Marketing leaders today are smart, experienced, and surrounded by better technology than ever. So why are so many of them struggling? That was the central question Dr. Debbie Qaqish explored in a recent episode of Revenue Marketing Raw, where she joined host Jeff Pedowitz to discuss the launch of her new venture, The Growth Factor.
Dr. Qaqish, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at The Pedowitz Group and the pioneer behind Revenue Marketing®, has spent nearly two decades observing marketing leaders up close. What she discovered is not a strategy gap or a technology gap. It is a human performance gap.
Marketing Does Not Have a Strategy Problem. It Has a Human Performance Problem.
After years of working alongside marketing executives, Dr. Qaqish noticed a pattern. Leaders with strong teams, sophisticated tech stacks, and clear mandates were still underperforming. She sat down and asked herself: why are they struggling?
The answer she arrived at: we are living in what researchers call the Age of Overwhelm. Information overload. Constant change. Always-on pressure. These are not temporary conditions. They are the permanent operating environment for modern marketers. And human beings are not physiologically built to perform at peak levels under that kind of sustained stress.
When stress triggers the body's fight-or-flight response, the amygdala takes over. Thinking narrows. Opportunities become harder to see. Decision quality drops. According to recent studies, approximately 70% of workers report stress levels that are creating genuine mental health issues. Yet almost no one is training marketers how to operate effectively inside that reality.
Introducing The Growth Factor
The Growth Factor is Dr. Qaqish's response to that gap. It is a leadership development practice built at the intersection of marketing expertise, positive psychology, and neuroscience. The mission is straightforward: help marketing leaders develop the inner skills they need to perform and thrive in high-pressure environments.
The Growth Factor offers:
- Leadership workshops and leadership labs
- Team workshops for marketing operations and broader marketing teams
- Speaking engagements
- One-on-one coaching focused on unlocking what the individual already has inside them
- Resilience: the ability to bounce back from setbacks and sustain performance over time
- Nervous system regulation: understanding and managing the physiological stress response so that clear thinking remains accessible
- Decision agility: the capacity to make sound decisions quickly under uncertainty
- Curiosity and open mindset: staying open to possibility and perspective rather than narrowing under stress
- Purpose and engagement: connecting daily work to meaningful direction, which directly affects both performance and retention
The coaching model is notable for what it is not. It is not consulting or advising. It is not telling leaders what to do. It is helping them access their own capabilities more fully. As Dr. Qaqish put it: the belief is that you already have everything you need to be successful. The work is helping you access it.
Why This Moment Is Different
Marketing has always carried pressure. But there is a meaningful difference between pressure that spikes and recedes versus pressure that is constant and compounding. Dr. Qaqish draws a sharp analogy: training a general practitioner is fundamentally different from training an emergency room doctor. The ER environment demands a different kind of mental readiness because high-stakes decisions happen in a pressure cooker, not a controlled setting.
That is the environment most marketing leaders now operate in every day. And the tools that used to help, brief periods of calm, a manageable pace of change, sufficient processing time, are no longer available. AI has not reduced the pressure. If anything, it has accelerated the rate of change and raised the expectations bar further.
The Inner Skills Marketing Leaders Need Now
Positive psychology focuses on human flourishing: understanding what enables people to perform at their best, not just recover from their worst. Applied to marketing leadership, it surfaces a specific set of capabilities that traditional training programs rarely address.
These include:
Dr. Qaqish noted that something as immediate as a three-minute breathing exercise can help reset the parasympathetic nervous system and restore cognitive access. These are not soft skills in the dismissive sense. They are the foundational operating conditions that determine whether intellectual capability gets deployed or gets blocked.
This Is Not Just for the C-Suite
While marketing executives carry a particular burden, these challenges run throughout the marketing organization. Individual contributors face constant direction changes, information overload, and a persistent sense of limited control. Dr. Qaqish has already delivered workshops to marketing operations teams on topics like finding purpose at work and maintaining an open mindset under pressure.
The practical tools work at every level. Exercises like mapping worst-case, best-case, and most-likely outcomes help employees contextualize worry and reduce the mental noise that blocks effective execution. Research consistently shows that higher individual well-being correlates with better job performance. The investment in people is also an investment in output.
A Pattern Worth Noting
In 2011, Dr. Qaqish introduced the concept of Revenue Marketing®, which helped redefine how organizations think about marketing’s role in driving business results. At the time, the idea was considered radical. Over the following decade, it became foundational.
Her view is that The Growth Factor represents a similar inflection point. The next revolution in marketing is not AI. It is human performance. Companies that invest in helping their people navigate the always-on pressure environment will see better retention, better output, and better results. Those that do not will continue to absorb the compounding costs of burnout and turnover.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Growth Factor?
The Growth Factor is a leadership development practice founded by Dr. Debbie Qaqish. It applies positive psychology and neuroscience to the specific challenges facing marketing leaders and their teams. Services include workshops, leadership labs, speaking, and one-on-one coaching.
What is positive psychology and how does it apply to marketing leadership?
Positive psychology is the scientific study of human flourishing. It examines what enables people to perform at their best, not just what causes dysfunction. Applied to marketing leadership, it provides practical tools for managing stress, building resilience, sustaining curiosity, and maintaining clear thinking in high-pressure environments.
Why are marketing leaders burning out at such high rates?
Marketing leaders operate in an always-on, high-complexity environment with sustained pressure that rarely recedes. This triggers the body’s stress response chronically, which narrows thinking, reduces decision quality, and degrades performance over time. Traditional leadership training was designed for environments with more natural recovery cycles. The current environment requires a different set of skills.
How is The Growth Factor different from other leadership coaching programs?
Most coaching programs focus on external strategies: better processes, clearer goals, stronger frameworks. The Growth Factor focuses on inner capabilities, specifically how marketing leaders regulate their stress response, maintain cognitive clarity, and sustain high performance in the conditions that actually exist. It is also built for marketing specifically, combining deep marketing expertise with positive psychology and neuroscience.
Is this program only for senior marketing leaders?
No. While Dr. Qaqish works with CMOs and VP-level leaders through coaching and leadership labs, The Growth Factor also offers team workshops for marketing operations professionals and individual contributors. The tools apply at every level of the marketing organization.
Will AI reduce pressure on marketing leaders over time?
Based on current evidence, no. AI has accelerated the pace of change, raised performance expectations, and introduced new layers of complexity. The human performance challenges marketing leaders face are likely to intensify, not ease, in the near term. The answer is not to wait for the environment to change. It is to build the skills to navigate the environment as it is.
What are the most important inner skills for marketing leaders today?
Based on Dr. Qaqish 2019's work, the highest-impact inner skills include resilience, nervous system regulation, decision agility, curiosity and open mindset, and a clear sense of purpose. These are the capabilities that determine whether a leader can bring their full intellectual capacity to work under pressure or whether that capacity gets blocked by stress.
Where can I learn more about The Growth Factor?
Visit www.growthfactor.us to learn more about Dr. Qaqish's programs, workshops, and coaching offerings.
Watch the full Revenue Marketing Raw episode with Dr. Debbie Qaqish at The Pedowitz Group. New episodes every week.