Leaning Into the Top Challenges Facing Leaders in 2025
Damon D'Amore
C-Suite Advisor | Women Who Lead | Storytelling For Stakeholders | Stakeholder Communication Strategist
The beginning of each new year spurs a flood of content into our feeds ranging from annual business and trend forecasts, market analysis, risk assessments and the list goes on.? One category that I always look forward to is leadership interviews, across categories, which outline the challenges and obstacles C-Suite and senior leaders believe they will face in the coming year.?
This year is of particular interest as in addition to the usual expected volatility, ambiguity and blindspots in these forecasts, 2025 kicks off a fresh four-year cycle with new political leadership. By default this increases the number of variables and stakeholder considerations leaders must address and navigate domestically and globally.?
Traditionally there are a few recurring ‘usual suspects’ in the list of potential challenges. Recent surveys of C-Suite executives and also specifically female leaders reveal three main areas the majority of interviewees are focused on and prioritizing solving for:
Each of these issues are deep in nature with the complexities and potential solutions varying by company, sector and individual leader and require many hours of investigation and reflection to address properly. However, in a short-form environment such as this I can share high-level considerations and tools for leaders to begin addressing them effectively and efficiently.?
Navigating a Climate of Uncertainty
“The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a never-ending chain of absurdity, confusions, messy relationships, and imperfect people.” —Morgan Housel
84% percent of CEOs are “optimistic or very optimistic” about their company's performance over the next 12 months, according to the 2024 Post-Election Fortune/Deloitte CEO Pulse survey.
While optimism is soaring compared to just a few months prior (a survey of CEOs in October 2024 by The Conference Board reported only 51% of respondents held an optimistic outlook for business in their industries), the risks they face are echoed by a majority of leaders with geopolitical instability (63% of respondents) and a changing international trade and tariff policy environment (73%) topping their lists.
As with any potential crisis facing your business the top agenda item for a leader is to shift their positioning from reactive to proactive. One can take a forward-leaning stance in the following actions:
? Identify the variables that you can control. What are the inputs or levers that will determine whether a specific concern ends up being a real challenge or obstacle to your business? Which of those can you directly or indirectly affect, or at a minimum have some degree of input regarding their outcomes?
? Take control of your narrative. Risk can be mitigated by taking control of the public narrative for both your company and at times your personal brand as a leader if you are perceived by your stakeholders to be a key element of the success of your company. In a world where brands can lose control of their narratives in an instant, especially in a ‘perceived’ crisis, it is important to have a clear and consistent message that you are amplifying.
Ideally one should develop multiple contingency narratives for anticipated key events if a crisis should escalate. Coordination with your communications team, stakeholders and external advocates is critical.?
? Resource reallocation. Are there resources available that can be accessed or created through reallocation or finding efficiencies? Any valuable resources (capital, labor, equipment, etc.) that can be at-the-ready to address anticipated obstacles or business challenges can mitigate the impact of a full-blown crisis.
Thoughtful scenario planning, inclusive of input from all team members can help identify major and even not obvious resources that can be made available to a leader if requested.?
These three major actions all have high practical value in navigating environments rife with ambiguity. In times of relative calm, when resources appear plentiful and the potential for major disruptions to business or business cycles are far from top-of-mind it is wise to dedicate some time and energy to the second major area of concern for CEOs surveyed:
Mitigating the Effects of Future Crises
The aforementioned actions recommended for navigating a climate of uncertainty are also part of any viable scenario planning exercise to identify probable threats and minor issues that have the potential to grow into full blown crises. Additionally, one of the more reliable and most accessible tools at any leader’s disposal is to:
? Engage your stakeholders. Communication is key. Stakeholders can include but not be limited to the investors or shareholders of a business, its board of directors, employees, customers, vendors and partners and for leaders, their families and personal stakeholders.? Engage in conversations not for the purpose of reinforcing your own perceptions or assumptions about the business or challenges on the horizon, but what each stakeholder is perceiving and experiencing from their own position.?
Once you have a clear understanding of your stakeholders’ needs, concerns and expectations of you if a crisis does come to pass, expand the horizon of your view past those individuals. Engage with secondary stakeholders - who are the business owners, individuals, customers, entities that rely on your stakeholders to deliver consistency and confidence in the event of a crisis.?
These can range from supply-chain and logistics dependency to materials and product or service delivery in a timely and secure manner, to capital flow and other resources.? Anticipating the challenges your stakeholders may experience if you are forced into crisis-mode will only increase their confidence in your leadership and ability.?
Increased Stress Levels
According to a recent survey by Deloitte's Women at Work report, “Half of women say their stress levels have increased since last year, and despite some progress, they are still not receiving adequate mental health support in the workplace.”
Employee wellness has become a larger focus for employers across the board over the past five years, and many companies regardless of size allocate resources for employee health and engagement. While executives and leaders alike should take advantage of the services offered by their company, it is always best to take measures as an individual first and foremost.
While corporate wellness resources are structured and delivered on a timeline that may not be as immediate as an individual’s needs one should take control of those levers in their psychological and emotional wellbeing that they have ownership on and can implement quickly and efficiently.?
In a previously published article on Pragmatic Optimism [linked here], which is an excerpt from my upcoming book, I outlined a process and structure for finding emotional relief in stressful situations, eliminating a scarcity mindset, recovering and increasing energy and embracing a positive worldview:
? Accept and embrace ambiguity. Leaders thrive on control and any thoughts or fears that they may be losing that control, especially over their capacity to self-regulate their emotions and operate in a healthy, clear mindset can result in their leadership ability becoming limited at best and incapacitated at worst.
Getting comfortable knowing that you do not and cannot know all of the variables that exist when making decisions is a valuable skill in reducing stress loads and one which is developed and perfected over time and experience.?
? Identify your stressors. Being able to have an honest, vulnerable, transparent conversation with yourself is a skill in itself and necessary for any valuable reflection to result in progress. Ego, in its proper form, is an invaluable tool, leadership asset and strength. Being able to put that ego aside for unguarded contemplation is equally a valuable skill.
Once identified, address each stressor individually and critically, without emotion or bias. Determine which are wholly in your control to suppress or eliminate, which are external and who or what do you need to engage to remedy the anxiety. Some issues may be remedied with one action, some may have deeper roots and require many steps of work and external engagement.? Break those larger issues into smaller, baby steps.
Even when a solution may seem far away, each smaller action taken to reduce or eliminate that stressor is a ‘win.’ Tracking and celebrating those wins, no matter how small they may seem, builds confidence, provides a degree of emotional clarity and these individual actions compound over time as you get closer to the final stages of resolution.?
? Don’t lie to or negotiate with yourself. When under the weight of an emotional burden, being honest in your assessment of a given situation may be difficult, and the urge to sugarcoat is strong. It is common when facing hardships without an external accountability partner (peer, mentor, coach, etc.) to negotiate with yourself when feeling overwhelmed. This usually takes the form of procrastination, promising yourself you will do something uncomfortable at a later date instead of in the moment.?
However, once you develop the discipline to keep promises to yourself and value your own validation of that of others, addressing and relieving stressors becomes easier and positive results manifest faster.?
? Develop a resilient lifestyle. Most people think of resilience as a resource for a specific situation and not beyond that situation - it is not.? Resilience is not a “break in case of emergency” cure-all tool in your leadership kit.? It is a lifestyle, a mindset and frame through which you view the world and all of its opportunities and risks each and every day.?
Resilience for each individual should be data-supported. It isn’t flipping a switch and having superpowers to overcome hardships. It is knowing you are going to be alright despite any challenges because you have in your past exhibited the capacity to be resilient.
Resilience is a lifestyle that requires one to regularly and in a disciplined way:
Each of these requirements will be identified, developed and implemented differently for each individual. The important takeaway is that a fundamental shift in one’s worldview, value of self and value placed on discipline as a core value are necessary.
An individual’s capacity for resilience is directly correlated to their ability to address and relieve stress and the more resilient a person is, the greater their ability to resolve issues faster and with more clarity for emotional relief. This is reinforced in one of my favorite quotes about resilience:
“Toughness is experiencing something that is subjectively distressing, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action that aligns with your core values.” - Brad Stulberg
Take Control
“All the energy you put into things you can’t control comes at the expense of things you can control.” Shane Parrish
Whether preparing to address a potential crisis, mitigating the effects of future uncertain events on your business, entering a period of uncertainty and being forced to lead and operate in a climate of ambiguity, or gaining some modicum of control over your emotions to address and reduce the major stressors hampering your ability or handicapping you emotionally you are in control of how you perceive the world and interact with it each and every day.
The challenges facing leaders at the moment are complex and have the capacity if realized to their full potential to pose serious challenges to businesses and the broader culture dependent on thriving businesses led by individuals who inspire confidence, especially with storms brewing on the horizon.??
Possessing a realistic and pragmatic worldview in times of uncertainty, investing the time and resources to prepare for weathering any storm, and knowing what to focus on and why is not only possible for leaders to focus on, it is critical. When implemented as a complete strategy this approach delivers far better results than any alternative.
* For updates on the release of my upcoming book please visit the homepage of LegacyMentor.co to join the notification list.
[This article was commissioned for the February newlsetter of the C-Sweet sweet organization which I have been a proud supporter of for the past four years.]