Could Your Business Compete in Survivor Meets Amazing Race Meets Shark Tank? Most Managers Aren’t Prepared for This Challenge

Ever feel like you’re playing a never-ending game of Jenga, where, as a business leader trying to effectively and compassionately manage your team, you’re always scrambling to keep the tower from crashing while someone keeps pulling out blocks?

Based on conversations I’m having, today’s workplace feels like it’s all about juggling skyrocketing demands, shrinking budgets, and the pressure to innovate like you’re auditioning for Shark Tank. You know your people can’t thrive under pressure without the right support. But without proper leadership training and tools to manage stress, this is an impossible ask.

Why This Matters

Here’s the thing: When managers don’t know how to lead – and employees are drowning in stress – productivity and innovation come to a grinding halt. Poor leadership fuels disengagement, stifles innovation, and compounds workplace stress.

Instead of solving problems, people are stuck spinning in distraction, covering their posteriors, and spiraling into burnout. And guess who pays the price? Everyone. Your culture. Your results. Your bottom line.

Empowering leaders and teams with the tools to handle challenges is not optional. Now more than ever, it’s essential to stay competitive and achieve sustainable success.

If you’re serious about thriving in this chaos, you’ve got to equip your people with the skills to lead, adapt, and manage stress like Billy Napier when the Gator Nation is coming for his head.

Challenges Facing Today’s Organizations

Business today is like The Amazing Race and Survivor combined, where the challenges keep piling up and everyone’s scrambling to make it to the next round. If you’re feeling the heat, you’re not alone. As I mentioned in a post last week, I’ve been doing research and talking with some of my amazing connections here on LinkedIn. Here’s a snapshot of what I’ve been hearing:

Market Demands Are Skyrocketing Customers want everything faster, cheaper, and better. Whether it’s overnight delivery or instant support at 3 a.m., the pressure to keep up is relentless. And let’s face it, when you’re constantly putting out fires to meet these demands, there’s not much time left for innovation, training sessions, or future planning.

Adaptability and Flexibility Are the New Non-Negotiables In this environment, businesses have to pivot faster than Patrick Mahomes on game night. One minute it’s all about updating your website content regularly; the next, it’s developing cutting-edge AI algorithms to personalize content delivery. If your team isn’t equipped to shift gears without losing momentum, you’re playing catch-up while your competitors are scoring points.

Do More with Less. People are people, not machines. There’s only so much one can do with shrinking budgets and rising expectations. Employees are being asked to juggle twice as many responsibilities without dropping a ball. It’s like running a marathon and being told to sprint at mile 20, then again at mile 22, and again at mile 24. Unsurprisingly, this pace is unsustainable.

Innovate or Ride Off Into the Sunset You know this… companies that stop innovating are on the fast track to irrelevance. But innovation doesn’t happen when your people are too stressed or disengaged to think creatively. You can’t expect fresh ideas from teams stuck in survival mode.

Uncertainty Is the Only Constant Just when you think you’ve figured out the rules of the game, the board flips. Political shifts, economic turbulence, new regulations. It’s like trying to drive on a road that’s being built as you go. And every bump affects how decisions are made, from hiring to expansion plans.

The Cost of Bad Leadership

Poor leadership isn’t just a “soft skills” (or more accurately “an essential professional competencies” issue) This is a hard-hitting bottom-line problem.

Here’s a fun (I mean horrifying) stat - research shows that a single bad leader can cost a company $160,000 a year. Now, multiply that by the number of untrained managers in your organization. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you grab a calculator.

Let’s say you have 4,000 employees and 200 of them are managers. Let’s generously say five of them are not great managers – they’re not bad people, they just don’t know how to manage as well as they could. You’re looking at almost $1 million dollars lost. Just POOF! Simply because a few people haven’t been trained on how to be a leader.

And you know a bad leader doesn’t operate in a vacuum. They’re like a drop of dye in water, affecting everything around them. Their inability to align team efforts with company goals leads to disengagement, which spreads through the workplace like a bad cold. Employees check out or burn out, which means creativity takes a nosedive and productivity drops. Deadlines come and go and suddenly, those big goals you set for the year are never gonna become a reality no matter how loud you yell or how hard you push people.

Like I said, these managers aren’t bad people. They probably WANT to do a good job. But they’re underprepared. Without training, they’re essentially stumbling through the dark, hoping for the best.

Leadership isn’t an innate skill; it’s a learned one. When companies fail to invest in their managers, they’re leaving their culture, employee well-being, and profits to chance. And if you’re anything like me, that’s not a risk you feel comfortable with.

The good news? There IS a fix.

Leadership Training 101 aka Zen Leadership

Leadership IS science, but it isn’t rocket science. It’s more like people science. And again, if you’re managers haven’t been given an education in the essential skills for success (again, more commonly referred to as “soft skills”), they’re going to hurt your organization. And you’re not going to see the damage right away. In fact, you may even be misattributing the missed targets, the lack of collaboration, or the employee disengagement and/or turnover to other factors.

Step 1: Start with the Basics of Being a Good Human Before you can lead others, you’ve got to get your own house in order. Effective leaders understand how to manage themselves before they manage a team. This means developing emotional intelligence, aka the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate your emotions while empathizing with others.

Imagine a manager who doesn’t freak out when things go sideways but instead takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, let’s figure this out together.” That’s emotional intelligence in action, and it builds trust faster than a New York minute.

Step 2: Master Communication No one’s a mind reader. Great leaders know how to communicate clearly and consistently. They set expectations, give meaningful feedback and appreciation, and know how to have tough conversations without making it weird.

A huge part of being a good human leader? Listening. And not the kind where you’re just waiting for your turn to talk and defend your position. The kind where you actually hear what your team is saying and respond with empathy and action.

Step 3: Build a Culture of Collaboration For way too long, business has been based on competition, even within organizations and amongst team members. That style of leadership is now as outdated as a rotary phone. What’s working in 2024 and into 2025 is collaboration. So, leaders have to know how to 1. be vulnerable themselves and 2. create psychological safety for everyone else. This is the secret sauce for innovation and productivity. When employees feel safe to share ideas without fear of judgment, magic happens.

Step 4: Teach Stress Management and Resilience The workplace isn’t always smooth sailing. Stressful situations are going to come up. And leaders set the tone for how their teams navigate storms. Training managers to manage their stress and model resilience will be revolutionary for your organization. Because if your leader’s freaking out, the team’s going to panic.

The Bottom Line As a whole, we’re looking at an administrative change in the U.S. government, uncertainty in the global economy and supply chain, and seismic changes in workforce expectations.

Imagine your organization is thriving in the face of all of it. Because your managers know how to lead with humanity, clarity, and resilience. Are you ready to contribute to a world where great leadership is the rule, not the exception?

Lori Saitz is the CEO of Zen Rabbit, a forward-thinking company specializing in helping corporations build healthy and high-performance-focused teams and workplaces. She’s also the host of Fine is a 4-Letter Word. As an award-winning author, speaker, and broadcaster, she has been published in Business Insider and has worked with various organizations, including AARP, Insperity, Women in Technology, Infinity Broadcasting, and JK Moving Services.