Composure Under Pressure: Executive Presence for Lawyers Part 5
Updated: Nov 4
This is Part 5 in a series on Executive Presence for Lawyers. If you missed the earlier issues, start with what executive presence actually means, or jump to gravitas, strategic communication or delivery. This issue covers composure.
Key Takeaways
Composure isn't the absence of fear.
Neil Armstrong's heart rate hit 150 while his voice stayed flat. You can't control the adrenaline, only whether it drives.
Composure is built before the moment.
He logged 50 to 60 practice landings, so the mechanics were automatic when it counted.
Split what's new from what you can rehearse.
You can't prepare for the stakes, but you can drill the structure of a hard conversation until it's automatic.
Executive Presence for Lawyers: Staying Composed Under Pressure
I have always been fascinated and obsessed with people who excel under extreme pressure. And if you have ever watched the video of the first moon landing you’ll know it wasn’t like parallel parking a Kia. It was a nail-biting, heart-pounding, near-fatal event that was somehow made to look…easy.
In May 1968, a little over a year before the Moon landing, Neil Armstrong was flying a strange, unstable training vehicle nicknamed "the flying bedstead," practicing the exact descent he'd need to fly for real. About 200 feet above the ground, the thrusters failed. He had milliseconds. He ejected just before the machine hit the ground and exploded.
He parachuted down, unhurt except for a bitten tongue. And according to a fellow astronaut who saw him afterward, he dusted himself off, and went back to his office to keep working.
The same day.
A little over a year later, he was about to do something no human being had ever done. Land a machine on another world, with nobody alive who could tell him what it actually felt like.
Seven minutes from touchdown, the guidance computer started throwing alarms nobody had seen in training. The automatic landing path was carrying the module toward a boulder field. Armstrong took control himself, hunting for clear ground while Mission Control counted down his remaining fuel out loud. He landed with less than 30 seconds to spare, by most reconstructions.
His heart rate at touchdown was recorded near 150 beats per minute, roughly double his resting rate. On the radio, the whole time, his voice stayed flat. Procedural. Almost bored.
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Composure Is Not the Absence of Fear. It Is the Result of Practice
Armstrong’s body wasn't calm. His heart rate proves that. Composure was what he did with his voice and his hands while his body was doing something else entirely.
You don't get to choose whether the adrenaline shows up. You get to choose whether it drives.
Armstrong didn't develop that composure in the 7 minutes it took to fly Eagle down. He built it in the years before, one unglamorous repetition at a time.
That training vehicle he ejected from was famously miserable to fly, unstable and unforgiving. Armstrong himself called it a “contrary machine”. But he flew it anyway. Not once or twice. More than 30 times, with 50 to 60 practice landings logged in it before the real mission.
By the time he was actually descending toward the Moon, he said the lunar module flew very much like that trainer, and that the final approach he flew felt very close to the ones he'd already flown dozens of times in practice. He called it "a comfortable familiarity."
Read that again. Comfortable familiarity, on the first Moon landing in human history. That should be a contradiction and Armstrong made sure it wasn’t.
But familiarity wasn't the same as certainty, and Armstrong drew that line on purpose. He later said the crew worked hard to guard against overconfidence, because that's exactly the moment something "snaps up and bites you." The repetition built comfort. It was never allowed to build carelessness.
Separate What's Actually New From What You Can Rehearse
Nobody had ever landed on the Moon. That part was genuinely, unavoidably new. But the actual mechanics, the hand movements, the trajectory, the feel of the controls, weren't new to Armstrong at all. He'd done that exact motion 50 or 60 times already. The only thing left to be new, on the day it counted, was the location.
That's the real skill behind composure. Most people treat a high-stakes moment as one big unknown and brace for all of it at once. Armstrong split it in two. The context (landing on the Moon, in front of the world, with no precedent) he couldn't rehearse, so he didn't try to control that part emotionally in the moment. The mechanics (the actual flying) he could rehearse, so he drilled it until his hands didn't need his full attention to run it.
When the moment arrived, most of what he was doing was already familiar. He only had to handle the sliver that was genuinely new.
A Composure Exercise for Lawyers: Two Lists Before Your Next Big Meeting
Composure under pressure can be practiced. Before your next high-stakes meeting, split it into two lists. What's genuinely new about this one, the stakes, the audience, the fact that you've never faced this exact question before?
And what's actually mechanically similar to something you've done many times, the structure of a hard conversation, the shape of a tough question, the pattern of pushback you've handled before?
You can't rehearse the first list. Stop trying to calm your nerves about it in the moment, that's wasted effort. Instead, drill the second list until it's automatic. The less of the meeting that feels new to your hands, so to speak, the less of your composure gets spent managing things that were never actually unfamiliar in the first place.
FAQ: Composure and Executive Presence for Lawyers
What does "executive presence" mean when it comes to composure?
Composure is how you act when a meeting goes sideways: a tough question, a challenge, a surprise. It's one of 5 elements of executive presence, and it's about what you do with your voice and actions, not whether you feel calm.
How do I stay calm in high-pressure meetings?
Practice the parts you can rehearse. Most of a high-stakes meeting is mechanically familiar: the shape of a hard conversation, the pattern of pushback. Drill those until they're automatic, so your attention is free for the genuinely new part.
Is composure a personality trait or a learnable skill?
It's learnable. Armstrong's heart rate hit 150 on the Moon. His composure came from years of repetition, not from being born calm.
What's Next in the Executive Presence for Lawyers Series: Trust
In Part 6, the last issue in the series: trust. Your clients are not buying an answer. They are buying confidence. And the root of that is trust.
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Jonathan Cullen
Want to see where you stand on executive presence? Take the free Leadership Assessment at jonathancullencoaching.com or book a free discovery call with me here:
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