32 Months in Battle: 5 Leadership Lessons Nobody Wants to Learn the Hard Way
- Laura Culver
- Aug 11
- 7 min read
Based on Leadership in Practice Episode 282 taught by Meghan Messenger - The Skills to FIGHT (Part 1). Follow Meghan on Instagram
Most leadership advice gets tested in a conference room. Meghan's got tested at 6:01 AM, when eight armed FBI agents banged on her door and pulled her into a hallway while the neighbors watched.
That was the start of a 32-month federal trial that truly tested her family and career.
Here's the thing: most of us will never face anything close to that. But the framework Meghan built to survive it? That's not a courtroom story. That's a leadership manual for anyone who's ever had to think clearly while everything around them was on fire.
Five counter-intuitive truths came out of it, and they'll mess with how you think about planning, confidence, and control.
1. Stop Planning. Start "Visceral Drafting."
When things get hard, we crave a plan. A deck. A timeline. Something that feels like safety. But here's the uncomfortable truth: planning is often just a sophisticated form of stalling.
The real breakthrough doesn't come from more structure. It comes from what Meghan calls "Visceral Drafting"—blurting out exactly what you want, right now, with zero filter. No jargon. No professional polish. Just the truth.
This is hard because we're terrified of judgment. We're trained to ask "is this the right thing to do?" before we ever ask "what do I actually want?"
But innovation doesn't come from getting permission—it comes from being honest about your raw "Ideal" versus your "Reality" and letting that gap generate momentum.
"What do I want to do right here, right now—this is the muscle we're all really weak in."
Learn more about Visceral Drafting
2. Expert Bias Will Quietly Wreck Your Judgment
When you're in over your head—legally, medically, technically—it's tempting to check your brain at the door and let the specialists take the wheel. That's expert bias, and it's lethal.
Meghan saw this years before the trial, when her son was born with physical challenges. The best doctors in the room gave her a path forward. She didn't feel it in her bones. So she researched, networked, and made her own call instead of outsourcing the decision.
She carried that same instinct into the courtroom. Your lawyers, your consultants, your advisors—they bring data. They don't live your life. You cannot hand someone else the final decision just because they have a fancier title than you.
"Expert bias is really dangerous... you can't check your judgment... because ultimately it's you, your life."
3. Mood Matters More Than You Think—Especially Timing
Ever open a bad email at exactly the wrong moment and spiral for the rest of the day? That's not weakness. That's biology. When you're "startled" or "on tilt," your brain physically cannot process information the way it normally does.
The trap here is called "Deprivation Curiosity"—the anxious, compulsive urge to check the bad news the second it lands, even when you're not psychologically ready to handle it. So Charlie and Meghan built a framework: Light, Break, Revisit (LBR).
Learn more about Light, Break, Revisit (LBR)
She refused to read a 200-page legal motion on a Saturday morning if she was already in a bad mood. Why? Because a negative headspace makes you cherry-pick the worst possible interpretation of everything you read. So she waited and worked through to a calm mind, ready to actually absorb what was in front of her instead of just reacting to it.
If you engage while startled, you're not being tough. You're just loading garbage into your brain that you have no idea how to process yet.
4. Move from Defense to Offense
There are two modes you can operate in, and most people get stuck in the first one without realizing it.
Mode | Core Question | What It Looks Like |
Defense | Can you handle anything? | Survival mode. Managing Red Arrow Behaviors (RABs)—preemptive moves that keep people from telling you the truth. |
Offense | Can you do anything? | Speed, boldness, and a "Live Feed/Stream"—thinking out loud, even to the point of discomfort, so others can react and build with you in real time. |
Defense keeps you alive. Offense is where the growth happens. And you can't move to offense until you spot your own Red Arrow Behaviors—the habits that quietly sabotage feedback before it even reaches you.
Meghan found a new one for her own list mid-trial: the Preemptive Attack—picking a fight to create conflict because you're scared of being attacked first.
A few others worth checking yourself for:
Hostility — looking aggressive so people keep their real feedback to themselves.
Fragility — signaling you might break so nobody dares tell you the truth.
Deflection — hiding behind "I'm just tired" or "I'm just busy" so you never have to face the actual issue.
Short Clips of Related Topics:
5. Confidence Isn't a Prerequisite. It's a Byproduct.
We wait to feel confident before we take the shot. That's backwards. Confidence gets built in the dark, not on stage.
Meghan points to the New York Knicks—players like Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby. They look calm under the lights because of the thousands of reps nobody saw. The gym work. The reps that don't make it onto the highlight reel.
For Meghan, the "gym" was 32 straight months of daily psychological discipline. By the time she got cross-examined on the witness stand, the composure was already baked into her bones. She watched the prosecutor's maneuvers happen almost in slow motion—not because she was fearless, but because she'd already stacked 32 months of evidence proving to herself she could handle pressure.
"When you do it once, you know you can do it again... give yourself the evidence, step into the arena, keep going and shoot your shot."
You don't find confidence sitting around waiting for it. You build it, one rep at a time, usually when nobody's watching.
The "Always Be Training" Mindset
We obsess over physical training—reps, nutrition, recovery. Then we completely wing it when it comes to our mental game. That's the gap.
Meghan's outcome wasn't luck. It was a gated process: calculated risk-taking, building the right team around her, and relentless mental conditioning, day after day, for almost three years straight.
You're probably not walking into a federal courtroom this week. But you are going to face your own version of hard mode—a brutal quarter, a blindsided reorg, a decision nobody can make for you. The question isn't whether you'll survive it. You can survive a lot more than you think—provided you stay in motion.
The Bottom Line
You don't need a plan to feel safe, an expert to feel certain, or confidence to feel ready. You need reps—and the willingness to stay in motion when everything in you wants to freeze.
Resources
Follow Meghan on Instagram
Check out our free AiCoach trained on 30+ years of Next Jump frameworks to help identify your mental habits that both help and hurt you.
Take the Red Arrow Behaviors Quiz
Watch the full episode (with quick reference chapters) here.
Short Clips of Related Topics:
FAQ's
What exactly is "Live Streaming," and how is it different from just venting?
Venting is emotional release with no direction—you say what's bothering you and move on.
Live Streaming, or capturing your visceral, or Visceral Drafting is emotional honesty with a target: you're stating what you actually want to achieve, stripped of the polish and the "should." It's a starting point for action, not just a pressure valve. The goal is to break through analysis paralysis by admitting the raw, unfiltered truth out loud, so you can actually work from reality instead of "should's" or a version of yourself you think you're supposed to be.
Isn't relying on experts just smart delegation? Why is "expert bias" a problem?
Delegation and expert bias aren't the same thing. Delegation means you hand off the work. Expert bias means you hand off the judgment.
Experts should absolutely inform your decision—that's the whole point of hiring them. But the final call, especially on anything that shapes your life or your business, has to run through your own instincts too. If something doesn't sit right in your gut even when an expert says it should, that discomfort is data. Don't ignore it just because someone has better credentials than you.
What if I don't have the luxury of waiting to deal with bad news?
The LBR framework isn't about the specific timing—it's about not engaging while you're psychologically compromised. Sometimes you genuinely can't wait; a crisis needs a same-day response. In those cases, the move is to at least create a small buffer: a walk, five minutes of quiet, anything that gets you out of "startled" mode before you touch the problem. Even 10 minutes can change how you interpret what you're reading.
How do I know if I'm stuck in Defense mode instead of Offense?
Ask yourself: are you mostly trying to avoid mistakes, or are you trying to create something new? If every decision you're making is about risk mitigation, damage control, or keeping the peace, you're on Defense. That's not inherently bad—sometimes Defense is exactly what's needed. But if you're never moving to Offense, you're not growing, you're just surviving on repeat. (You can't win scoring zero.)
I don't think I have any Red Arrow Behaviors. How do I actually find mine?
Nobody thinks they have them—that's exactly why they're dangerous. Start by asking the people closest to you a blunt question: "What do you avoid telling me?" Their hesitation in answering is often the answer itself. Also pay attention to your own reactions when you get pushback. Do you get defensive? Deflect with "I'm just busy"? Pick a fight before the other person even finishes their point? Those are your RABs showing up in real time.
We also have a ton of free resources on RABs
Take the Red Arrow Behaviors Quiz
This all sounds intense. Do I need a 32-month crisis to build this kind of mental discipline?
No—and that's the point. Meghan's situation was extreme, but the training principle scales down to any pressure situation: a hard conversation, a tough negotiation, a rough quarter.
You don't need a courtroom to start stacking reps. You need repeated exposure to discomfort where you practice staying calm and observant instead of reactive. Start small. The muscle builds the same way regardless of the size of the crisis.
What's the fastest way to start building "confidence as a byproduct" instead of waiting to feel ready?
Pick one low-stakes decision you've been avoiding and make it today. Not the big scary one—something small enough that a bad outcome won't wreck you, but real enough that it counts as a genuine rep. The goal isn't to get it right.
The goal is to prove to yourself you can act under uncertainty and survive it. Do that enough times and the "waiting to feel confident" instinct starts to fade on its own.
