There’s a quiet crisis unfolding in organizations right now. Your managers are drowning, and the leadership training for managers you’ve invested in isn’t addressing the real problem.

I’m talking to you, Chief People Officer. You, Head of Wellbeing. You, CEO who just lost another high-potential leader to burnout. The numbers tell a story you already know in your gut: manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27% last year. Younger managers under 35 saw an even steeper decline, down five percentage points. Female managers? Seven points.

But here’s what the data doesn’t fully capture: the weight of what your managers are carrying right now.

The Leadership Load Nobody’s Talking About

Picture your typical manager in 2026. She’s overseeing nearly three times the number of employees she managed just seven years ago. He’s navigating hybrid teams across time zones while integrating AI tools that are supposed to make life easier but somehow add to the complexity. They’re the bridge between executive demands and frontline reality, absorbing pressure from both directions.

And here’s the kicker: 71% of leaders report increased stress from their roles, with 40% actively considering leaving leadership positions to protect their wellbeing. That’s not just a retention problem. That’s a leadership exodus waiting to happen.

When DDI published their Global Leadership Forecast, they found something revealing. Leaders aren’t struggling because they lack strategic vision or technical skills. They’re struggling because they’re emotionally exhausted, and no one taught them how to regulate the intensity of what they’re feeling.

The Skill We Keep Overlooking

Traditional leadership training for managers covers the usual suspects: delegation, performance management, strategic thinking. All important. But we’ve missed something fundamental.

Emotional regulation.

Not emotional suppression. Not pretending everything’s fine. Not the “professional mask” that leaves leaders drained by Wednesday. I’m talking about the ability to work with emotions skillfully, to shift their intensity without being consumed by them.

Research published in leadership journals shows that leaders who practice cognitive reappraisal (reframing how they think about emotional situations) and situation modification (changing their environment to support better emotional responses) consistently outperform those who don’t. Meanwhile, leaders who suppress their emotions? They perform worse on leadership tasks across the board.

Think about that for a moment. The very thing many leaders have been trained to do—push emotions down, power through, maintain composure at all costs—is actively undermining their effectiveness.

What Emotional Regulation Actually Looks Like

Dr. Ethan Kross, psychologist at the University of Michigan and author of “Shift,” has spent years studying how people manage their emotions in real time. His research reveals something powerful: emotions aren’t obstacles to clear thinking. They’re information. The problem isn’t the emotion itself. It’s the intensity, the duration, and our relationship with it.

What Emotional Regulation Actually Looks Like

Anxiety sharpens focus when something matters. Anger signals when our values are violated and mobilizes us to act. Even sadness serves a purpose, slowing us down so we can process and integrate difficult experiences.

These emotions evolved to help us survive. Trying to eliminate them is like removing the warning lights from your car’s dashboard because they’re annoying.

What your managers need isn’t fewer emotions. They need evidence-based tools to regulate them. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Connection as regulation: Humans are social creatures. We co-regulate emotions through relationships. When a manager spends time with a grounded colleague, those calming emotions spread. When they help a team member solve a problem, they reconnect with their own capability. Your managers need networks of wise advisors, not just venting partners.

Rituals that anchor: Simple daily practices create emotional baselines. A consistent morning routine, an evening reflection habit, small celebration moments that reinforce resilience. These aren’t luxuries. McKinsey research on leadership effectiveness emphasizes that high-performing leaders create conditions for sustained performance by protecting time for recovery and regeneration.

Environment as co-regulator: The physical workspace matters more than we think. When internal emotions feel chaotic, organizing even one drawer can restore a sense of control. Lighting, space layout, small environmental tweaks shift emotional states faster than you’d expect.

Attention as a tool: Where attention goes, emotion follows. Teaching managers to name emotions (which quiets the amygdala), practice purposeful breathing, or use grounding techniques gives them real-time control. These aren’t soft skills. They’re performance tools.

Perspective that creates distance: When overwhelmed, we collapse into the moment. Teaching leaders to zoom out (Will this matter in a year? What would I tell a colleague in this situation?) changes emotional intensity immediately.

The Business Case You Can’t Ignore

Let me give you the numbers that should matter to your CFO.

Organizations with self-aware leaders generate 41% higher shareholder returns. McKinsey found that companies with strong emotional intelligence at the leadership level achieve 2.5 times higher revenue growth compared to peers.

When you invest in developing emotional regulation as a core leadership capability, you’re not funding a feel-good initiative. You’re funding performance.

Here’s what happens when managers can’t regulate their emotions:

Trust in managers has plummeted from 46% in 2022 to 29% in 2024. Teams mirror the emotional state of their leaders. An anxious, reactive manager creates an anxious, reactive system. Decisions get clouded. Conflicts escalate. Your best people start quietly updating their LinkedIn profiles.

But when managers develop emotional regulation skills, something remarkable happens. They foster psychological safety. Team members bring problems forward earlier. Communication improves. Conflict gets resolved faster. And critically, because 70% of team engagement is determined solely by the manager, emotionally regulated leaders directly impact your retention and productivity metrics.

What This Means for Your Leadership Training

If you’re a Chief People Officer or Head of Talent, here’s what needs to change.

Stop treating emotional intelligence as a nice-to-have module in your leadership programs. McKinsey’s research predicts we’ll need 26% more social and emotional skills by 2030. Organizations that wait are already behind.

What This Means for Your Leadership Training

Build emotional regulation into your leadership competency frameworks. Not as an afterthought, but as a named capability with clear behavioral indicators. TalentSmart’s research shows emotional intelligence accounts for 58% of job performance, far outweighing IQ alone.

Create practice environments, not just workshops. Leaders need to encounter real emotional pressure in safe settings where they can try different regulation strategies and get feedback. One-day seminars don’t build new neural pathways. Repeated practice does.

Measure what matters. Track not just engagement scores but emotional regulation indicators: How quickly do conflicts get resolved? How often do team members bring concerns forward? What’s the quality of decision-making under pressure?

The Path Forward

Here’s something I’ve learned from working with thousands of leaders: they’re not failing because they lack dedication or intelligence. They’re failing because we’ve asked them to lead in unprecedented conditions without giving them the foundational skills to manage the emotional complexity that comes with it.

You can have the best strategy, the smartest people, and the most innovative products. But if your managers are emotionally dysregulated, your culture will reflect that chaos. Your teams will feel unsafe. Your best talent will leave.

The flip side? When you invest in teaching emotional regulation as a core leadership skill, you create a cascading effect. Regulated leaders build regulated teams. Psychological safety increases. Innovation follows. People stay.

This isn’t theoretical. The research is clear. The ROI is measurable. What’s missing is the will to make emotional regulation a priority in your leadership training for managers.

Your managers are carrying an enormous load right now. The question isn’t whether they’re strong enough to handle it. The question is whether you’re going to give them the tools they actually need.

Because here’s the truth: technical skills get people promoted. Emotional regulation skills determine whether they succeed once they’re there.

Start with one simple question in your next leadership team meeting: “What are we doing to help our managers regulate the emotional intensity of their roles?”

The answer to that question will tell you everything you need to know about whether your leadership development strategy is ready for 2026.

Learn more about Ashish on LinkedIn.

Access and subscribe to all of the episodes of the Flourishing Edge Podcast here.

Make Flourishing Your Competitive Edge.