy, but also how the nervous system impacts our ability to lead, relate, and create. 

We’ve learned that to make truly wise decisions, solve complex problems, build strong relationships, and execute effectively, our bodies need to be in a regulated, optimal state—not stuck in survival mode.

When we’re in a survival state—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—our access to higher thinking, creativity, and collaboration shuts down. And yet, so many leadership teams try to do their most important work while under stress, pressure, and fatigue.

So instead of heading to a typical boardroom or office, we chose something radically different.

We booked a condo at the beach and transformed the patio lanai into our boardroom. Equipped with flip charts, laptops, notebooks, markers, we had everything necessary to accomplish our objectives. And we also had ocean air, sunlight, and the natural regulation that comes from being near water and in connection with nature.

We spent 5 days immersed in intense, purposeful business planning. But here’s what made it different: We listened to our bodies.

When we felt our systems start to dysregulate—tension rising, energy dropping, focus fading—we didn’t push through. 

We paused. 

We stepped outside. 

We walked, stretched, grounded ourselves in nature, and returned only when we felt clear, connected, and capable again.

This rhythm of regulation became the foundation for our planning. And as a result, the ideas flowed more easily. The collaboration deepened. We made faster, more aligned decisions with less friction and more joy.

We had access to not just our strategic minds, but our full human intelligence—head, heart, and gut.

Together, we’re discovering what it means to truly partner in a wise, embodied, and effective way. We’re not just designing a business—we’re modeling a new way of working.

So, the next time you have important planning or decision-making to do, consider this: 

What might be possible if your “boardroom” was a place where your nervous system felt safe, your body felt supported, and your full self was welcome?

It’s not about luxury; it’s about letting go of what drains you so you can do what truly matters. Better setting, better state, better outcomes.

A New Way Forward

I’m not suggesting we head to the beach for every meeting or interaction. I am, however, suggesting we rethink when, where, and how we hold meetings particularly on important and challenging topics.

What if the key to unlocking our greatest leadership potential isn’t more pressure, more hours, or more control—but more presence?

We don’t make our wisest decisions when we’re overwhelmed, dysregulated, or disconnected. We make them when we feel safe in our bodies, clear in our minds, and grounded in our values.

This isn’t just a new productivity hack—it’s a complete paradigm shift in how we lead, work, and relate.

We need to stop treating our bodies as machines and start honoring them as instruments of intelligence. We need to design our workspaces and planning processes to support regulation, creativity, and connection—not push us deeper into burnout and survival.

My partner and I didn’t just plan a business—we designed a way of working that reflects the kind of world we want to build. One where human well-being and business excellence are no longer at odds.

Reflection

I invite you to reflect and rethink how you’re making decisions, solving problems, and building relationships.

• Are you pushing through, or are you tuning in?
• Are you meeting under stress, or creating space for true collaboration?
• Is your environment helping you thrive—or slowly wearing you down?

Next time you have something important to work through, consider choosing a better setting. Listen to your body. Create space for regulation. Design from wisdom—not just willpower.

Because the future of leadership isn’t just about what we build—it’s about how we build it.

Conclusion: Returning to Reality

Almost immediately upon my return from this planning session, I encountered a real-world example of what happens in meetings where the foundation of safety is absent. The organizational consequences are significant with lost productivity, effectiveness, and increases in unhealthy conflict. 

But the individual consequences are even more concerning, the stress of these meetings has a ripple effect on people’s capacity to perform, their health and wellbeing (physical and mentally), and even on their families.

It's time to re-think how we meet! 

Want More? 

How can you redesign Your Meetings for More Safety, Insight & Impact? If this article resonated with you, we’ve created a powerful free resource to take your next step.

Download our Guide to Designing Meetings for Psychological Safety & Wise Decision-Making. Just go to our website (Evolving to Exceptional) and subscribe to get instant access to this guide and our entire library of free resources.

Because it’s not just what we decide—it’s how we come together that defines our success.