The Deployment Fallacy: Why Emotions Need Testing Before Production
How self-awareness prevents emotional outbursts in high-stakes work
This is Empathy Elevated - your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. Last week, I wrote Vulnerability ROI: Quantifying the Impact of Authentic Leadership
Emotional Intelligence • Stoicism • Human–AI Partnership
Practical frameworks for clearer communication, better judgment, and less friction in modern work.
It was Tuesday, and we needed a sign-off by Friday, End of Day.
UAT was rough.
UAT seemed to have endless hours.
There was not a minute to spare in this marathon.
“Hey, can we talk about this?”
I acknowledged and recapped that it would need to be discussed “soon” at the end of the meeting, and we closed one of the 3-hour sessions with just 44 seconds to spare.
I was confident it would not be an issue to have the follow-up in the next week, once we got past the deadline.
The emotions of feeling rushed and under pressure had hijacked my judgement.
The talk needed to happen in real time, and what emerged later as an issue was explosive. My feeling of being rushed submerged what needed to be dealt with, on the surface.
If You Wouldn’t Deploy Untested Code, Why Deploy Untested Emotions?
I like logic.
Even with all my data laid out cleanly, the messiness of emotions lurks in the background, inevitably, as I am human.
Even the drive to write perfect code that functions flawlessly is built on the emotional drive to seek perfection.
Have you felt the emotional drive to write your code of certainty and the feeling of certainty that it is right?
Of course you have, presuming you are a living, breathing human reading this.
But have you acknowledged it, and really named it?
Perhaps not.
Naming an emotion is the first small act of empathy, with yourself. Once you see what’s there, you can choose a response that protects your judgment instead of letting urgency choose for you.
See my guest post on Leadership in Change by Joel Salinas , to read more on how to take the acknowledged step.
You would not deploy untested code to others. You would be nervous not just about the ding to your reputation, but also about the deluge of negative reactions coming your way should it fail for your less technical users.
At least if you get the error while testing your code, you can vent your frustration in private and protect its integrity before distribution.
But why do we just check in with our code, and not our own thoughts and deep-rooted, almost unconscious feelings on it?
How will you feel when it is deployed?
Will what you see out to do be accomplished?
Will that feeling of accomplishment translate into the initial problem statement being resolved for your stakeholders?
Do you have a deep hesitance that you can feel in the tingling of your hands, despite your logical brain telling you “This is right”
Before your next deployment with your code, recognize that it is time to check in not just with testing your code, but also with the emotions underlying it.
Your urgency, much as it did for me, that rushed January UAT obscured the signals, like a fog that even radar could not pierce.
The planning done in ChatGPT by a team leader missed the details. The discussion partnership with AI was missed, as not all the facts were entered.
AI accelerates direction, but it can’t surface the emotional context we haven’t articulated. When we bring our full emotional clarity to the partnership, the tools sharpen because we sharpen first.
A pause to gather all would make the urgency, well, less urgent, with the right tools and people at our disposal.
That pause is the Stoic discipline in action, clarity before action, perception before reaction. It’s not withdrawal from urgency, but a method of standing firm within it.
Staging Your Reactions Before They Go Live
As stated by Jan Yuhas and Jillian Yuhas (see their Substack High-Stakes Conversations) in their book, Boundary Badass: A Powerful Method for Elevating Your Value and Relationships, “You have the ability to take action by pausing in the present moment and thinking of a solution before responding” (p. 30).
This is written in relation to a healthy way to handle a freeze response. But truthfully, you do not need to be in “freeze” mode to even proactively leverage a pause.
Stage your reactions in your mind. Do this before they go “live” and are visible.
In that UAT moment, the rush, without even a brief pause, was covering the reasons for the rush. Was the rush because a system was broken, or an expectation from a high-level stakeholder? It was the latter. Did they realize the implications of condensing what should have been 8 days of work into 4? Probably not. Had anyone been open with them in advance? No. We were stuck.
It was not my monkey, so to speak. Yet, I was feeling it, even though I really had the power.
This was a situation in which I was not present when the decision was made to rush UAT. But I could take a pause to examine where the stressor was coming from, and how to calm down.
I did respond to the decision makers’ post with the initial push (successfully done in time) once we were past the deadline, and emphasized the need for intentional planning around the deadline and for the more technical folks to scope. I had taken some time to think about my response, to make it strategic, rather than impulsive, with the exhaustion I felt.
About 7 weeks later, we moved into our deployment smoke testing. This time, it was spread out based on the input from key stakeholders’ testing. Yes, we had a deadline, but we made it well before the next business day.
The moment of stoic pause to examine what was really happening led to intentional action. Self-awareness of what was driving the stressors could be expressed, allowing all parties to empathize and adjust.
Reliability Isn’t Just Technical
Reliability starts way before a ticket hits production. It begins when we slow down enough to notice the tension humming beneath our decisions and name what is pushing us forward.
That pause is not indulgent; it is strategic.
When we test our emotions as rigorously as we test our code, we reduce silent failures in ourselves and our teams. The work becomes more durable because we become more durable.
EMPATHY ELEVATED IN ACTION
Emotional Intelligence → Test what you feel before you speak. Before your next high-stakes meeting, take 90 seconds to name the primary emotion you’re bringing into the room—pressure, frustration, excitement, hesitation.
Stoicism → Build a pause into your workflow. Set a recurring reminder at the midpoint of your day labeled “Perception → Action?”
Human–AI Thought → — Use AI to surface what you can’t see alone. Before finalizing a message or decision, paste your draft into your AI tool and ask: “What emotions or assumptions might be influencing my thinking here?” Let AI reflect your logic back to you so you can check it against your emotional signals. You stay the author, while AI becomes the mirror.
✅ What I’ve been analyzing this week (reading, watching, listening, etc.)
📖 I’m reading Boundary Badass: A Powerful Method for Elevating Your Value and Relationships, Jan Yuhas and Jillian Yuhas, of High-Stakes Conversations. Because ‘no’ is a complete sentence, but a Boundary Badass knows how to make it a power move.
👀I had read a post by Chelsey Sidler on why January 1st is not the “new year” and how to reframe this is often cold and dark time of year in the northern hemisphere.
Emotional Intelligence • Stoicism • Human–AI Partnership
Practical frameworks for clearer communication, better judgment, and less friction in modern work
The pause can truly be powerful, especially when collecting our thoughts during intense moments.
Reliability isn’t just technical, that’s great!