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If youve seen a birds-eye view of Earth over the past decade, chances are it came from Colorado-based Maxar Intelligence. From some 280 miles up, its powerful imaging satellites have created an atlas of modern problems: the impacts of extreme weather, the build-up of Russian tanks near the Ukrainian border, the ruination of Khartoum and the decimation of Gaza, even the not-so-total destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities by U.S. bombers. What you may not have noticed: Last month, the Maxar brand was itself wiped out, after its private equity owner replaced it with a new moniker: Vantor. The new name reflects how the company that sees everything on Earth now sees itself. Peter Wilczynski, Vantors chief product officer, points to the harsh V, which gives it that edge. The edginess extends to a slick new website, where fast-paced scenes on screens evoke Jason Bourne, or Alex Karp. But unlike Palantir, where Wilczynski spent a decade, or Anduril, a Vantor partner, the new name does not come from The Lord of the Rings, the touchstone for so many unabashed defense tech firms. Still, Wilczynski admits: it could be Elvish. The Maxar makeover reflects a broader crossroads for Earth observation, says Jarkko Antila, the CEO of Kuva Space, a Finnish startup building a constellation of AI-equipped hyperspectral nanosatellites, capable of monitoring any material on the Earths surface. Raw satellite imagery alone is less of a differentiator. Combining imagery with AI-powered analytics and sensor fusion to access real-time actionable intelligence is what customers demand. The hard-edged, tech-forward revamp isnt just marketing. Maxars transformation reflects bigger shifts in the business of watching Earth. A new wave of military and intelligence demand has led companies to double down on government work or even enter the market for the first time. According to Novaspace, a consultancy, the data and services market for defense and intel customers grew by 42% over the past five years, reaching $2.2 billion in 2024. National security work now represents more than 65% of the whole earth observation data market. Whereas imagery satellite companies once leaned into civic applications, the firms are increasingly turning to AI to rapidly analyze all kinds of space data, and sharpening their focus on national security amid turmoil here on Earth. Were experiencing growth across every region as customers respond to the changing geopolitical climate, Wilczynski says. Vantors international business has grown by double digits this year to around 100 government and corporate customers, with the bulk of its contracts now with military and intelligence agencies, he adds. Vantor’s new platform includes a tool for automated tasking of multiple satellite constellations [Image: 2025 Vantor] A separate Maxar division that builds the satellites, the California-based Maxar Space Systems, was also rebranded, as Lanteris. At the top of its new roadmap, the company said it was centered on platforms for missile tracking, secure communications, and resilient constellations that safeguard U.S. and allied interests. Last week, the lunar infrastructure firm Intuitive Machines bought Lanteris for $800 million, “mark[ing] the moment Intuitive Machines transitions from a lunar company to a multi-domain space prime, CEO Steve Altemus said in the companys press release.Investors who previously shied away from national security are now pouring in record amounts of cash. According to Bain & Company, venture capital investment in defense tech has increased more than eighteen-fold over the past decade. Over the next decade, Goldman Sachs estimates, the global satellite market will grow from $15 billion to $108 billion. DoD is basically saying, Hey, private sector, spend your equity dollars, do some preliminary work and that will help us decide what we want, Shahin Farshchi, a partner at Lux Capital, said October 29 at a satellite conference in California. A data glut At MaxarVantorthe makeover was years in the making, says Wilczynski. In 2022, the private equity firm Advent International purchased Maxar Technologies in an all-cash $6.4-billion transaction in 2022 and split its imagery and satellite businesses into separate divisions. Adventwhose business involves buying, repackaging and selling companiessaid the firms would prioritize work for the U.S. government and its allies as part of its broader defense portfolio. Since then, Maxar Intelligence has shaken up its executive team with tech veterans and rejiggered its business, with a focus on services and extracting insights from data. Vantorwhich grew partly out of the early Google Maps partner DigitalGlobealso operates ten satellites built by Maxar and another ancestor, GeoEye. Its six WorldView Legion satellites produce some of the highest-resolution color images commercially available, down to 30 centimeters, or 15 with enhancementgood enough to count individual tanks and the crowns of trees. (Only Airbuss satellites offer a comparable resolution.) Dozens of other companies operate some 1,200 earth observation satellites, helping governments and companies keep tabs on everything from airbases to mines to big box parking lots in a zoo of formats, from optical to hyperspectral to SAR and RF. All this adds up to a problem of too much space data, more than humans can look at, let alone sort, combine, or usefully analyze. Its like a thousand times, a million times, the data that you were handling 10 years ago, says Wilczynski, who previously helped develop Palantirs data management system and geospatial platform. The glut has pushed Maxar and its two large earth observation rivals, Planet and BlackSky, to become more like tech firms, building AI to combine data from space and other domains like drones and phones, and devising slick interfaces that can extract objects and flag changes on Earth and at sea. (Years ago, a similar flood of video evidenceand the subscription services involved in managing itled th law enforcement contractor Taser to hire executives from Tesla and Apple, build a cloud-based platform, and rebrand as Axon.) Incumbent players are only now moving into the world of rapid data fusion, says Antila of Kuva, which plans to sell defense customers subscription-based access to its hyperspectral microsatellites; on-board Nvidia chips will help speed up data processing. But it remains to be seen how quickly they can reset their existing processes and business models. At Vantor, that effort has meant a range of new partnerships and products, from analysis tools to near-real-time 3D globes, to less traditional ways of presenting and selling geospatial data. Ninety percent of Vantors revenue now comes from subscriptions and recurring contracts, amounting to over $900 million, a business the company projects will grow by double digits this year. Geopolitics are driving countries to want eyes faster In part, the shift can be traced to a set of color images taken by Maxar on November 1, 2021. The photos, first published in Politico, showed tanks massing near the Ukrainian border. That, and subsequent Maxar imagery, helped convince the world that Putin was serious about his plans to invade, more than three months before it actually happened. NEW: Photos show Russian troops & equipment, including hundreds of tanks, self-propelled artillery and an Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile are deployed in a training area located approx 160 miles north of the Russia Ukraine border.: @Maxar pic.twitter.com/qXkj7V1yeI— Elizabeth Campbell (@ECampbell360) December 23, 2021 The war that followed was another reminder that commercial space data wasnt just a nice-to-have. Along with communications provided by Spacexs massive Starlink network, commercial satellites would prove pivotal for Ukraines defense: Since images by Vantor and other companies are unclassified, U.S. and NATO commanders and analysts could easily share them with Kiev, providing critical intelligence. That sharing arrangement became well known in March, after President Donald Trump abruptly turned off Kievs access to a Maxar-run digital atlas used by the Pentagon and other US agencies and overseas partners. The White House restored access 11 days later, but the episode unnerved U.S. allies around the globe. The moment was a wake-up call for partners around the world, and weve seen an uptick in demand from international government partners who want to pay for direct access to our spatial intelligence capabilities, says Wilczynski. The push for more surveillance from space is said to be existential in the longer term, too. For defense and intelligence agencies facing the prospect of AI-powered weapons and drones, the data that comes from above will determine who wins future wars. Geopolitics are driving countries to want eyes faster, Will Marshall, CEO of Planet, told a panel at World Space Business Week in September. The publicly traded company has signed deals with NATO, Germany, and Wales. It has also announced a new factory in Berlin, and seen its stock more than triple this year. People are very worried, and countries want to have their own independent means of surveying the world, he said. Since July, Vantor has signed over $300 million in contracts, including a deal with Taiwanese aerospace firm AIDC for Raptor, a system that uses its 3D terrain models to guide swarms of drones. Under a separate Army contract, Vantor is also building a 3D virtual globe for training and planning. Last month, the company also signed a deal with the Space Force to capture images of other satellites, a growing concern amid tensions in orbit. Wilczynski puts the market for its products next year at $2 billion. One of Vantors largest U.S. government contracts is for GEGD, the web-based portal that provides unclassified imagery and geospatial data to 400,000 users across federal agencies and U.S. partners. The company last year also won a contract to provide AI capabilities for programs that help analysts at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency monitor industrial sites and detect vehicles and ships. That work has informed some of its new commercial AI products. A screenshot from Vantor’s Sentry platform, which uses AI to detect objects and flag changes [Image: 2025 Vantor] The shift toward defense represents something of a return to the industrys roots. The space industry has traditionally been propelled by intelligence agencies, which provide the large stable contracts needed to put expensive satellites into orbit. Over the past decade, Maxar and a growing number of earth observation firms have expanded into civil and corporate applications, including mining, energy, finance, insurance, and disaster relief. The public is left out But for Vantor and the rest of the industry, the picture of the future is still murky. As defense budgets explode, U.S. government budgets for civil and commercial contracts are shrinking. The Trump administrations $18.8-billion budget for NASA, pending Congresss approval, pushes the space agency to its lowest level since 161, and cuts nearly half of its science mission funding, or a third of its science portfolio. On the defense side, where the Pentagon is investing in more of its own satellites (including a requested $40 billion for the Space Force), the administration has proposed about $130 million in cuts to its commercial imagery contracts. In a letter to Congress in June, executives from Vantor and other firms protested the cuts, arguing they would cede U.S. leadership in space. The decision to abandon Americas vetted and reliable commercial remote sensing capabilities, while adversaries China, Russia and Iran rapidly expand their state-backed Earth observation infrastructure is ironic, shortsighted, and perilous, says the letter. The industry’s concerns underscore the gravitational pull of defense budgets, and the reality that demand for space imagery among non-government customers hasnt been as high as some had expected. There are only so many government contracts, and commercial demand never lived up to the hype, Tushar Prabhakar, founder of Orbital Sidekick (OSK), a hyperspectral data company, wrote at Space Republic. So maybe the real question isnt about Maxar. Its how does this industry finally break free of its own gravity well?The industry shifts are also raising eyebrows among advocates for public space data. Commercial and government programs like the U.S.s Landsat and the EU’s Sentinel have been foundational for climate science, agriculture, and disaster relief for decades. Vantor and other EO companies also run open data programs, providing imagery in the wake of disasters. U.S. and Western governments subsidize some access to commercial data for use by scientific and humanitarian users. Public portals like NASA WorldView, EO Browser, the Copernicus Browser, Google Earth Pro Microsofts Planetary Computer, Esris Living Atlas, and OpenAerialMap offer tools for searching, sharing, and using various kinds of satellite and drone imagery. But all of those programs are contingent on goodwill. And researchers have reported significant gaps in the coverage provided by public data. For instance, there is no comprehensive repository of recent or historical high-resolution imagery, which could be valuable for a range of humanitarian and environmental challenges. As the industry focuses more on the defense and intelligence sector and government budget cuts threaten research satellites, public access to critical data could be at risk. Thats my worry, says Bill Greer, a geospatial analyst who worked on humanitarian mapping at Maxar and founded Common Space, a nonprofit trying to launch its own satellite for research purposes. A complete enclosure of satellite imagery by defense and intelligence, where the public is left out. Seeing the Earth in near-real time To see how space got here, zoom out a bit. It was Space Imaging, Maxars ancestor, that launched the first spy-grade commercial satellite in 1999, with a then eye-popping resolution of 1 meter per pixel. Since then, a parade of advancementsincluding SpaceXs reusable rocketsmade it much cheaper for giants and upstarts alike to bring large and small satellites to orbit.In February, Maxar hit a critical milestone. Six years after a mechanical failure took out one of its costly Legion satellites, it successfully launched two more, Legion 5 and 6, aboard a SpaceX rocket. If that program did not work, says Wilczynski, there was not a company. Once the satellites were up, the time was right for the company to go on offense, and turn a lot of the latent potential that the company had into something that’s a little bit more concrete and durable. While Maxar was a SpaceX-like space behemoth, says Wilczynski, with tentacles reaching across the whole space domain, we were really trying to think about a company that was more vertically integrated across space, air, and ground, using the space-based data as the global foundation, he says. All the data is handled by TensorGlobe, a set of cloud-based technical services built to process an unceasing flow of high-resolution imagery, covering some six million square miles per day. Wilczynski likens the infrastructure to Amazon Web Services, but for geospatial data, continuously ingesting, stitching, and enhancing. That’s really valuable for a customer who’s trying to build a spatial intelligence system that takes imagery from multiple providers, he says. People heading north on the coastal road in Gaza, October 10, 2025 [Image: Satellite image 2025 Vantor] With a zoo of vendors, combining and making sense of the data at speed is one challenge. It will be interesting to see how Maxar is going to deal with the interoperability of various data sources and do it in a near-real-time cadence, says Antila.Wilczynski agrees. The hurdles for earth imagery now arent about hardware, but an information overload challenge of data coming from each of those domains being pretty siloed, being pretty disconnected, he says. And this is something that I was really fascinated about at Palantir, thinking about knowledge graphs and connecting semantic data. Wilczynski says defense agencies are already using the platform to choose from a mix of government and commercial satellites, just as companies might split their data workloads between their own data centers and cloud services. And as AI models learn from the work of human analysts, the system is helping automate the process too. That scheduling’s actually very hard, he says. So is turning all the imagery into a single 3D map, in near real-time. Other algorithms, from the startup Ecopia AI, layer on 2D vector base maps,with features like building footprints, roads, and land cover. Yet more software wraps a mess of images onto a “living” globe. These models form the basis of Raptor, a system that helps drones navigate by terrain in GPS-denied environments like Ukraine. They also feed the U.S. Armys One World Terrain program, which will provide geospatial data for the mixed-reality headset project started by Microsoft and now led by Anduril. The 3D maps can be continuously enriched and verified against new imagery coming from sensors on helmets and drones. And those real world terrain models can then be used to train geospatial AI models, more firmly grounding them to prevent dangerous falsehoods in the outputs. Researchers at IBM, Google, and elsewhere have also released dynamic maps and geospatial AI models that have been used by insurance companies and disaster relief groups. A lot of how we’re thinking about the risks of AI are, how do you continue to use real world observations to keep the system from spiraling away into some false hallucination of what’s happening by connecting it to the world, says Wilczynski. A cloudy picture Even as the data gets better and faster, the ground is shifting beneath the industrys feet. As part of the budget proposal for NASA submitted earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed abandoning more than 40 missions, including at least 14 Earth science missions. The White House has also called for a roughly 30% reductionabout $130 millionin the National Reconnaissance Offices procurement of imagery under its commercial imagery purchasing program. The administration is also seeking to eliminate funding entirely for synthetic aperture radar imagery, a capability widely used since Russias invasion of Ukraine. In a June 16 letter, the CEOs of Maxar, Planet, BlackSky, Iceye US, Capella Space, and ground systems provider KSAT told the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, and Intelligence committees that the budget cuts would undercut Trumps Golden Dome plans, stall the Space Forces initiative to create a Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, and derail U.S. leadership in AI development. Commercial imagery can be used today, or they can wait six, eight years and spend billions of dollars building systems, Susanne Hake, general manager of Vantors U.S. government business, said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in September. We commercial companies have shown that we can deliver at scale, but in order to do that, we do need long-term contracts and consistent funding in order for us to be able to build our technology. Vivid Features vectors in Reynosa, Mexico, including road centerlines and 2D and 3D building footprints But for Bill Greer, of CommonSpace, the markets continued reliance on the defense sector comes at the expense of other, less-resourced users. Maxars rebrand looks like private equity positioning for a sale, likely to defense primes or similar players, he wrote on LinkedIn. If that happens, we can expect further restrictions on who gets access to this data, price increases to make the more restricted data more profitable, and restrictions on how the data is used. Government will pay more for access to the same data, and end users will miss out entirely. Some have advocated for government rules that say any imagery purchased with taxpayer dollars be released to a wider array of civic users. Groups like UN-SPIDER have also pushed for more capacity and training for Earth observation, especially in developing countries.Satellite companies could also open up more of their archives. If they did, Greer thinks the industry could drive more non-defense commercial business. This is a big spot where the commercial industry gets it wrong, he says. They’re not developing the market without allowing access to that data. Sentry integrates Vantor’s Cortex and Forge software to automate multi-constellation orchestration and intelligence analysis. Theres some historical precedent here. The Landsat program began providing then-precious 60-meter views of Earth in 1972, but its full impact was limited by cost, with prices reaching $4,500 per scene during the 1980s when the commercial sector operated the satellite. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) transitioned to a policy of open data, free to users. The impact was immediate. Daily downloads skyrocketed from 53 scenes to more than 5,700, and within three years, a report found annual economic benefits of $1.7 billion in the United States alone, according to a June report by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a partnership of governments and international organizations. By 2023, those benefits had grown to $25 billion annually, far exceeding the $5 million collected in data sales by the USGS. The open data enabled projects like Australias water resource mapping, which analysed 300,000 Landsat scenes to grasp continental-scale water trends, and, said GEO, catalysed a global movement toward open-access Earth observation. Greer would like to see the commercial sector follow Landsats lead and open up more of its data. The problem is that this data is super good, and access isn’t, he says. He adds: My hope is that you start seeing more of that [data], and then that leads to tasking, and there would actually be growth in the industry, and more people that actually understand the value.
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Before becoming CEO and president of C.H. Robinson in 2023, Dave Bozeman worked at four of the worlds most iconic companies: Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Caterpillar, Amazon, and Ford Motor Company. During each stop, he gleaned valuable lessons: Harley-Davidson (16 years): The motorcycle maker educated him on the power of lean principles, including continuous improvement and just-in-time inventory management. He adds: I learned the value of connecting with people who do the work. I came in as an engineer, but I wanted to be on the [manufacturing] floor. Caterpillar (9 years): The construction and mining equipment maker offered him an opportunity to experience operational excellence globally and at scale. Cat allowed me to see that people around the globe want to do a great job, but they want clean process and workflows to do that, he says. Amazon (5+ years): Bozeman built the tech giants Middle Mile global transportation business, which moves customer orders from vendors and fulfillment centers to its sorting facilities and delivery stations. Amazon allowed me to learn how to solve problems at scale with technology, he says. Ford (1 year): While heading customer service and enthusiast brands such as Mustang and Bronco, Bozeman says his time at the automaker offered a deeper, tactile understanding of how things get made. It was really about getting back to touch, feel, smell, he says. Bozmans collection of experiencesindustrial, technology, transportationprepared him to run C.H. Robinson, a freight broker connecting shippers with truck, rail, ocean, and air carriers. But it is a customer-centricity he learned from all four companies that is helping propel his modernization and transformation of the 120-year-old company. These companies, at their heart, are all about the customer, he says. Its an obsession at Amazon; at Harley-Davidson, the customers tattooed themselves [with the company logo]; at Caterpillar, youre in the dirt with them; and Ford is all about the brand and its customers. Thats why Im obsessed with customers and customer service. Dealing with the “freight recession” C.H. Robinson customers have benefitted from several new programs announced on Bozemans watch. The company is deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the speed and volume of freight quotesthe estimated cost to ship goods. Touchless appointments technology schedules freight pickups and deliveries, replacing a process traditionally handled by phone or email, and AI chooses the ideal appointment time. As a result of cost cutting, divestitures, and productivity gains, the company earlier this year reported an 11% reduction in staffing. Its not just about headcount, Bozeman counters. We look at it as upskilling; were investing in customer-facing people, who can now help solve supply-chain, logistical problems with customers as we move away from manual tasking. Bozeman says implementing new technology and disciplined execution have been keys to its improved financial performance. Despite a freight recession, marked by weak demand and low rates, C.H. Robinson posted a 68% increase in third-quarter net income even as revenue fell 11% to $4.1 billion. The company says the recent quarter was its seventh straight period of outperforming analyst earnings-per-share estimates. At a time when many of C.H. Robinsons customers face supply-chain challenges and tariff uncertainty, Bozeman is applying lessons hes learned firsthand from timeless brands and putting them to work in new ways. The result: C.H. Robinsons companys ability to innovate may prove to be a competitive edge during a challenging time for freight. Experience counts Leaders often use their past experience in new ways. What are some of the lessons youve collected from the different companies youve helped lead? How have they benefited the company you lead now? Share your top takeaways from each rolebrief bullet points are greatand well compile unexpected experiences in a future newsletter. Also, were still soliciting nominations for the 2025 Modern CEO of the Year. Please nominate yourself or someone you admire via this link. Submissions are due November 21. Read more: CEO lessons What Alicia Boler Davis had to unlearn from Amazon and Jeff Bezos Beautycounter founder Gregg Renfrews season of learning GE Vernovas Scott Strazik is trying to rekindle its former parents entrepreneurial zeal
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At its best, work can be energizing, creative, and meaningful. It can also be emotionally exhausting and stressful. Even in healthy organizations, we all deal with interpersonal tension, stinging feedback, impossible deadlines, and the constant pressure to perform. Add in the rapid pace of change and a steady diet of uncertainty, and its no wonder many of us feel perpetually on edge. Stress isnt just a sign that somethings wrongits a signal that something matters. Emotions like frustration, anxiety, and excitement all contain useful data about whats important to us, what we value, and what we need. Yet in most workplaces, were trained to treat emotions as distractions from rational thought rather than as essential information that guides it. When we ignore or misread that emotional data, we lose access to one of our most valuable internal resources. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), originally developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan to help individuals struggling with chronic emotion dysregulation, offers a powerful framework for understanding and responding to emotions effectively. DBT isnt about suppressing or indulging emotionsits about interpreting them accurately and acting wisely in response. The same skills that help people navigate crises and build healthier relationships can help you stay centered in a difficult meeting, receive feedback without spiraling, and recover from professional setbacks with greater resilience. Heres how DBTs core principles can help you use your emotions as dataand manage stress and intensity at work more effectively. 1. Recognize When Youre in Emotion Mind and Do Something Different DBT starts with the idea that many of our problems arise from emotion dysregulationfeeling hijacked by strong emotions and acting in ways that make things worse. At work, that might look like firing off a reactive email, shutting down in a tense discussion, or replaying a negative interaction long after its over. These reactions come from what DBT calls Emotion Minda state in which feelings drive thoughts and behavior, often overriding reason and long-term goals. The antidote is Wise Mind, the integration of emotion and reason. Wise Mind is the space where you can both acknowledge how you feel and still act in ways that serve your goals. When you notice your pulse racing before a presentation or frustration mounting in a team meeting, take a breath. Ask yourself: What is this emotion trying to tell me? Maybe its signaling that you care about doing well, that you value fairness, or that you need more clarity. Once youve decoded that data, you can decide how to respond skillfully rather than react impulsively. 2. Check the Facts Emotions provide information, but not all that information is accurate. Sometimes theyre based on assumptions or incomplete data. You might feel angry when a manager doesnt include you on an email chain and interpret it as rejection, or anxious when a colleagues brief message reads as criticism. DBTs Check the Facts skill helps you distinguish between what your emotions are telling you and whats actually happening. Ask yourself: What exactly happened? What are other possible explanations? Am I assuming intent I cant verify? This isnt about invalidating your feelingstheyre real, even if the story attached to them isnt. Its about ensuring your next action fits the facts, not your assumptions. When you treat emotions as data, checking the facts becomes the emotional equivalent of verifying a source before acting on it. 3. Practice Opposite Action to Change Your Emotion Once youve checked the facts, you can choose whether to act on an emotion or shift it. DBTs Opposite Action skill is a behavioral way to update your emotional data. If your emotion doesnt fit the facts, you do the opposite of what it urges you to do. If youre angry and want to withdraw or lash out, the opposite action might be to approach calmly and with curiosity. If youre anxious before a presentation and want to avoid, the opposite action might be to step forwardto practice, to engage, and to risk. Opposite Action doesnt mean pretending to feel great when you dont. Its about behaving in line with your goals rather than your impulsesand, over time, reshaping the emotion itself. 4. Use Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills to Navigate Difficult Conversations Emotional data doesnt just live inside usit shows up between us. Interpersonal friction is inevitable, especially in environments with high stakes and constant feedback. DBT offers practical tools for these moments. The skill of DEAR MAN provides a clear structure for asserting needs or saying no effectively: Describe the situation objectively. Express how you feel or what you think. Assert what you want or dont want. Reinforce why collaboration helps everyone. Stay Mindful of your goal. Appear confident, even if you dont feel it. Negotiate when needed. You might say: The last few deadlines have been difficult to meet because the workload has increased significantly. Im feeling stretched thin. Id like to discuss redistributing tasks or adjusting the timeline so the work remains high-quality. By integrating emotion and reason, you turn emotional informationIm overwhelmedinto effective communication. Thats what Wise Mind looks like in real time. 5. Cultivate Mindfulness of Current Emotions Mindfulness, the foundation of DBT, helps us observe emotional data without reacting to it. When youre flooded with stressheart pounding, shoulders tense, thoughts racingpause for a moment and name whats happening. Tension in my chest. Tightness in my jaw. Thoughts saying, I cant handle this. Labeling activates the brains prefrontal cortex, shifting you from reaction to reflection. You move from being in the emotion to observing it. That small shiftrecognizing emotion as data rather than as dangercan completely change how you respond. 6. Practice Radical Acceptance Sometimes the data your emotions deliver points to something you cant change: a difficult colleague, a lost opportunity, or an organizational decision you dont agree with. Fighting that reality adds suffering to pain. Radical Acceptance means acknowledging reality fully so you can decide what to do next from clarity rather than denial. You can say: I dont like this, and its happening. This situation is painful, and resisting it isnt helping. Acceptance doesnt mean resignationit means seeing the full picture so you can use your emotional data wisely rather than fighting it blindly. 7. Build Resilience Proactively Most of us think of reslience as bouncing back after stress, but DBT teaches that resilience starts before the stress hits. Skills like PLEASE (taking care of physical health) and ABC (accumulating positive emotions, building mastery, and coping ahead) help maintain emotional stability so your system processes stress more accurately. When your body and mind are well cared for, youre less likely to misread emotional signals as threats. Daily habitssleep, nutrition, movement, connectionarent just wellness clichés. Theyre how you keep your internal data system online and responsive. A New Model of Effectiveness at Work DBTs philosophy is dialectical: balancing acceptance and change. In the workplace, that means recognizing that emotion and reason arent opposites to be managedtheyre partners to be integrated. Emotions are data. They tell us what matters, guide our attention, and strengthen connection. But like any data, they require interpretation and skill to use well. The most effective people and teams arent the ones who avoid emotional intensity; theyre the ones who train for itwho can read emotional cues accurately and respond with balance and wisdom. Thats the heart of DBT: learning to stay grounded, curious, and fully human in the middle of lifesand workschaos. Adapted from Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships (Guilford Press, 2026).
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