By Emil Bjerg, journalist and editor
Everything is moving fast these days. Leadership is no exception. Here are five essential skills leaders need in 2026.
Meaningful Delegation to Avoid Burnout
Delegation is difficult for leaders, but it is one of the skills that makes the most meaningful impact for leaders – professionally and personally. Recent data from DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 shows that 71 % of leaders report significantly higher stress levels since stepping into their current role, and among those, 54 % are concerned about burnout – a pattern that directly threatens leadership capacity across organizations.
Only about 19 % of rising leaders report having strong delegation skills, a key factor in mitigating overload, meaning the majority lack the tools to prevent burnout in themselves and others. Leaders experiencing burnout are also 34 % less likely to rate their effectiveness above peers and about half as likely to be engaged in their roles, which directly impacts team performance, culture, and decision quality. As a result, 40 % of stressed leaders have seriously considered leaving their leadership positions entirely to protect their wellbeing – a potential leadership exodus that could hollow out pipelines at all levels.
That is a measurable talent risk affecting both retention, productivity, and organizational resilience which highlights the need among leaders to learn how to delegate.
Sensemaking When Everyone Is Telling a Different Story
Information overload is no longer the central challenge facing leaders. To many leaders, the real problem is conflict over what the information means.
In many organizations today, internal data paints one picture while perception among colleagues or in the public paints another. Employees experience one reality, customers another – and increasingly, algorithms and big data offer yet another interpretation entirely. By 2026, leaders will be navigating decisions where there is no single, agreed-upon truth or narrative.
Leaders often assume that more facts will produce alignment, but in reality, people “talk their way into” their own interpretations, creating divergent narratives that slow execution and fragment understanding when they go unaddressed. Sensemaking – the disciplined practice of unpacking uncertainty and co-constructing meaning – connects knowledge to action by enabling teams to recognize signals, build shared context, and decide what happens next even when clarity is incomplete. In this view, alignment does not come from simply collecting information, but from collaborative interpretation, reconciling diverse viewpoints, and shaping a narrative that teams can rally around. Leaders who can guide this process – explaining not just what they believe but why, and acknowledging areas of uncertainty – create the cognitive glue that holds organizations together amid ambiguity.
According to Forbes, leaders should have five skills related to sensemaking. The first skill is contextual clarity – the ability to explain not just what the organization is doing, but why, why now, and under what assumptions. When leaders fail to provide this context, employees inevitably construct their own explanations, often inconsistently and at odds with strategic intent.
A second skill is dialogic leadership. Alignment rarely comes from directives or polished communications alone. It is built through structured, ongoing dialogue that surfaces different interpretations across the organization – particularly between headquarters and local units. Leaders who treat conversation as a strategic tool, rather than a soft add-on, are better able to build shared understanding during periods of change.
Equally critical, Forbes details, is the ability to recognize and elevate local insight. Subsidiaries and frontline teams often detect shifts earlier than central leadership, yet political pressure or past experience can lead to “sense-censoring,” where valuable observations are withheld. Leaders must create conditions where dissenting interpretations are seen as strategic input, not resistance.
Finally, effective sensemaking requires political awareness. Organizational change always produces competing narratives, some of which accelerate transformation while others quietly undermine it. Leaders who understand the politics of meaning-making can engage these narratives early, shaping them rather than reacting after misalignment has already slowed execution.
Psychological Safety as a Leadership Skill
In today’s organizations, psychological safety has moved from a nice‑to‑have to a practical leadership requirement. Recent developments in work culture, along with Gen-Z’s entrance into the workforce, mean that psychological safety has become a practical leadership requirement.
And studies show that psychological safety is not just good for employees – it’s good for innovation and business as well.
What this means in reality is simple: people need to feel they can speak up, challenge assumptions, ask hard questions, and admit mistakes without fear of punishment. Research shows that when leaders establish this kind of environment, teams are more likely to innovate, engage, and stick around. In a global survey by Boston Consulting Group, employees reporting high psychological safety were far less likely to consider quitting – a and felt more motivated and enabled to succeed – compared with those in low‑safety environments.
Creating psychological safety isn’t about being overly nice or entirely avoiding conflict. As researchers from Harvard Business School have emphasized, it is specifically about “permission for candor” – the expectation that challenging ideas and speaking up are acceptable and expected parts of work, not threats to one’s career. This distinction matters because leaders often assume safety exists when people aren’t openly disagreeing – when in fact, silence often masks fear, not alignment.
Leaders who excel at psychological safety demonstrate specific behaviors: they solicit diverse viewpoints, respond constructively to feedback, admit their own uncertainties, and model productive conflict rather than suppress it. These behaviors aren’t soft extras – they directly influence performance, retention, and innovation. In fact, psychological safety has been linked with stronger innovation outcomes because people feel free to take risks and offer ideas they might otherwise keep to themselves.
Leaders as AI Stewards, Not Decision Replacements
By 2026, AI will be deeply embedded in core business functions – from forecasting and compliance to talent management and customer engagement. But the fundamental leadership question is no longer whether to adopt AI; it’s how leaders govern and integrate AI in ways that amplify human agency, maintain trust, and uphold ethical standards.
According to McKinsey, AI dramatically accelerates routine tasks and data processing, but it cannot replace uniquely human leadership work such as setting aspirations, navigating trade-offs, building trust, and interpreting context-responsibilities that remain distinctly human even when AI performs analytical heavy lifting. The most central aspects leaders must learn in this environment are how to exercise judgment responsibly, frame problems for meaningful impact, and cultivate the human skills – empathy, resilience, and ethical decision-making – that enable teams to act confidently on AI-driven insights. Leaders who fail to integrate AI thoughtfully, or neglect these human capabilities, risk undermining both performance and morale.
A Gartner leadership report similarly notes that successful executives are shifting from a “command and control” mindset to one of judgment orchestration – deciding where AI insight should inform a choice versus where human values, ethics, and strategic context must prevail. According to Gartner, this requires leaders to explain how they balance technological output with human judgement, ensuring decisions are defensible to stakeholders and aligned with organizational values.
Strategic Adaptability and Adaptive Leadership
As disruption accelerates across industries – driven by tech- and AI adoption and constant competitive pressure – leaders must master strategic adaptability. Adaptive leadership is not merely reactive; it is proactive and systemic – involving flexible thinking, clear communication, and an openness to evolving solutions as conditions shift.
According to Forbes, adaptive leaders view change as an opportunity for learning and growth, not a threat to be resisted, and they cultivate cultures where teams feel empowered to pivot, experiment, and innovate rather than cling to legacy processes. This involves communicating transparently about what’s known and unknown, prioritizing where to focus energy, empowering others to make decisions aligned with strategic intent, and continually scanning for new signals that affect organizational direction.
As examples, adaptive leaders communicate frequently to reduce fear and confusion, delegate authority to increase responsiveness, and remain agile enough to shift priorities based on new data and feedback – essential behaviors in an age where economic, technological, and societal changes emerge with increasing speed and complexity. Effective adaptability blends strategic clarity with operational flexibility, enabling leaders to navigate ambiguity while preserving alignment and momentum.
