The CEO Squeeze (2025 Remix)

When I first wrote about The CEO Squeeze in 2022, leaders were navigating a post-pandemic, post-Brexit world. Supply chains were shaky, employees were rethinking their relationship with work, and the so-called “Great Resignation” was front-page news.

Fast forward to 2025, and the squeeze has not gone away. It has simply evolved.

CEOs today are caught in a vice between growth expectations, cultural fatigue, and the sheer human cost of sustained pressure. HR directors feel it too, often carrying the cultural weight of these tensions while still being asked to deliver results at speed.

The most dangerous part is not the long hours or even the constant change. It is the lack of space to think. Under that pressure, decision quality declines. And when decision quality slips, everything else is at risk.

What is squeezing leaders now?

• Investor impatience vs. sustainable growth: Boards want faster returns, but CEOs know resilience, not recklessness, will secure the future.

• Hybrid fatigue: The early enthusiasm for flexible work has settled into frustration, with fractured teams, culture dilution, and leaders caught in endless debates about “how we work.”

• Talent pipeline gaps: Succession issues are mounting. Many leadership benches are thin, with capability gaps widening at middle management.

• Economic pressure: Inflation may have steadied, but cost pressures and cautious spending are making bold moves feel riskier than ever.

• Tech disruption: CEOs are under pressure to embrace AI and digital transformation while also dealing with the cultural fallout of jobs, skills, and trust.

• Personal resilience: Executive burnout is no longer whispered about. It is front and centre. Deloitte’s 2024 survey found over 70% of leaders were prioritising personal equilibrium over career advancement.

And at the centre of it all? Everyone is still looking at the CEO for answers.

Three faces of the squeeze

Take Sarah, a construction CEO. Hybrid fatigue is eroding team cohesion, and a young leadership team are fraying at the edges under several years of uncertainty and pressure. Decision-making has slowed, and they seem to be spinning their wheels rather than getting anything done.

Or Matthew, navigating a merger. Aligning two very different sets of employees, with conflicting dynamics and values, feels like managing cultural translation on top of forging on with a growth strategy. He has also got investors to keep happy, and very experienced NEDs all with a contra-opinion.

Or Johnny, six months into a new CEO role. Professionally, he is tasked with transformation. Personally, he is balancing divorce fallout, teenagers in crisis, and elderly parents. The squeeze is not just commercial. It is human.

The quiet crisis

Here is the paradox. Leaders are expected to be the steady hand, the source of clarity, the role model for balance, while often running on empty themselves.

Arianna Huffington once said: “What we need from leaders isn’t powering through exhaustion, but wisdom and judgement. The first things to be depleted when we are running on empty.” That feels truer than ever.

Because the squeeze is not really about workload. It is about decision quality under pressure, and that requires clarity, alignment, and headspace.

Three ways to loosen the vice

1. Reset your communication When you are under pressure, empathy is usually the first casualty. And yet, how you say something matters more than ever. Check your own style first. Do you know what it is like to be on the other side of you? Are your boardroom conversations fuelling clarity or breeding tension? Small shifts in awareness can have a huge impact on trust and execution.

2. Align your leadership bench Strategy will fail if your senior leadership team is not aligned. After years of turbulence, many organisations have not revisited their mission, vision, and values in years. Do they still resonate? Do your team leaders actually share the same definition of success? Re-establishing alignment is not a “nice to have.” It is the only way to stop every decision flowing back up to the CEO.

3. Find your safe space The loneliest role in the business is still the top job. You need somewhere you can admit uncertainty without eroding confidence. That might be a trusted peer, a NED, or an executive coach (I know a good one....). Without that sounding board, pressure builds silently until something breaks.

Something has to give

The CEO squeeze is not going away. If anything, it is intensifying. But what gives does not have to be you.

For CEOs and HR directors alike, the opportunity is to stop carrying the weight alone and start building the conditions that make leadership sustainable. Clarity. Alignment. Safe spaces.

Because at the end of the day, it is not about being the leader with all the answers. It is about creating a leadership culture resilient enough to find them together.

Next step: find your starting point

If you have read this and thought, that is me, do not carry it alone.

Start by understanding what it is like to be on the other side of you. The Five Voices framework is different from many of the “one and done” assessments you may have seen. It is not just about a personality label. It is a foundation that works for individuals, teams, and decision-making at scale.

You can take the free Five Voices assessment here.

It is a simple first step, but it creates the clarity to start realigning your leadership, strengthening your bench, and finding the headspace you need.

We help scaling businesses fix the people stuff that is slowing them down: culture, communication, leadership, team dynamics. If you are feeling the squeeze, let’s talk.

We are Meraki People. Scaling what matters. Building leadership cultures that last.