Keeping Calm Ain't Cutting It
- How CEOs are keeping their investors confident, employees engaged and customers spending money through a very uncertain 2025
With several unique events fuelling growing doubt about the future, what people need from their leaders is changing.
Right now we have hugely uncertain global markets, a trade-war, rapid AI adoption and a cost of living crisis, all hot on the heels of a global pandemic.
You couldn’t make this stuff up, but the impacts are real.
Across industry, investors are being more cautious, employees are turning towards self-protection mode and many markets are stalling, waiting to see what’s coming next.
These anxiety-driven behaviours aren’t business friendly and a lot of CEOs are trying to turn the tide and keep their investors on side, employees engaged and their market loyal to their brand.
Here’s what some of them are doing that’s working.
Briefly - why different approaches are needed right now
Many folks are feeling a heightened degree of uncertainty around the future because of the number and nature of the unknowns in play. Their global reach is creating many possible threats that not only feel uncontrollable, but unavoidable.
This effected is being bolstered by the human condition too in that a threat only has to be believed as real to influence our decisions or behaviour. A hungry tiger sitting behind a rock waiting to pounce invokes the same fear whether we believe the tiger’s real, or whether it actually is.
Normally, most people get to worry about one big ‘tiger’ at a time. Mergers, a competitors product outselling their own, new C-level hires, overseas expansion, new funding, necessary downsizing.
Often there’s one, perhaps two major events occurring for them to focus on, but 2025 is firmly breaking the mold. Across industry, people are feeling that not only are there multiple tigers, but the media is telling them there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and nobody can save them.
This landscape isn’t just amplifying doubt and uncertainty, it’s exponentially scaling it and CEOs are finding the approaches that worked for them with one tiger at a time aren’t cutting it.
Approach change #1 - Air the elephants, however big or ugly
If recent market changes spell doom and gloom for some, talk about it. If AI might be a threat to livelihoods, acknowledge it and build a framework for if/how people can change the value they add to stay relevant.
When folk are afraid of losing their jobs, often they’ll act as though they already have, meaning lost productivity, declining communication quality, quiet quitting and job-hopping. Where there is one, show them the way forward and if at all possible, be equally as open if you know there’s no way to spare them from the tide.
Approaching topics like this of late has been confronting for many CEOs, but also freeing. They’ve been carrying the weight of other peoples concerns and giving air to them has not only helped people plan for their future, but freed the CEOs mind of burdens they couldn’t otherwise reconcile.
It’s taken very careful language, planning and a willingness to own the outcomes, but the upshot has been loyalty and engagement have increased. Amidst this level of doubt, people have stayed loyal to those they trust and whom they feel will be straight with them.
Approach change #2 - Question what you never think about
Change can be the perfect solvent for what we’ve assumed is already glued together and most CEOs right now are gambling huge outcomes on assumptions that may not be as solid as they believe.
For instance, take assumptions such as;
- My CFO and I communicate effectively
- I’m on the same page as the board and know exactly what they want from me
- I’m 100% sure I know what our market wants
- Our core mission is completely on point
As a CEO, if you’re making assumptions like those and you’re wrong, the fallout can be extreme given your position.
A good example of this recently has been with AI based SaaS firms. Many CEOs in this space are making the assumption that they’ll be ok through this revolution because they believe they’re leading the charge, only to discover that new industries mean needing to rethink what a threat to their viability can actually look like.
If you’re going to explore some of your own assumptions, make sure you let reliable intel do the talking. If you ask your CFO if you communicate well together, that’s two perspectives and potentially some conflict of interest. Not broad enough.
Involve several people whom you trust and have the ability to offer different perspectives and play the ‘10th man approach’. Assume you’re wrong and look for the evidence, if you collectively cant find it, that’s a win.
If you discover areas of concern, you’ve revealed a potential landmine without stepping on it. If you don’t, the exercise will usually deliver a different kind of value, deepening your conviction in the original assumption and revealing new ways you can double-down on it.
For instance, if you explore the assumption that you and your CFO communicate well and it turns out you do, the exercise will help you both see new ways you can expand on the strengths you bring to the table and improve the effectiveness of your partnership.
If sales are booming and you can’t keep up, explore new ways to understand what your market needs from you. You might validate that you were on point already, but even if so, those new ways to validate your assumption will reveal fresh insights to work from that you otherwise would have missed.
The greatest threat to any organisation is always internal and in the last place anyone thought to look.
Bottom line, the more certain you are of something, the greater the value there is right now in questioning it.
Approach change #3 - Health check your own consistency
With this level of uncertainty in the mix, any perceived gaps in a CEOs integrity of late have been extremely detrimental. Be careful to keep your communication relevant and meeting the needs of whomsoever you need to listen to you. Trim out anything that fosters an unknown, however small. People can be hanging on our every word through a time of change and take it far more to heart than we realise.
When our actions play out our promises too, we become the walking example of certainty in a world of the uncertain. If your meeting’s scheduled for an hour, make it take a hour. If you say you’ll be somewhere by 3pm, be there by 3pm. The little things are not so little when people crave structure and a predictable, safe environment.
Doing this has required some CEOs to develop new tools and behaviours around managing their time but it’s having an effect. Not only are they finding a renewed sense of control over their world, the same standards are being practiced by those around them and this is creating growing pockets of certainty and confidence in teams that’s so crucial to morale and productivity.
Approach change #4 - Fit your own mask first
In this landscape, many CEOs are revisiting how they can sustainably give of themselves to others as the demands on their time and focus increase.
Most are raising the question not just to avoid burnout or keep time with family and friends on the cards, but to make sure the nature of their support stays relevant.
A prominent theme that’s presenting when exploring this has been that unless they look after #1 first, all else is going to suffer for it.
‘Fit your own mask first’ is on those airline pre-flight safety videos for a very good reason. Without a continuous supply of oxygen, we can’t sustainably help anyone, including ourselves. Exhaustion, resentment and even anger can all too easily encroach and they’re hard roads to walk back from.
Exploring this has also helped some realise that although they thought they were meeting their own needs first, they weren’t. Amidst the escalating demands on their bandwidth, they’d actually doubled down on focusing on others needs before their own, amplifying the problem.
This behaviour leads nowhere productive and is so easy to justify because on paper, it seems a benevolent approach. It’s not, it’s self-destructive.
What needed to change wasn’t for them to care less about others needs though, it was to care more for their own, to give them a greater ability to serve.
For some, that meant saying no a lot more, adjusting how they manage their time or what they value. Some of the toughest change happens internally and often required them to work with a mentor or coach. But it’s been noticeably impactful, not just for the CEO, but their team.
When they changed how they turned up, others followed-suit. Putting themselves first resourcefully and not selfishly helped others do the same and feel the same sense of certainty and control, improving work ethic and engagement.
For the CEOs themselves, the shift has regularly been a game-changer. They’ve found a renewed confidence in the future, energy reserves they never knew existed were suddenly just there and the more they recognised and met their own needs, the more they had to offer others that needed their support.
Approach change #5 - Don’t assume your support as the CEO has the value it used to
Previous success isn’t a indicator of future success, especially when the environment is changing. CEOs are increasingly noticing that their team doesn’t respond the same way to their assurances, that boards are taking their word to mean less, that investors are questioning deeper than ever.
With global changes in play, people are coming to need different approaches from CEOs. The challenge for most being that they’re very used to employing what they know historically works and are reluctant to try anything different.
Best practice on this front is to first establish if there’s even a need for you to change anything about your approach before you even consider what those changes might be.
To do that, get comprehensive feedback from your stakeholders on how they feel about you as the CEO, what the future might hold, what’s on their mind and how they feel the company is reacting to the changes in the world.
This approach has frequently opened up meaningful dialogue and many found that even small but considered changes in their leadership style have had the most drastic flow-on effects. It’s shown people they’re willing to listen and adapt to the environment in real time and as things are unfolding, people have NEEDED to see top-down adaptation that they feel helps the organisation keep up.
Summary
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for navigating these new types of changes impacting industry, but a theme CEOs are finding is that most people believe nobody can predict what’s coming or has any answers, so there’s no point trying to be the exception.
Saying “I’ve got this”, even when they’ve got substantial experience and a comprehensive strategy isn’t generating the certainty it once did, in fact, most often its having the opposite effect.
These are new waters we’re all sailing and professing confidence around the future is frequently being seen as disingenuous, not confident.
What is working is helping folks feel the certainty they need, from a different perspective.
Instead of saying “I’ll ensure this outcome and here’s how”, CEOs are demonstrating through their actions what people feel are necessary for them to achieve it. They’re adapting, starting with themselves.
They’re questioning their assumptions, developing their internal resilience. Not letting their own ego blindside them. People are viewing them as a survivor and want to join whatever wagon they’re pulling.
CEOs who aren’t doing this are losing the faith of their followers. The ones who are meeting change head on by being willing to change themselves are the only ones offering any degree of certainty in a market consumed by doubt, giving them leverage and a position of social authority unattainable by any other means.
Paul Chapman
Director – Chapman CEO Coaching PTY LTD, Melbourne, Australia
paul@chapmanceocoaching.com
Disclaimer
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