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Workplace stress has become an important consideration for employees and leaders. A 2026 survey of 2,153 U.S. workers found that 53% had experienced burnout because of their job during the previous year, while 39% had felt overwhelmed enough to make performing their work difficult. The findings also showed that conversations about mental health tend to be more comfortable among trusted colleagues than with organizational leaders.

These findings raise an important question about how demanding, high-stakes work is interpreted. Society often associates high-stakes roles and challenging environments with stress as an inherent part of the experience. Brian Hite, founder of Brian Hite Global, offers a different perspective. He says, "A job or situation can carry significant stakes while the experience of stress and pressure can depend entirely on how a person interprets the circumstances."

Hite brings an unusual combination of academic, professional, and firsthand experience to this subject. He holds a master's degree in sport psychology and a PhD in organizational psychology, and spent 10 years as a university faculty member. He also spent 11 years applying performance psychology while working with elite U.S. Army units. Alongside that work, Hite has spent more than 30 years as a professional stuntman.

Those experiences inform his view of performance when consequences matter. He describes these moments as "high-stakes situations," defined by a meaningful difference between the potential outcomes of success and failure. The concept can apply to a major business decision, a performance, an important presentation, or an everyday responsibility that carries personal significance.

Hite distinguishes the psychological experiences within those situations by separating pressure from stress. In his framework, pressure relates primarily to attention directed toward future consequences. A person may imagine the professional, financial, social, or personal implications of succeeding or falling short. Those anticipated outcomes can occupy attention before the outcome itself arrives.

Stress involves a different appraisal. Hite draws from the transactional model of stress developed by psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman. The model describes stress as a process in which people evaluate a situation and their available resources. The first appraisal considers whether a threat exists, including potential physical, financial, emotional, or social consequences. The second considers whether sufficient resources are available to respond.

That framework adds nuance to discussions about workplace well-being. According to Hite, resources can extend beyond technical ability or professional expertise. He identifies five categories: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual resources, with the latter referring to a sense of connection to something larger than oneself.

"Leadership has an important role in helping employees recognize and use those resources," Hite emphasizes. "Communication, constructive feedback, recognition, priorities, and access to support can influence how people interpret demanding situations." He adds that employees also contribute by remaining receptive to different interpretations, seeking assistance when appropriate, and making practical use of the resources available to them.

The importance of this shared responsibility becomes especially relevant as leaders experience substantial workplace demands themselves. CNBC, citing the Global Leadership Forecast 2025, reported that 71% of surveyed leaders experienced increased stress, compared with 63% in 2022. The finding offers another dimension to the workplace conversation. Performance pressures can affect people throughout an organization, including those responsible for supporting others.

Hite translates his perspective into practical frameworks designed for high-stakes performance. His MAP framework addresses pressure through three ideas: Modest, Ambiguous, and Present. Being modest acknowledges the limits of predicting future consequences. Ambiguous recognizes that even an anticipated outcome can acquire different meaning over time. Present brings attention back to the action required now.

Hite notes, "The future is something we imagine; the present is something we can act upon." The distinction gives people a practical way to redirect attention from hypothetical consequences toward the task immediately available to them.

His FACT framework focuses on Focus, Arousal, Confidence, and Tenacity. Focus directs attention toward task-relevant variables within a person's influence. Arousal encourages people to interpret physiological activation, such as a racing heart, as preparation for action. Confidence can be strengthened through previous experience, supportive feedback, observed examples, and awareness of available resources. Tenacity introduces a longer-term perspective, encouraging people to treat performance as an ongoing process where each experience provides information for the next step.

These principles form part of Brian Hite Global's broader work with executives, athletes, educators, first responders, performers, and other professionals working in consequential environments. Through assessments and performance programs, Hite helps teams, organizations, and individuals examine factors such as attention, arousal, confidence, motivation, and preparation.

His perspective also connects contemporary performance psychology with an older philosophical idea. People create their experience through the meaning of situations that they encounter. For Hite, that idea has practical value in modern workplaces.

Hite says, "Situations don't have to dictate how we experience the moment. How we interpret the moment, the meaning we assign to each situation, determines our experience."

That distinction between situations and circumstances determining our experience and our perceptions of those situations determining our experience provides a unique way to consider workplace resilience. The surrounding circumstances only matter to the extent that those circumstances are more or less likely to be interpreted in ways that limit pressure and stress while boosting motivation, resilience, and well-being. Hite's contribution is to open people's minds to the reality that they have much more control over their levels of pressure, stress, and motivation than they typically believe. He remarks, "We need to ask ourselves how much stress and pressure we attribute to our circumstances versus how we perceive and understand our circumstances."