Escaping The Survival Mode That Sabotages Leadership

In a leadership landscape that rewards speed, availability, and the appearance of effortless control, Tracey Grove is making a different argument—and it starts with a predator that no longer has teeth.

An executive coach, leadership consultant, and author of Taming the Sabertooth: Resilient Leadership in a Stressful World, Grove has built her practice around a single unsettling insight: the strategies that helped leaders climb are often the same ones quietly dismantling them at the top. She isn't interested in inspiration. She's interested in biology, behavior, and the hard work of changing both.

"Today's sabertooth doesn't bother with fangs," Grove says. "It shows up as one more meeting crammed into a calendar that's already gasping for air, the tough conversation you've been artfully dodging, the high-stakes presentation that spikes your heart rate, or the reorg announcement that lands like a punch to the gut."

For most leaders, she explains, the modern predator is anything that threatens identity, credibility, or control. The danger is psychological—but the brain hasn't gotten the memo. "It still fires the same ancient survival circuitry designed to keep us alive on the savannah. Our biology is running a 200,000-year-old operating system in a world that is moving at digital speed."

That mismatch between ancient wiring and modern demands explains, Grove says, why so many talented leaders default to behaviors that feel productive but function more like camouflage. Overpreparing as if studying for a pop quiz no one assigned. Controlling every detail as if the universe might fall apart without supervision. Staying silent to dodge conflict. Packing a calendar so tightly it needs its own oxygen mask. "These habits feel safe because, at some point, they have worked," she says. "So, leaders cling to them, even when those same habits quietly block the growth, courage, and clarity they're craving."

One of Grove's more counterintuitive claims is that stress itself isn't the enemy. Productive stress—the activation that sharpens focus, fuels creativity, and signals that work matters—is necessary for strong performance. The trouble begins when the activation never shuts off. "When the body stays in survival mode long after the 'threat' has passed, stress stops being a catalyst and becomes corrosive," she says. "That's when we see the quiet erosion of judgment, patience, health, and ultimately, our ability to function at an optimal level."

What makes that erosion particularly insidious is that leaders often set it in motion themselves—without meaning to. Moving too fast for others to keep up, responding to everything with urgency, rewarding "always on" availability, making last-minute pivots that send teams scrambling. Even well-intentioned habits like jumping in to fix problems or celebrating heroic effort over healthy effort can quietly signal to a team that constant pressure is the norm. "These behaviors can become contagious," Grove warns. "The team starts bracing instead of thinking, reacting instead of collaborating, and surviving instead of performing."

That word—reacting—points to one of the most important distinctions in Grove's work. "Reacting is what happens when the amygdala grabs the wheel and floors it," she says. "It's fast, automatic, and powered by ancient survival wiring—the kind that was great for outrunning predators, but is terrible for navigating a tense meeting.

Reacting feels productive in the moment, but it usually leaves behind more noise, more stress, and a mess you'll have to clean up later." Responding, by contrast, requires a pause—the breath that lets the nervous system settle so leaders can see what's actually happening, rather than what their biology thinks is happening. "Responding is choosing a behavior that reflects your values instead of your fear. The pause between the stressor and the response creates room for judgment, empathy, and strategic thinking."

That same capacity for pause is what makes psychological safety possible. And Grove is direct about where it comes from—and where it doesn't. "Psychological safety isn't created by what leaders say. It's created by how they show up when things become uncomfortable." The behaviors that build it are deceptively simple: listening without rushing to fix, asking real questions instead of fishing for the answer you want, admitting when you don't know, and responding to bad news with clarity rather than punishment. When those conditions exist, something shifts: "Teams stop bracing for the reaction and start contributing to the solution. That's when real dialogue—and real innovation—finally happens."

Then there’s the question of the hero—the well-meaning leader who steps in, takes over, and quietly teaches the team that they can't be trusted to figure things out. "Most leaders step in with the best of intentions. They want to protect their teams, and keep things moving," Grove says. "But there's a fine line between supporting your team and unintentionally weakening them. The difference usually comes down to who's holding the discomfort. If you're stepping in because the work truly requires your expertise, that's support. If you're stepping in because watching someone struggle makes you uncomfortable, that's hero leading."

Support, she says, looks different: "asking good questions, offering guardrails instead of solutions, and letting people stretch without letting them drown. That's when teams grow stronger instead of more dependent."

For many leaders, the path to that kind of steadiness runs through a concept Grove calls white-space time: unscheduled, undirected, unproductive-on-purpose time. It may sound indulgent, but Grove would argue it's survival. "If you don't create space, your biology will eventually force it—through exhaustion, reactivity, or burnout." For leaders whose calendars look like a video game gone haywire, the prescription is blunt: block ten minutes between meetings and treat it as sacred, schedule thinking time the way you'd schedule a board presentation, say no to one more "quick sync" to protect an uninterrupted hour to breathe and reset. "White space time sounds luxurious," she says, "until you realize it's survival."

All of it—the habits, the cultures, the calendars, the pauses—ultimately circles back to resilience. Not the white-knuckle variety most leaders carry as a badge of honor. "Gritting your teeth and white-knuckling your way through challenges is endurance, not resilience. Endurance has its place—like dental appointments and airport security lines—but it's not a sustainable leadership strategy."

Real resilience, in Grove's telling, is quieter: taking one intentional breath before firing off the email you'll regret, asking for clarity instead of letting your brain write its own dramatic screenplay, setting boundaries that protect your energy so you can stay effective over the long haul. "It's less about being tough and more about being able to reset, recalibrate, and rise without losing yourself in the process."

In a world that has long celebrated the relentless, the always-available, and the heroically self-sacrificing leader, Grove's message is almost subversive in its simplicity: the most powerful thing a leader can do is pause.

In a business world obsessed with speed, urgency, and constant availability, Grove's message offers a different path. The greatest leadership advantage may not come from working harder or moving faster. It may come from recognizing that the sabertooth is rarely real—and that the simple act of pausing can be the difference between just surviving and truly leading.