This episode starts with a thank you.
Specifically — to TikTok user @ErikaLove, who left a comment asking:
"Can you do an episode on Reality Testing — step-by-step?"

And the answer?
Absolutely.

🎯 Digital short: "When a follower asks for a topic this important, you listen — because Reality Testing can make or break a leader’s decisions."

Here’s why:
Every leader has moments when emotions run high, the pressure is intense, and your mind starts filling in the blanks with assumptions.
You think you know what’s happening.
You think you know what people mean.
You think you know the next right move.

But… what if you’re wrong?
What if you’re reacting to a story you’ve told yourself instead of the facts?
What if your “truth” is actually a blend of bias, fear, and incomplete information?

Reality Testing — one of the core skills of Emotional Intelligence — is the ability to see things as they are.
Not better than they are.
Not worse than they are.
Just… real.

And here’s why that matters:
- Leaders who skip reality testing make costly mistakes.
- Teams suffer when leaders overreact to rumors or underreact to warning signs.
- And in high-stakes environments, poor reality testing can destroy trust faster than almost anything else.

So today, thanks to ErikaLove on TikTok, we’re diving deep into:
- What Reality Testing really is and why it’s essential for leaders
- How Emotional Intelligence fuels your ability to reality test
- And a clear, step-by-step process you can follow to stop reacting to fiction — and start leading from fact

And before we get started — I want to hear from you.
If you’re on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or listening on Apple or Spotify — send me your leadership questions, dilemmas, or topics you’d love to hear on this podcast. You might just inspire the next episode.
Segment 1: What Reality Testing Is — and Why It’s a Leadership Non-Negotiable (8–10 min)
🎯 Digital short: "Reality Testing is the difference between reacting to the story in your head and responding to the facts in front of you."
Reality Testing is about mental accuracy — your ability to see a situation for what it truly is, based on objective evidence, not on assumptions, biases, half-truths, or the emotional fog of the moment.
📚 According to the EQ-i 2.0 Emotional Intelligence Model, Reality Testing is one of the 15 EQ skills most strongly linked to effective decision-making in high-pressure leadership roles. It’s what allows leaders to remain grounded and precise when everyone else is running on instinct, fear, or guesswork.
Why it matters for leaders:
• Clarity over chaos: When a situation starts spinning, the leader who can pause, strip away emotion, and work from verified facts becomes the anchor everyone looks to.
• Trust: Teams rally behind leaders whose decisions are grounded in truth, not personal agendas, snap judgments, or second-hand narratives.
• Risk management: Reality Testing helps you spot early warning signs before they escalate into crises — giving you a chance to correct course while the stakes are still manageable.
🎯 Digital short: "In high-pressure moments, Reality Testing isn’t just a skill — it’s your leadership life jacket."
The danger of skipping it:
When leaders fail to reality test, they:
• Misinterpret intentions — reading malice or negativity into neutral actions.
• Overcommit resources to the wrong problems, draining budgets, energy, and focus.
• Damage relationships by reacting to incomplete or inaccurate information, eroding trust that can take years to rebuild.
Example 1:
A department head hears from one staff member that “morale is at an all-time low.” Without gathering more perspectives or evidence, they implement sweeping policy changes aimed at “fixing” the culture. The truth? One person was frustrated about a single scheduling issue. The blanket changes addressed the wrong problem — and ended up alienating most of the team.
Example 2:
An executive sees a competitor post about “new service expansion” on LinkedIn. Without verifying the scope, they rush to announce a counter-expansion, only to find out the competitor’s post referred to a small, regional pilot program — not a market-changing move.
🎯 Digital short: "Leaders lose credibility when they act fast but think shallow."
Here’s the thing — leadership isn’t just about moving quickly.
Yes, speed can be a competitive advantage… but only when it’s paired with accuracy.
When you skip Reality Testing, you risk making decisions based on incomplete or incorrect information. And in leadership, a bad decision made fast doesn’t feel decisive — it feels careless.
Reality Testing doesn’t slow you down — it protects you from sprinting in the wrong direction. It forces you to pause just long enough to ask, “Do I have the facts? Have I checked my assumptions? Do I know what’s actually true here?”
Because speed without accuracy? That’s just a faster way to fail.
And in high-stakes environments, one wrong call can cost you resources, trust, and even your reputation.
The leaders people trust aren’t the ones who always have an immediate answer — they’re the ones who have the rightanswer, grounded in reality.
So don’t confuse quick with effective.
Be fast when you can.
But be accurate always.
Segment 2: Emotional Intelligence Skills That Power Reality Testing (8–10 min)
🎯 Digital short: "If you can’t see your bias, you can’t see the truth."
Here’s the reality — your brain is not a camera.
It doesn’t capture events exactly as they happen; it filters them through your past experiences, values, and emotions. That means every decision you make is influenced — sometimes invisibly — by your biases and triggers.
📚 Harvard Business Review (2021) found that self-aware leaders make better, faster decisions because they can recognize when emotions or bias are steering the wheel.
Self-awareness in Reality Testing means knowing the exact moment you’re moving from fact to interpretation.
It’s catching yourself thinking, “They must be upset with me” — and then asking, “Wait, do I know that for sure, or am I projecting?”
If you don’t know where your blind spots are, you can’t account for them. And if you can’t account for them, you’re leading through a distorted lens.
Strong reality testing starts with an honest check-in: What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? And how much of that is about this situation — versus my own history?
Because if you can’t see your bias, you can’t see the truth.
2. Impulse Control
🎯 Digital short: "Impulse control is leadership’s built-in pause button."
In high-pressure situations, leaders are often rewarded for being decisive. But here’s the thing — decisiveness without discipline is just reaction.
Reality Testing requires that momentary pause — the breath between stimulus and response — so you can check the facts before acting.
📚 Journal of Organizational Behavior (2020) found that leaders with strong impulse control have 40% fewer incidentsof decision regret. That’s not because they’re slower — it’s because they choose their moments to act.
Think of impulse control like a built-in filter. It stops you from firing off that email in frustration, making that call without full context, or jumping to conclusions when the story isn’t complete.
The leaders who master impulse control aren’t less decisive — they’re more precise. They know that speed is only an advantage when it’s matched with accuracy.
In leadership, the pause is not weakness. It’s wisdom.
3. Empathy
🎯 Digital short: "Empathy is the bridge that gets you to the full story."
You cannot reality test in a vacuum. If you only trust your own perspective, you’re working with incomplete data.
Empathy opens the door to perspectives you might never have considered. It’s not about agreeing with everyone — it’s about understanding where they’re coming from so you can factor their reality into the bigger picture.
When you ask, “Tell me how you see this,” and you really listen, you often uncover details that change the shape of the decision entirely.
This is especially important in diverse teams, where experiences and cultural backgrounds can influence how people interpret events.
In reality testing, empathy doesn’t mean losing your objectivity — it strengthens it. It helps you gather a fuller, more accurate account before you decide what’s real and what needs action.
Without empathy, reality testing is limited to your own point of view — and that’s rarely enough for effective leadership.
4. Problem-Solving
🎯 Digital short: "Facts without action are just trivia."
Reality Testing tells you what’s real — but Problem-Solving decides what to do about it.
Once you’ve separated facts from feelings, you need to make decisions that address the immediate issue and consider the long-term impact.
Effective problem-solving means asking:
• What’s the best solution for now?
• What prevents this from happening again?
• What are the unintended consequences of my decision?
Without this step, you can gather all the facts in the world and still fail your team — because nothing changes.
Strong leaders don’t just diagnose the reality — they prescribe solutions that are sustainable, fair, and aligned with their values.
In short: Reality Testing gives you the map. Problem-Solving gets you to the destination.
Segment 3: The Step-by-Step Reality Testing Process (7–9 min)
Step 1: Pause and Label the Situation
🎯 Digital short: "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast when the stakes are high."
When the pressure hits, your instinct might be to do something — immediately. But in leadership, speed without clarity is a gamble you can’t afford.
The first step in Reality Testing is to pause. Not for an hour, not for a week — just long enough to take a mental step back and see the situation clearly.
State what’s happening in neutral terms, free of judgment or assumption.
Example: Instead of “The project is a disaster and no one cares,” say, “The last three deadlines have been missed.”
That shift in language matters because it moves you from emotional interpretation to observable reality. It’s like cleaning the lens before you take a photo — what you see is sharper, truer, and less distorted by your own frustration or fear.
A clean, neutral description creates a solid starting point for every decision that follows. Because when you start with clarity, you’re far less likely to make a move you’ll regret.
Step 2: Separate Facts from Feelings
🎯 Digital short: "Your emotions are valid — but they’re not always evidence."
Once you’ve labeled the situation, the next step is to sort the data from the drama.
Draw two columns. In the first, list only the verifiable facts — the things that could stand up in a court of law or be confirmed by multiple credible sources. In the second, list your feelings — the frustration, anxiety, hope, or excitement you’re experiencing.
This isn’t about dismissing your emotions. Feelings are important signals, but they are not proof. Separating them ensures that your decision-making isn’t accidentally being driven by adrenaline or fear rather than facts.
When leaders skip this step, they often overcorrect or underreact. But when you take the time to separate the two, your decisions become more balanced, measured, and credible.
In short — respect your emotions, but lead with your evidence.
Step 3: Seek Multiple Perspectives
🎯 Digital short: "One viewpoint is a story. Three viewpoints start to look like reality."
Your version of events is just that — your version. And as a leader, acting on one perspective is risky.
This step is about actively seeking out other angles, even — and especially — from people who might see things differently.
Talk to stakeholders who were directly involved, and those who can provide a neutral view. Ask open-ended questions like, “What’s your read on the situation?” or “What did you observe?”
This cross-checking process is a safeguard against tunnel vision. It reveals missing details, uncovers blind spots, and often corrects inaccurate assumptions before they harden into decisions.
The more perspectives you gather, the more complete your picture becomes. And in leadership, a complete picture is your best defense against costly missteps.
Step 4: Challenge Your Assumptions
🎯 Digital short: "Question the story you’re telling yourself — it might be fiction."
We all tell ourselves stories to fill in gaps. The problem is, those stories can feel like facts — especially when they line up with our fears or past experiences.
This step forces you to interrogate the narrative in your head. Ask yourself:
• What hard evidence supports this conclusion?
• What evidence contradicts it?
• Could there be another explanation?
This is where humility comes in. Strong leaders are willing to be wrong early so they don’t have to be wrong publicly later.
When you challenge your assumptions, you make space for more accurate conclusions — and better decisions.
Step 5: Decide Based on Data, Not Drama
🎯 Digital short: "Decisions built on drama collapse fast. Data holds."
This is the payoff step. You’ve paused, separated facts from feelings, gathered perspectives, and challenged your assumptions — now it’s time to act.
Base your decision on the clearest, most credible evidence you have, not on the loudest emotion in the room.
That doesn’t mean you ignore urgency — it means you let urgency sharpen your focus, not hijack it.
📚 Stanford Graduate School of Business (2020) found that leaders who follow a structured decision-making process are 2.5 times more effective in volatile environments. Why? Because they move with both speed and accuracy.
When your next step is rooted in verified data, you lead with confidence — and your team follows with trust.
Wrap-Up & Closing
🎯 Digital short: "Reality Testing is leadership’s truth serum — it keeps you honest with yourself and fair with others."
Here’s the truth — Reality Testing isn’t just a skill you pull out when you’re under pressure. It’s a discipline. A daily leadership habit.
It’s what keeps you from making emotional calls on incomplete information. It’s the checkpoint between what your mind is telling you and what’s actually happening. And it’s the thing that protects you from the two biggest leadership risks — losing trust in yourself, and losing the trust of your team.
The leaders who master Reality Testing don’t guess their way forward. They verify. They listen. They adjust. And because of that, their teams know one thing for certain: decisions here aren’t made on a whim — they’re made on what’s real.
I want to say a special thank you to @ErikaLove on TikTok for inspiring this conversation. Your question is why we’re here today. And to everyone listening — you can do the same. If you have a leadership challenge, a topic you want me to unpack, or a skill you’re trying to master, send me a DM on TikTok, drop a comment, or email me through the podcast site. You might hear your name and your question in a future episode.
🎯 Digital short: "Your questions shape this show — and they make all of us better leaders."
If this episode helped you, share it with another leader who’s ready to make better, clearer decisions. And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music — wherever you listen — so you never miss a Leadership Lesson.
And next time, we’re diving into Episode 13: “The Mirror Isn’t Broken – Redefining Confidence and Self-Trust.”
Confidence isn’t about bravado — it’s about alignment. It’s about rebuilding trust in yourself, one choice at a time.
Until then —
See clearly.
Decide wisely.
And lead with both your head and your heart in the same room.
I’m Dr. Fredrick Lee II, and this has been your Leadership Lesson.