Full Colour Friday: 2026: What’s changing in leadership and how to keep up

Jan 9, 2026 | D&I

In 2026, many senior leaders are discovering that what they learned as they rose up the leadership ladder is no longer enough to lead successfully in today’s world.

Whatever your sector – non-profit, financial, tech, public, private health etc – the leadership challenges look strikingly similar, even if the contexts differ.

  • The pace of change has accelerated
  • Expectations of leaders have grown in breadth and complexity
  • Financial and workload pressures mean the margin for error has narrowed

Here are three leadership issues that should be on your to do list in 2026.

1. AI is a leadership issue, not a technology one

AI is now embedded in decision-making, workforce planning and service delivery in many organisations. However:

  • Some leaders see AI as a route to downsizing their teams without fully understanding the implications.
  • Colleagues are using AI to make life easier but not always checking the accuracy or appropriateness of what comes out of the model they are using.

The real risk isn’t lack of adoption — it’s poor governance. It’s leaders making decisions without fully understand the implications or even knowing what questions to ask.

Solutions

  • If you are a leader, skill up. There is help out there and investing time and money in learning about AI will save you by ensuring you avoid costly mistakes.
  • Establish protocols on how and when colleagues can use AI and what your expectations are on checking accuracy and appropriateness.
  • Talk to other leaders about what they are doing. See if there is anything you can borrow.

2. Burnout is a strategic risk

Earlier this week (5 January 2026) the TUC shared HSE stats that showed:

22 million working days were lost due to stress in 2024/2025.

  • High-performing leaders are exhausted
  • Teams are stretched
  • People cannot see their way out of the constant cycle of overwhelm

Psychological safety and empathy are no longer “nice to have” — they directly affect results, retention and reputation. Yet most leaders I talk to do not have the practical skills and tools to create psychological safety.

Solutions

  • Get ruthless in prioritisation. Every planning cycle, most leaders talk about the need to prioritise. However, often it is teams themselves who are reluctant to let to of cherished areas of work despite complaining of overwhelm. This is the time for leaders to step up, risk unpopularity and cut things out of work plans that are not serving your organisation enough. As long as you explain your decisions, in time colleagues will see the benefits and thank you. (See below for a link to Full Colour’s prioritisation tool.)
  • Learn how to create psychological safety. Rocking up to a meeting and declaring it a “safe space” does not work. There are numerous skills and techniques to create sustained psychological safety. If you can’t point to specific things you do to create psychological safety, it’s time to learn… (Get in touch if you don’t know where to start. See below).

3. Culture and trust are competitive advantages

Trust in leaders and institutions is fragile.

I have never known a time when colleagues are more willing to openly talk about lack of trust in their leaders.

This leads to real blocks to organisational success that become hard baked into workplace culture.

  • People subvert official power structures leading to tensions between teams and the personal power of individual leaders driving decisions more than evidence.
  • Only loud voices are heard, when solutions may rest with quieter voices.
  • People wrap themselves in processes as a substitute for trust. Result? Innovation crushed and organisations’ ability to respond to external and internal pressures diminished.

Solutions

  • Take active charge of the culture you want to create, don’t just let it emerge
  • Prioritise one key issue that regularly emerges from your employee engagement data and take visible, substantial action to address it. Showing progress on a regular gripe will build trust.
  • Find ways to be more visible as a leader with those you don’t normally engage with. If they see you more, they are more likely to trust you.
  • If possible, widen your range of relationships across the organisation so more people have first hand experience of who you are. They will become your biggest champions and will have more impact on others’ willingness to trust you than anything you can directly say or do.

How Full Colour can help

Wishing you a happy and successful 2026.