How Economic Uncertainty is Sapping Executives’ Confidence

Critics of President Donald Trump’s trade war, mass deportations, and other contested policies have repeatedly warned the measures risked provoking renewed inflation, economic contraction, and mass job losses. While most of those dire predictions have —thankfully — not yet come to pass, U.S. executives are increasingly anxious about their companies and professional futures amid continued uncertainty all the same.

Three different studies reflect growing concern among top managers about their personal and professional stakes in today’s uncertain business and economic environment. The broadest of those studies in scope was consultancy Deloitte’s latest quarterly poll of chief financial officers (CFO). While it found that the general confidence level of respondents rose slightly in September compared to earlier this year, it noted its 5.7-point reading “remains in medium territory… (and) is well below the 6.4 mark registered at the beginning of the year.” Other results included only 65 percent of participants saying the current economic situation is not safe to take risks in, and just 15 percent described the economy itself as “good.” 

Among the top threats to business cited by participating executives were inflation, high interest rates, faltering economic growth, and supply chain disruptions from tariffs. But even if those didn’t prevent the confidence index of CFOs creeping up a little in Deloitte’s survey, even that mediocre outlook appeared strong compared to those captured by consultancy Korn Ferry in its recent poll of CEOs and board members.

Its polling found 63 percent of top company officials said risks to their businesses had increased more rapidly over the past year. Meanwhile, just 11 percent of respondents said they felt fully confident about their organization’s ability to successfully navigate those multiplying challenges. The leading worries voiced by participants were minimal early returns on artificial intelligence investments, a shortage of qualified candidates to fill job openings, and internal resistance by existing staff to policy or cultural change.

Another concern, focused on an aspect of the increased economic volatility observed since Trump came to office, was executives’ recognition that those risks are spread unevenly across various business sectors. Around 86 percent of leaders of consumer businesses said that growing unpredictability was a major concern, topping all other categories. Second most exposed to the rising uncertainty were industrial companies, with 83 percent calling it a big problem.

“Many leaders are challenged to navigate so many forces simultaneously,” said Tierney Remick, head of Korn Ferry Services. “We’re seeing uneasiness — especially among long-tenured CEOs who have weathered decades of change but now face a convergence of risks unlike anything before.”

A third survey, by workforce management platform Kahoot!, found uncertainty rising on a more personal level among the 221 human relations and training professionals polled. It found most responding managers feeling the same disengagement also reported by growing numbers of employees across U.S. workplaces over the past year.

Nearly 80 percent of participating C-suite executives said that while their teams appear to view them as “fully engaged” in their work, only 47 percent said they actually were all-in and energized on the job. Over a third of respondents reported feeling burned out daily or several times during the week, with 22 percent saying they’ve often or always felt disconnected from teams they work with over the past six months.

That psychological and emotional disconnect has consequences on two important levels.

First, it led 46 percent of participating managers to say they’d be willing to give up their executive titles if that would allow them to feel engaged again. Another 26 percent confided that they’d considered quitting in the past year in order to stop feeling so adrift on the job.

Meanwhile, with recent Gallup data showing only 31 percent of all employees saying they felt engaged at work, the risk of already slackening workplace energy and enthusiasm waning even more increases further as more managers overseeing staff similarly withdraw.

But Kahoot! CEO Eilert Hanoa noted that as troubling as that development among top managers is, there are ways for companies to remedy the problem.

“If leaders are ready to trade away their title for the chance to feel engaged, it signals something profound,” said Hanoa in comments about the findings. “Leaders are telling us loud and clear that recognition, training and connection matter more than status. Engagement cannot be a side project. If engagement fails at the top, it fails everywhere. The companies that respond will not only retain their leaders but unlock the energy of entire teams.”

How do businesses effectively react? By showing executives the same attention, consideration, and support that lower-level employees say they need.

When asked what would boost their engagement most, 69 percent of executives answering the survey cited more recognition and incentives from their companies, followed by 57 percent who said greater connection between teams would help. Nearly 45 percent said simply introducing more competition or gamification exercises at work would be beneficial — with 58 percent predicting that initiative alone would would result in increased energy, creativity, and fun on the job.

Over half of respondents also getting more training to build their skills would strengthen their engagement. That’s a desire that a nearly 80 percent of lower-level employees have increasingly expressed, especially Gen Zers who place a premium on professional and personal growth.

Meaning, there are many relatively easy ways employers can start addressing and reversing declining workforce engagement — awaiting the return of improved macroeconomic conditions capable of curing the broader doubts many companies now face at all levels of staff hierarchy amid today’s uncertainty.