Three states, named
Ventral: connected, curious, available. Sympathetic: mobilized, urgent, sometimes useful, often costly. Dorsal: shut down, foggy, gone-but-still-in-the-room. Every meeting cycles through all three. Most leaders only know one.
Your nervous system is your strategy.
Shifting states with breath
A long exhale — six counts out, four in — is the cheapest, fastest ventral intervention available to a human nervous system. It works in elevators. It works before board meetings. It works on conference calls when the camera is off.