The Week of ER Visits
Leadership isn’t always about boardrooms and strategy documents. Sometimes it’s about pain, fatigue, and a week that spirals in ways you never expect.
Before I tell you the story, let me set the stage. Psychologist Richard Boyatzis talks about two states leaders move in and out of: the Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA) and the Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA).
PEA is when you’re at your best—open, hopeful, creative, and relational.
NEA is when stress takes over—your nervous system fires fight-or-flight, your brain narrows to survival tasks, and your emotions lean toward fear, frustration, or cynicism.
In short: PEA helps you lead; NEA makes you want to crawl under the covers.
Now, let me tell you about a week in 2001 when NEA showed up in force—complete with multiple ER visits and one unforgettable twist.
In 2001, I was working in mergers and acquisitions for Sigma-Aldrich, and we were preparing to fly to Florida for the potential acquisition of a diagnostics company. The plan was simple: fly down Monday morning, spend three days negotiating, and hopefully strike a deal.
But Saturday night at about 10 p.m., I was hit with severe ear pain. Several of my kids had battled ear infections before, and for the first time, I realized just how little sympathy I’d shown them. The pain was excruciating. I told my wife I had to get to the ER, and sure enough, the doctor confirmed a raging ear infection. He gave me antibiotics and pain drops for my ear.
NEA reflection: Pain is a fast track to NEA. My sympathetic nervous system flipped the fight-or-flight switch, my brain tunneled into pure problem-solving, and my emotions settled somewhere between “fear” and “make it stop now.” In that moment, empathy and perspective were as absent as my sleep schedule was about to be.
Between the pain and the 4 a.m. Monday flight, I barely slept Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. When we met with the target company in Florida, we offered them $14 million. They countered that if it wasn’t $40 million, there was no reason to continue the conversation. After confirming that “14” and “40” weren’t just misheard, we wrapped it up and caught the last flight back to St. Louis Monday night.
NEA reflection: Sleep deprivation is basically NEA’s favorite sidekick. Exhaustion narrows perspective, ramps up irritability, and makes setbacks feel larger than they are. In this case, it didn’t matter how rested I was — $14M and $40M were never going to meet in the middle — but fatigue made the gap feel even more discouraging.
On the flight home, I finally managed a little sleep. But when I got home that night, I couldn’t get my contact lens out of my eye. I tried everything—half an hour in the shower, prying at it with my fingers—but it was glued on. I even looked for the little rubber suction cup they’d given me when I first got contacts, but I couldn’t find it. Finally, very late Monday night, I told my wife I needed to go back to the ER. She remembers me being frustrated and angry; I remember being perfectly calm.
NEA reflection: One of NEA’s great tricks is distorting self-perception. My wife saw cranky and irritable; I was convinced I was serene and composed. In leadership, this disconnect can wreak havoc—everyone else knows you’re stressed, but you think you’re fine. Spoiler: you’re not.
When I got there, I was greeted by the same ER doctor from two nights before. “You look familiar,” he said. I told him, yes, I’d been there just recently. He looked in my eye and said, “Good news and bad news. The good news is there’s no contact lens in your eye. The bad news is you’ve spent the last couple hours trying to remove your cornea. You have a nasty abrasion.” He prescribed antibiotic eye drops, reassured me it would heal, and sent me home.
NEA reflection: Pain plus irony rarely lands well in NEA. The “good news/bad news” line was objectively funny. But when your cornea feels like it’s been through a paper shredder, your sense of humor doesn’t exactly rise to the surface. NEA narrows emotional bandwidth—you lose the ability to laugh at even the best material.
By Tuesday night, I was at a church board meeting—our annual dinner. As the pastor urged everyone to invite their non-Christian friends to church, I quipped, “All my non-Christian friends already go here.” He did not laugh. Moments later, as someone prayed over the meal—a long prayer—I decided to put in my eye drops. My eye began burning and stinging fiercely. When the “amen” finally came, I looked down at the bottle. I had put the ear drops into my eye.
At that point, I remember thinking, There is no way I’m going back to that ER doctor a third time in four nights. I’d rather risk losing some vision.
NEA reflection: Nothing says NEA quite like “I’ll risk partial blindness to avoid embarrassment.” When stress, fatigue, and frustration stack up, rational decision-making takes a back seat. NEA convinces us that pride and self-protection are more important than wisdom. It’s rarely right.
The Leadership Lesson
That week taught me something I couldn’t name then but can see clearly now: the Negative Emotional Attractor hijacks us. Pain, fatigue, embarrassment, and stress all pile up until we’re no longer leading from clarity, creativity, or hope.
Every leader visits NEA—it’s unavoidable. The question isn’t if but when. The real skill is noticing when you’ve been hijacked and developing practices that bring you back to the Positive Emotional Attractor, where empathy, perspective, and vision return.
At Catalystic Leadership, we help leaders recognize these shifts and build resilience so they can lead with clarity and compassion—even when life throws curveballs.
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