Insights from 52 Senior Leaders on Leadership Challenges in 2026
Cegos x Talent & Leadership Club | 26 Jan 2026
How do we develop leadership capability that actually works in AI-enabled, constantly changing organisations?
We asked 52 Senior Leaders to work together to answer the three biggest challenges of 2026.
Our AI model provided instant feedback: Themes, Commonalities, Blind Spots, and an Evaluation.
Here are the results.
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Discussion #1: What leadership capabilities are becoming non-negotiable as AI reshapes roles, decision-making and accountability?
1. Emerging Themes
People-first leadership
Group discussions consistently framed leadership as enabling people through empathy, trust, and clarity, rather than control or technical authority.
Mindset-led thinking
Conversations emphasised curiosity, adaptability, and humility, showing strong shared beliefs even where operational detail was left open.
Judgement over deference
Leaders repeatedly stressed the need to challenge AI outputs, signalling a shared instinct to keep human judgement central.
Values before structures
Discussions converged on principles and relationships, revealing an opportunity to translate shared values into clearer operating models.
2. Areas of Strong Alignment
Human-centred baseline
Across groups, empathy, psychological safety, and communication emerged as non-negotiable foundations for leadership in 2026.
Learning as leadership
Group dialogue strongly reinforced experimentation, openness, and comfort with uncertainty as core leadership capabilities.
Human judgement amplified
Participants broadly agreed AI raises the bar for judgement, positioning leaders as active interrogators of insight, not passive consumers.
Sense-making role
Leaders consistently saw themselves as storytellers, helping teams interpret complexity and navigate change together.
3. Variability and Growth Opportunities
From intent to practice
While many groups spoke about challenging AI, there is a clear opportunity to define shared criteria, checks, and decision rituals.
Building AI fluency
Some discussions raised AI literacy, opening space to align on what leaders need to know about limits, risks, and failure modes.
Governance made tangible
Light references to risk and governance point to an opportunity to co-design practical mechanisms like escalation paths and oversight.
Expanding the leadership lens
Topics such as data stewardship, workforce redesign, and scenario thinking surfaced unevenly, offering fertile ground for deeper collective focus.
4. Final Evaluation
Strong cultural foundation
The cohort shows high alignment on human-centred leadership, learning mindset, and the enduring importance of judgement.
Operational clarity next
Group outputs remained largely behavioural, highlighting an opportunity to complement values with concrete decision frameworks.
Moderate maturity
Readiness is strong at the cultural level, with clear headroom to mature mechanisms for accountable, safe AI-enabled work.
Key shift ahead
The biggest opportunity is moving from shared traits to explicit decision accountability—defining human boundaries, guardrails, and governance to enable confident action at scale.
Discussion #2: How can organisations evolve leadership development beyond programmes into sustained capability and performance?
1. Emerging Themes
Continuous development focus
Discussions emphasised shifting from one-off courses to embedded, ongoing leadership practice in the flow of work.
Reinforcement in context
Coaching, mentoring, peer cohorts, action learning, and nudges were repeatedly highlighted to sustain behaviour change over time.
Learning through real work
Teams valued applying skills to live challenges and daily work, showing a practical, hands-on approach to leadership growth.
Strategy and culture alignment
Leadership development was linked to business priorities, AI-enabled tools, and psychologically safe cultures to support practice and reflection.
2. Areas of Strong Alignment
Leadership beyond programmes
Groups agreed capability grows from sustained practice, not training events, highlighting embedded learning as essential.
Reinforced, real-work learning
Consistent focus on coaching, feedback loops, and peer mechanisms ensured learning occurs in context and is reinforced over time.
Outcome-driven intent
Teams broadly emphasised aligning development to strategy and performance, with measures like 360s and KPIs beyond attendance.
Normalising leadership
Shared language and routines made leadership “part of the job,” embedding capability into daily work and accountability structures.
3. Variability and Growth Opportunities
From concept to practice
Application to live, consequential work varied—an opportunity exists to formalise vehicles like strategic initiatives and role transitions.
Ownership clarity
Senior sponsorship and line manager roles were inconsistently defined, offering a chance to embed accountability and governance.
Linking to performance
Measurement intent is strong, but connecting leadership development to observable business outcomes can be strengthened.
Systemic alignment
Gaps in incentives, governance, and operating rhythms highlight opportunities to hardwire leadership behaviours across the organisation.
4. Final Evaluation
Strong embedded foundation
Cohort demonstrates practical, people-centred approaches with reinforcement, flow-of-work learning, and intent to connect to strategy.
Operational system next
Discussions focused on tools and activities; opportunity exists to build system-level mechanisms to sustain leadership capability over time.
Moderate maturity
Readiness is solid for reinforcing behaviours locally, but organisation-wide capability building is limited by systemic gaps.
Key shift ahead
Hardwire leadership into the operating system—align incentives, governance, and line ownership, anchor learning in strategic work, and link to measurable outcomes.
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Discussion #3: What practical ways exist to align leadership development with strategy, skills priorities and business outcomes?
1. Emerging Themes
Strategy-led focus
Teams consistently start from business priorities, framing leadership development as aligned to strategy, though mechanisms remain largely conceptual.
Diagnostics and frameworks
Capability models, gap assessments, and tools like 360s guide development needs before design.
Leadership sponsorship
Senior leader visibility, communication, and involvement were repeatedly cited as essential enablers of alignment.
System integration
HR processes, performance management, and goal-setting are used to embed behaviours, with measurement intent emerging but business linkage limited.
2. Areas of Strong Alignment
Strategy first
Groups agree development should derive from strategic choices and business needs, linking capability building to execution priorities.
Capability over content
Focus is on critical behaviours and capabilities, not generic training programmes, supporting role-differentiated impact.
Leadership ownership
Senior sponsorship and accountability are recognised as essential, reinforcing governance and integration with organisational incentives.
Outcome intent
Teams emphasise measuring impact over participation, signalling a shared view that development success is defined by business-relevant results.
3. Variability and Growth Opportunities
Real-work application
Few teams consistently use strategic initiatives or stretch roles as the main development vehicle—an opportunity to make learning practical and high-impact.
Sharpening priorities
Most cohorts maintain broad competency frameworks; refining to 3–5 strategy-critical capabilities could focus effort and impact.
Linking to outcomes
Business-relevant measures (execution quality, operational performance, customer results) are rarely defined, offering a clear chance for stronger attribution.
Governance and incentives
Decision rights, promotion criteria, and review rhythms are underdeveloped, presenting opportunity to embed accountability and reinforce desired behaviours.
4. Final Evaluation
Strong strategic intent
Cohort demonstrates coherent language and principle: leadership development aligns to strategy, behaviours, senior ownership, and measurable outcomes.
Operational focus next
Most activity centres on frameworks and HR processes; embedding learning in live strategic work remains underdeveloped.
Moderate maturity
Intent is clear, but prioritisation, real-work learning vehicles, outcome measures, and governance require refinement for maximum impact.
Key shift ahead
Make live strategic initiatives the default development vehicle, anchored to a small set of role-differentiated, strategy-critical capabilities with clear business outcome ownership.