The Next Horizon: Leadership Trends to Watch in 2026
Six signals shaping the future of leadership and how to prepare for what's next
By Suzie Thoraval
“You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.”
Change isn’t something we prepare for anymore — we live with it every day.
In last year’s trends for 2025 newsletter, I wrote about agility, inclusion, and resilience as the leadership qualities that help us find stability through uncertainty. Those themes still hold true, but looking ahead to 2026, the challenge has shifted focus.
The task for leaders striving to achieve adaptive stability next year is to understand how technology, governance, culture, and purpose shape one another — and how leaders can respond to them with calm awareness, connection, and foresight rather than reactivity.
Here are six trends that I think signal where leadership attention is shifting, and things we can try to stay future-fit.
1. AI and technology integration
Artificial intelligence has moved from a side project to a daily tool. The question for 2026 is how organisations can use these tools thoughtfully, responsibly and transparently.
The PwC Risk Agenda for Assurance Functions 2026 notes that AI oversight has become a priority for boards and executives. Yet many leaders still see AI as a technical challenge instead of a leadership responsibility.
For example, Walmart’s AI-enabled demand forecasting system uses machine learning to predict what products each store will need by analysing data like sales trends, holidays, and weather. This system’s accuracy only improved when local managers used their judgement and knowledge of local context to adjust what the data suggested.
This shows that human insight remains central to progress.
Ask yourself: Are your teams using technology to think better, or just to move faster?
Try this:
Ensure your organisation is developing ethical and governance frameworks for how AI is used, tested and explained.
Help your people to build confidence in reading and questioning data by building digital literacy across leadership teams so that decisions about technology reflect shared values, not just technical efficiency.
2. Geopolitical and economic volatility
Disruption now crosses borders and industries in a heartbeat. The Institute of Internal Auditors Risk in Focus 2026 Global Summary ranks geopolitical tension and digital disruption among the most significant emerging risks.
Resilience is no longer just about having a documented back-up plan. It has become about continually actively strengthening capability to adapt and recover in real situations rather than a ‘tick-box’ business continuity compliance exercise that sits in the bottom drawer.
Maersk’s Resilience Industry Report found that companies that worked with multiple suppliers, across different regions or transport routes, were able to recover faster when one supplier or route was disrupted. The trade off was that managing all those relationships made their operations more complicated and expensive.
Effective leaders are realising that running everything as efficiently as possible can make an organisation fragile. To stay secure, they sometimes need backup systems or extra suppliers — even if that costs more or slows things down.
Ask yourself: How much stability do our systems truly need, and at what price?
Try this: Use team discussions or board meetings to explore different “what if” scenarios. Ask where one failure could trigger others, and what small changes could improve resilience.
3. Workforce transformation and culture
Hybrid work is now standard, but the challenge for 2026 is creating cultures that feel cohesive across time zones and contexts.
Research shows that teams that share decisions and lead with trust adapt faster to change. When people are involved in choices, they collaborate more, build stronger trust, and stay more united around common goals.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2025 notes that organisations with clear hybrid norms and strong communication rhythms — how and when people connect — maintained higher wellbeing and performance.
Flexibility is no longer about where people work; it’s about how they relate. Strong cultures are built on clarity, trust and accountability.
Ask yourself: Does your team feel connected and informed, wherever they work?
Try this: Review how decisions are shared, feedback is exchanged, and expectations are managed. Culture health deserves the same attention as financial health.
4. Governance, oversight, and emerging risk
Boards and executive teams are being asked to see further ahead while staying grounded in what they can actually influence. The Center for Audit Quality’s Governance Outlook 2026 reports that oversight of AI ethics, cybersecurity, and culture risk is now viewed as essential to sustainable performance.
Yet there are capability gaps: many directors are still developing confidence in interpreting new forms of risk data.
The most effective boards are treating foresight as a learning process — connecting risk, strategy, and culture rather than separating them into distinct conversations. Awareness and adaptability are becoming key measures of governance maturity.
Ask yourself: How do we build oversight that informs rather than overwhelms?
Try this: Create space on agendas for forward-looking sessions that explore emerging risks and their interconnections. Use these sessions to explore possibilities by combining technical expertise with diverse thinking to build foresight capacity.
5. Purpose, trust, and social impact
Trust has become one of the most valuable measures of leadership.
The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 found that people want consistency between what organisations say and what they do. People are starting to lose patience with talk about purpose that isn’t backed by action
LEGO’s approach is a good example — its investment in circular materials and education programs reflects its purpose of helping children learn through play.
Purpose doesn’t have to mean taking a stand on every issue; it means being clear about your values and living them out in decisions big and small.
Ask yourself: Does your organisation’s purpose guide real decisions and choices, or just sit on a page?
Try this:
Revisit purpose statements and test them against real-world initiatives you are working on. If it doesn’t decide what needs to change.
Embed purpose metrics alongside financial and operational ones.
6. Adaptive systems thinking
The most effective leaders think about connections, not silos. They understand how decisions in one area influence outcomes in another — how culture influences innovation, how innovation shapes risk, and risk informs strategy and purpose.
A systems mindset has become the meta-skill of modern leadership.
During the UK National Health Service’s digital coordination program, cross-functional teams improved emergency responsiveness by viewing the entire patient journey as one interconnected system rather than a sequence of steps. The shared accountability and a broader perspective reduced delays and improved coordination.
Ask yourself: Are our leadership structures built for collaboration or fragmentation?
Try this: Bring different teams together to discuss shared challenges, insights and foresight. Seeing the system together builds alignment and speed.
Bringing it all together
If 2025 was about finding steadiness in a changing world, 2026, is about seeing the full picture - how technology, culture, risk and purpose are not separate domains but rather, they interact together in a system.
Leaders who notice these patterns, stay open to learning and lead from calm awareness will create teams and resilient organisations that adapt and grow stronger through uncertainty.
Leadership in 2026 will reward those who stay curious, connected and grounded — qualities that turn constant change into calm insight creating steady progress.
How can you connect your people, systems and decisions more intentionally this year?
