Dr. Natalie Callis Explains Why Experience Can Fail People in High-Pressure Moments
(MENAFN- Komail Khatak) Experience carries weight for a reason. When someone has spent years doing a job, working through difficult situations, and building expertise, we naturally expect that experience to help when something goes wrong.
Most of the time, it does. But experience doesn't guarantee that every lesson learned over the years will be equally available under pressure. An accomplished executive can hesitate at the wrong moment. A clinician can overlook something they would normally notice. Someone who has handled a situation many times before can suddenly find it much harder to decide what to do next.
Dr. Natalie Callis studies what is happening in that gap. Her interest is not in dismissing the value of experience, but in understanding why access to experience can become less reliable when the circumstances surrounding a person change.
"Pressure does not always change what you know. It can change what you can access," says Dr. Callis. For organizations that depend on experienced people to make consequential decisions, that difference matters.
Years of Experience Can Still Meet an Unfamiliar Moment
Experience gives people a library of previous situations to draw from. It helps them recognize patterns, anticipate problems, and make sense of information that might overwhelm someone encountering it for the first time.
Then pressure enters the picture. Perhaps there is less time than usual, the information is incomplete, or several priorities suddenly demand attention. Maybe the decision has consequences for people the professional cares about, or the safest choice professionally is not necessarily the choice their judgment is telling them to make.
Nothing about that situation erases the person's expertise. What changes are the conditions under which they are being asked to use it.
That distinction is easy to miss after the fact. Once an outcome is known, people can look backward and identify what the person should have noticed or remembered. In the actual moment, however, the person did not have the benefit of hindsight. They were trying to access what they knew while also responding to everything else happening around them.
We Often Prepare for the Job, Not the Difficult Version of It
Organizations devote considerable time and resources to competence. They teach procedures, verify credentials, assess skills, provide continuing education, and expect experience to deepen over time.
Those investments are necessary, but Dr. Callis sees a difference between preparing someone to perform a role and preparing that person for what happens when familiar conditions begin to change.
"Knowing what to do and being able to do it when the moment gets hard are two different capabilities," says Dr. Callis. A training room can show whether someone understands a process, but it says much less about what happens when that person has five minutes to decide, conflicting information in front of them, and a consequence they would strongly prefer to avoid.
The same problem can appear in less dramatic ways. A leader who normally welcomes disagreement may hesitate to challenge a senior colleague in a tense meeting. Someone known for being methodical may rush because everyone around them appears ready to move on.
These are not necessarily examples of people forgetting what they know. They raise a different question: what became harder to access once the conditions changed?
Competence and Readiness Are Easy to Confuse
A long record of strong performance understandably creates confidence. If someone has repeatedly demonstrated sound judgment, an organization has good reason to trust that person's ability.
The problem comes when that history is treated as proof that the person is equally prepared for every version of the situation they might encounter. Pressure is not simply a harder version of an ordinary workday. It can change what gets attention, how risk is perceived, how readily someone speaks up, and how quickly a person feels compelled to decide.
That is why more training isn't always the obvious answer after something goes wrong. If the person genuinely lacked knowledge, training may be exactly what is needed. If they already knew what to do, teaching the same material again leaves a more important question unanswered.
Dr. Callis' work asks organizations to separate those two problems. One concerns whether capability exists. The other concerns whether that capability remains available when it is most needed.
What Happens in the Pressure Moment?
Dr. Callis uses the term "pressure moment" for the internal period when someone takes in a difficult situation, interprets what it means, and decides how to respond. It may last minutes or only seconds, but a great deal can happen within it.
Urgency can pull attention toward the fastest solution. Uncertainty can make a familiar decision suddenly feel less secure, while authority or social pressure can make someone reluctant to question what others have already accepted.
Looking at the pressure moment does not mean explaining away a person's responsibility for what they ultimately choose. It means recognizing that if an organization wants to improve future decisions, it needs to understand more than the final action.
This perspective also informs Dr. Callis' work in Human Intelligence Governance™, which examines the human conditions shaping judgment, accountability, and decision integrity in consequential environments. That becomes particularly relevant as professionals are asked to exercise judgment around increasingly complex technologies and systems, where knowing when to question, escalate, or intervene remains a human responsibility.
Readiness Looks Different When Pressure Is Part of the Picture
If organizations accept that pressure can affect access to capability, preparation looks different. The question is no longer limited to whether someone knows the procedure or has enough experience to handle the role.
Organizations can also pay attention to what happens when people encounter uncertainty, competing demands, unexpected changes, or difficult consequences. They can examine whether communication shifts, whether assumptions still get questioned, and whether someone can recover after a disruption instead of letting one difficult moment shape the next.
"The real test of preparation is not what someone knows in a calm room. It is what they can still use when pressure enters the room," says Dr. Callis. That does not make technical preparation less important. It makes the ability to access that preparation part of readiness itself.
Experience remains one of the most valuable resources a professional can bring into a difficult situation. But years of knowledge can influence a decision only if the person can access and use it when the moment demands it.
About Dr. Natalie Callis
Dr. Natalie Callis, DNP, NEA-BC, is a PhD candidate and doctoral researcher examining human performance under pressure. She is the founder of LYQOR™ and a Human Intelligence Strategist whose work examines human performance, judgment, and decision-making under pressure. With more than 25 years of experience in healthcare leadership and high-stakes environments, she develops research-informed frameworks that explore what happens internally when pressure begins to affect performance. Her work spans leadership, healthcare, sports, behavioral risk, education, and the governance of emerging technologies.
About LYQOR™
LYQOR™ is the company and intellectual architecture behind Dr. Natalie Callis’ work on human performance and judgment under pressure. Its research-informed frameworks have applications across leadership, sports, artificial intelligence, behavioral risk, healthcare, education, and other consequential environments. Human Intelligence Governance™ extends this body of work to the human judgment, oversight, accountability, and decision integrity required to govern intelligent technologies responsibly.
Most of the time, it does. But experience doesn't guarantee that every lesson learned over the years will be equally available under pressure. An accomplished executive can hesitate at the wrong moment. A clinician can overlook something they would normally notice. Someone who has handled a situation many times before can suddenly find it much harder to decide what to do next.
Dr. Natalie Callis studies what is happening in that gap. Her interest is not in dismissing the value of experience, but in understanding why access to experience can become less reliable when the circumstances surrounding a person change.
"Pressure does not always change what you know. It can change what you can access," says Dr. Callis. For organizations that depend on experienced people to make consequential decisions, that difference matters.
Years of Experience Can Still Meet an Unfamiliar Moment
Experience gives people a library of previous situations to draw from. It helps them recognize patterns, anticipate problems, and make sense of information that might overwhelm someone encountering it for the first time.
Then pressure enters the picture. Perhaps there is less time than usual, the information is incomplete, or several priorities suddenly demand attention. Maybe the decision has consequences for people the professional cares about, or the safest choice professionally is not necessarily the choice their judgment is telling them to make.
Nothing about that situation erases the person's expertise. What changes are the conditions under which they are being asked to use it.
That distinction is easy to miss after the fact. Once an outcome is known, people can look backward and identify what the person should have noticed or remembered. In the actual moment, however, the person did not have the benefit of hindsight. They were trying to access what they knew while also responding to everything else happening around them.
We Often Prepare for the Job, Not the Difficult Version of It
Organizations devote considerable time and resources to competence. They teach procedures, verify credentials, assess skills, provide continuing education, and expect experience to deepen over time.
Those investments are necessary, but Dr. Callis sees a difference between preparing someone to perform a role and preparing that person for what happens when familiar conditions begin to change.
"Knowing what to do and being able to do it when the moment gets hard are two different capabilities," says Dr. Callis. A training room can show whether someone understands a process, but it says much less about what happens when that person has five minutes to decide, conflicting information in front of them, and a consequence they would strongly prefer to avoid.
The same problem can appear in less dramatic ways. A leader who normally welcomes disagreement may hesitate to challenge a senior colleague in a tense meeting. Someone known for being methodical may rush because everyone around them appears ready to move on.
These are not necessarily examples of people forgetting what they know. They raise a different question: what became harder to access once the conditions changed?
Competence and Readiness Are Easy to Confuse
A long record of strong performance understandably creates confidence. If someone has repeatedly demonstrated sound judgment, an organization has good reason to trust that person's ability.
The problem comes when that history is treated as proof that the person is equally prepared for every version of the situation they might encounter. Pressure is not simply a harder version of an ordinary workday. It can change what gets attention, how risk is perceived, how readily someone speaks up, and how quickly a person feels compelled to decide.
That is why more training isn't always the obvious answer after something goes wrong. If the person genuinely lacked knowledge, training may be exactly what is needed. If they already knew what to do, teaching the same material again leaves a more important question unanswered.
Dr. Callis' work asks organizations to separate those two problems. One concerns whether capability exists. The other concerns whether that capability remains available when it is most needed.
What Happens in the Pressure Moment?
Dr. Callis uses the term "pressure moment" for the internal period when someone takes in a difficult situation, interprets what it means, and decides how to respond. It may last minutes or only seconds, but a great deal can happen within it.
Urgency can pull attention toward the fastest solution. Uncertainty can make a familiar decision suddenly feel less secure, while authority or social pressure can make someone reluctant to question what others have already accepted.
Looking at the pressure moment does not mean explaining away a person's responsibility for what they ultimately choose. It means recognizing that if an organization wants to improve future decisions, it needs to understand more than the final action.
This perspective also informs Dr. Callis' work in Human Intelligence Governance™, which examines the human conditions shaping judgment, accountability, and decision integrity in consequential environments. That becomes particularly relevant as professionals are asked to exercise judgment around increasingly complex technologies and systems, where knowing when to question, escalate, or intervene remains a human responsibility.
Readiness Looks Different When Pressure Is Part of the Picture
If organizations accept that pressure can affect access to capability, preparation looks different. The question is no longer limited to whether someone knows the procedure or has enough experience to handle the role.
Organizations can also pay attention to what happens when people encounter uncertainty, competing demands, unexpected changes, or difficult consequences. They can examine whether communication shifts, whether assumptions still get questioned, and whether someone can recover after a disruption instead of letting one difficult moment shape the next.
"The real test of preparation is not what someone knows in a calm room. It is what they can still use when pressure enters the room," says Dr. Callis. That does not make technical preparation less important. It makes the ability to access that preparation part of readiness itself.
Experience remains one of the most valuable resources a professional can bring into a difficult situation. But years of knowledge can influence a decision only if the person can access and use it when the moment demands it.
About Dr. Natalie Callis
Dr. Natalie Callis, DNP, NEA-BC, is a PhD candidate and doctoral researcher examining human performance under pressure. She is the founder of LYQOR™ and a Human Intelligence Strategist whose work examines human performance, judgment, and decision-making under pressure. With more than 25 years of experience in healthcare leadership and high-stakes environments, she develops research-informed frameworks that explore what happens internally when pressure begins to affect performance. Her work spans leadership, healthcare, sports, behavioral risk, education, and the governance of emerging technologies.
About LYQOR™
LYQOR™ is the company and intellectual architecture behind Dr. Natalie Callis’ work on human performance and judgment under pressure. Its research-informed frameworks have applications across leadership, sports, artificial intelligence, behavioral risk, healthcare, education, and other consequential environments. Human Intelligence Governance™ extends this body of work to the human judgment, oversight, accountability, and decision integrity required to govern intelligent technologies responsibly.
Komail Khatak
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