What you need to do differently as a leader in 2026

We all know leadership can be challenging, especially now. You’re not alone if you feel weary at the very thought of another year of chaos and unpredictability. So amidst the ongoing economic uncertainty, political instability and industry disruption, how can you lead with grace and fortitude? Seven LBS faculty suggest areas you can focus on this year no matter how many competing demands you have, so you and your people have the best chance of success.

Lead for the “human moment”

Amy Bradley, Adjunct Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour

How many people in your team are honest about how they feel? Data we collected from 389 work teams suggest that in one in four teams is more likely to pretend everything is okay rather than sharing their true feelings – a concept we call ‘pseudo-engagement’. Furthermore, our data suggests that 56% of people at work feel unable to influence decisions that affect them. But we know that engaged teams feel that their leader cares about them, they take time to listen, and they feel their voices are heard.

In 2026, I see leadership being less about grand gestures and more about small intentional acts of connection. This is what I call leading for the “human moment”. We know that when connections between people in organisations are strong, this can increase psychological safety, collaboration and adaptation to change. In an increasingly fractured world, our need for caring connection is more important than ever. The youngest members of the workforce report the highest levels of daily loneliness, with one report stating that the top personal use of GenAI in 2025 was companionship and emotional support.

If you do one thing differently in 2026, be more intentional in finding ways to slow down and cultivate presence for those within your span of care. Give someone in your team a moment of undivided attention. Learn about their frustrations, appreciate their efforts. Supporting others’ wellbeing in this way is both emotionally reinforcing and contagious. Receivers of prosocial acts, such as positive feedback, are significantly more likely to pay similar acts forward to others at work, triggering an upward spiral of positivity and engagement.

Stop making assumptions, start getting curious

Kathleen O'Connor, Clinical Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Faculty Director, Executive Education

A very simple practice that can be a game changer is to pause on assuming that everybody sees the world as you see it and instead ask a few genuinely curious open questions. Instead of reaching for tips and tricks to get someone to do what you want them to do, focus on creating psychological safety. Work out who you're sitting across from and what their interests are.

One of the fundamentals I teach in negotiations is to stop assuming that the other party wants what you would want. Imagine that everybody is wearing a hat that says “What's in it for me?” Your task is to figure out what they're trying to get out of the conversation. Going in all guns blazing with carefully rehearsed but irrelevant arguments can sabotage your credibility, as an influencer and as a leader. If you haven’t bothered to find out what moves the other person, you aren’t really speaking to them, and that’s when the trust is lost.

Challenging your own assumptions creates room for trades to be made. Say you’re trying to buy somebody’s business. You assume it’s about the numbers. You keep throwing more money at the solution and wonder why you’re getting nowhere. Turns out, that wasn’t it. The guy is more interested in his legacy: he wants to keep his name on the business for the next 10 years. And if we care about different things, that’s interesting: there's a deal to be struck.

So in 2026, focus less on advocacy and more on enquiry. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, be willing to grow. Take all the voices from the table into account and be open to changing your own mind. If you learn to listen effectively and deeply, you’ll be able to understand what the problem really is – and then you’ll be able to solve it.

Lead wellness by example

Selin Kesebir, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour

Workplace wellness is not a passing trend, it’s a crucial initiative. Beyond the real human cost, burnout hurts the bottom line through diminished performance, absenteeism and turnover. Yet company wellness programmes often fall flat, because they are not supported by the right culture. Very few leaders understand that resilience and sustainable performance come from wellness.

Here are four ideas to align your leadership approach with the wellness outcomes you seek:

Start with yourself. To authentically champion wellness, you need to genuinely value it in your own life. This requires honest reflection: Do you believe rest makes you more effective, or do you secretly think it’s lazy and weak? Do you admire colleagues who never take a break, or do you worry about them? Leaders who haven't internalised that self-care matters inevitably signal their true beliefs through micro-behaviours and make it harder for others to prioritise wellness.

Be transparent about your work boundaries. When you visibly leave at a reasonable hour, take your full holiday, or block time for rest or exercise, you are normalising such behaviour and giving permission to everyone else.

Be transparent about your trade-offs. Wellbeing requires prioritising, and that means saying no to some things. When you decline an invitation or protect time to recharge, say so openly rather than offering a vague excuse. Telling your team, "I'm skipping this conference because I've been stretched too thin lately," is a small act of vulnerability that signals something powerful: prioritising your capacity is legitimate, not shameful.

Demonstrate recovery, not just endurance. Resilience isn't about pushing through indefinitely; it's about bouncing back after hard work. After a demanding quarter or a high-stakes launch, tell your team you are taking a few days off to decompress. Admit that the intensity took something out of you. When leaders act as though pressure never touches them, they set an impossible standard and make others feel weak for being human.

So, take good care of yourself this year and let your team see it. When leaders take care of themselves, they stop being the obstacle to everyone else doing the same.

Build the conditions for trust

Randall S Peterson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour

To not only survive but to thrive in the unpredictable world we live in now requires you to create the conditions for trust. Relationships and empathy have always been part of the equation for motivating others, but they are becoming ever more important as the world feels more chaotic and we increasingly supervise from a distance or online. To achieve this, you need your team to follow when you signal a change in direction.

People need to trust in you as a leader, and they also need to trust in the organisation or system in which you lead. What do I mean by trust? Be willing to follow through on what you say and promise. People pay special attention to what you do, and your actions count for more than your words. Your actions MUST reflect what you tell them.

Here are three quick wins for building trust with your team this year:

Start small: Ask your team for their input on a decision – and actually listen.

Show vulnerability: Admit when you don’t have all the answers. It builds credibility.

Over-communicate: Share the “why” behind your decisions to build alignment.

People need to know that you will take care of others. When they are vulnerable, do they believe you will continue to support them? How do you actually know that others trust you? Here I would channel former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who famously described the answer to that question: You will know you are a good leader when people choose to follow you out of curiosity in where you are going. They do not have to be persuaded or threatened – they will follow your new direction because they know they can trust you.

Lead when the spotlight moves elsewhere

Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

In 2026, the most critical leadership quality will be the discipline to execute your sustainability commitments when the headlines have moved on. We've entered the second act of sustainable business. The first act brought fanfare: net-zero pledges, ESG frameworks, sustainability reports. Today, with political headwinds and the term “ESG" being contested, many leaders are quietly recalibrating. This is precisely when purpose-driven strategy proves its worth.

Purpose transcends quarterly cycles and political swings. When sustainability becomes embedded in your organization's fundamental reason for existing, it gains resilience that outlasts any acronym. Consider Patagonia's decades-long commitment to environmental activism, or Interface's Mission Zero journey that reduced their carpets' carbon footprint by 74%. These companies anchored sustainability in purpose long before it was fashionable, building capabilities that now deliver competitive advantage. Forward-thinking leaders are following suit, steadily strengthening these competencies while others wait for clearer signals.

Ask yourself: what specific capabilities are you building today that will matter in five years? How does sustainability strengthen your relationship with customers who increasingly make values-based choices? The most effective leaders connect these dots explicitly, showing teams how purpose drives decisions from R&D investment to supplier selection.

The transition to aligned capitalism is already underway. Leaders who maintain strategic discipline now, who connect their sustainability actions to their organization's core purpose, who develop capabilities ahead of market recognition – these leaders are actively shaping tomorrow's competitive landscape. The work continues, regardless of external validation. That's what transforms purpose into performance.

Become comfortable with digital and data

Nicos Savva, Professor of Management Science and Operations; Academic Director, Data Science and AI Initiative

For any leader feeling overwhelmed by the AI revolution, the hit television show Ted Lasso offers the perfect allegory for 2026. Ted is a successful American-football coach – an expert in leadership and his own sport – but he’s hired to manage a British soccer team, a complex, technical game he knows nothing about. His past success becomes irrelevant. That’s the modern executive’s dilemma: the expertise that once defined a career now offers little guidance in a world transformed by AI.

So, what does Ted do? He doesn’t bluff or posture. He leads with humility and curiosity. He makes himself the student, empowering his colleagues — from Coach Beard to, most notably, Nate the “kit man” — to teach him the game’s rules, strategy, and culture. That’s the leadership model 2026 demands. The most AI-fluent, digitally native experts in any organisation aren’t in the C-suite. They are, like Nate, often the most junior colleagues.

The smartest move a leader can make is to formally embrace reverse mentoring: to seek out those younger experts and say, “I don’t understand this. Teach me. Show me how it works.” It’s an act of openness — a commitment to curiosity over certainty. Because technology will keep changing faster than any one person can master. In a world of relentless change, the greatest change for any leader is to keep learning — and still believe.

(And if you didn’t get that last line, ask ChatGPT… or a younger colleague.)

Don’t just stretch people, be there for them

Dan Cable, Professor of Organisational Behaviour

Leaders often give people work that stretches their skills. Sometimes this “stretchwork” is self-initiated by employees looking to grow. When it is initiated by leaders, it doesn’t always feel empowering or developmental to the person who is expected to do it. In fact, it can feel like a veiled way of getting people to work harder on the same pay grade, or like a necessary condition for promotion.

New activities that push employees outside their comfort zones and extend their skills in new directions can be challenging and often uncomfortable, even if learning new skills can increase employees’ performance over time. When someone works on tasks outside of their comfort zone, it can prevent complacency and make them more resilient and adaptable, as well as broadening their knowledge.

Across three studies, my coauthors and I found that employees are most likely to develop when the leaders who stretch them also are responsive to their needs, emotions, and concerns. If not, a leaders’ stretchwork may feel transactional rather than supportive. When leaders are emotionally responsive, employees feel empowered, which is what ultimately facilitates employees’ development and performance improvements.

Our results show that while employees might derive small gains in learning and performance from leader-initiated stretchwork, the real benefits only kick in when employees also feel that leaders are there for them emotionally. So when you are stretching employees outside their comfort zones at work, be sensitive to their struggles and responsive when they ask you for support.