Every generation of leaders faces a turning point and 2026 is shaping up to be one of them.

After years of constant disruption, leaders are grappling with a convergence of forces: accelerating technology, rising stakeholder expectations, shifting workforce values and unpredictable geopolitical and environmental conditions.

The pace of change is outstripping traditional planning cycles and the skills that served leaders well in the past are falling short of what is needed today.

Taking on major projects and tasks has become a difficult pursuit because the backdrop is constantly in flux. How can your leaders cut through the noise and effectively plan, budget, adapt and excel in these times?

A raft of new skills are needed to increase their personal, team and organizational resilience and to ensure they’re ready to pounce on opportunities. What are they?

Business and workforce trends point to five key areas that should be on every leadership development agenda.

Building ecosystems of trust

Trust is an incredibly valuable currency for businesses and their brands. It can take years to attain and can evaporate in seconds.

Leaders must build broader and more trusting relationships with a range of stakeholders including their people, regulators, customers and communities – considering them as business partners instead of risks to manage.

For example, with rising cyber and other security risks, several banks are developing ecosystems in the form of trusted, integrated services that their customers can work within.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and disruption followed, companies that had already invested in partnership building displayed more resilience and confidence in their actions.

Gaining directional clarity

In times of uncertainty, directional clarity galvanizes people around a common purpose and motivates them to go the extra mile and achieve designated goals.

The social purpose of your business should be a strategic marker, not a flimsy throwaway statement. It helps guide the strategic and other difficult decisions that your leaders will need to make.

When Mars Petcare sought to diversify away from products by venturing into veterinary services, resetting their purpose as “a better world for pets” played a key role in galvanizing their people – and analysts credit it as being a key factor behind the success of their business transformation.

Simplifying models and messaging

Studies have shown that those companies achieving a sustained competitive advantage have a relatively short distance between upper management and the front line.

They develop simple and accessible messaging that resonates across their entire workforce structure, providing a rallying point for doing good work and delivering customer value.

It will include reference to the values, behaviors and competencies that are held in high regard because they’re intrinsic to historical and future success.

Since its first store openings in the 1950s, IKEA has been about self-assembly furniture that’s designed to hit a target selling price in stores that encourage cross-selling opportunities. A set of simple and transparent principles such as design simplicity, cost-consciousness and the desire to renew and improve are behind its sustained success.

Enhancing decision-making capability

Agility and adaptability will underpin your company’s resilience and opportunity preparedness.

However, it’s a process that pushes decision-making away from the center and towards the edge of your business – thus increasing risk, because less experienced leaders are making more important decisions.

Not only are individual critical thinking skills highly valued, building team-based critical thinking skills are becoming increasingly valued.

Leaders must be able to synthesize information, project forward using scenarios and weigh up potential impacts as a means for making well-informed, objective decisions. Otherwise, poor choices will end up cascading across your organizational structure.

Harnessing the knowledge and skills of your people without getting unduly weighed down by consensus seeking and bureaucracy is the goal.

Elevating care levels for staff

With many businesses undergoing significant change and restructuring, the impacts on staff are immense, exacerbating existing levels of overwhelm, anxiety and burnout.

People need more support, and paying attention to those needs will bolster your change and transformation initiatives.

Generative AI is a once-in-a-lifetime performance and productivity opportunity, however leaders must balance compassion with programs of change. Human input is not redundant, but its form is changing, and leading companies are reinvesting a decent portion of their AI dividends into the reshaping and retraining of their workforce.

Modern leaders must get involved in the ‘care’ process and not attempt to outsource it to the people and culture team.

Now is the ideal time to refresh or build on your leadership development agenda and unlock your leaders’ ability to push through the turning point they face – it could be the difference in making or breaking your success in 2026 and beyond.

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.