A Review of Leading in 2025

What My Work with Executives Revealed

Over the past year, headlines have been dominated by a few powerful forces. Artificial intelligence moved from experimentation to expectation, requiring executives to make consequential decisions about adoption, governance, and talent without clear precedent. Many organizations renewed pressure for employees to return to the office, reopening unresolved questions about trust, productivity, and control. At the same time, persistent economic uncertainty drove aggressive cost containment, flatter organizations, and heightened scrutiny of every role and investment.

These issues consumed board agendas and executive team discussions. Yet in my work with senior leaders, the most consequential leadership challenges of the year were not the ones making headlines. They were quieter, more personal, and ultimately more determinative of whether leaders were able to lead effectively under sustained pressure.

What showed up repeatedly was not confusion about strategy, but strain in how leaders were operating inside their roles. The work of leadership had subtly shifted, and many were still relying on habits that had once served them well but now constrained their effectiveness.

From Doing the Work to Creating Capacity

One of the clearest patterns I saw was the challenge leaders faced in moving from doing the work themselves to creating the capacity for others to do it well. Many of the leaders I worked with continued to act as the point of quality control long after their role required something else. They stayed close to decisions, reviewed more work than necessary, stepped into problem solving, and absorbed responsibility that should have lived elsewhere. This was rarely about micromanagement. More often, it reflected high standards, past success, and a deep sense of responsibility for outcomes.

The cost was immediate. These leaders felt overextended, while their teams remained overly dependent. Frustration grew on both sides. Progress came not from better delegation mechanics, but from a shift in how these leaders understood their role. They began to focus less on solving problems themselves and more on building conditions for others to succeed. That meant clarifying expectations with greater precision, assigning real decision ownership, and resisting the urge to step back in when progress felt inefficient or imperfect. For many, this was identity work: letting go of leadership built on personal control to create capacity beyond themselves.

Leading Without Certainty or Permission

A second theme involved decision making at the top. Many leaders hesitated at moments that required judgment rather than analysis. Decisions slowed while more data was gathered or more alignment sought. Pushback softened. Saying no felt risky, particularly when consequences were visible or interpersonal.

What separated the leaders who moved forward was not boldness, but confidence in their own judgment. They stopped outsourcing decisions to process or perfect information and accepted a core reality of senior leadership: clarity often follows commitment, rather than preceding it. Acting with partial information, naming the reasoning behind decisions, and staying grounded when challenged became essential leadership muscles. Waiting for certainty, they realized, was itself a choice, and often the most expensive one.

Signaling Importance through Attention and Energy

The third challenge ran beneath everything else. Most of the senior leaders I worked with were still performing at a high level, but many were operating almost entirely in reaction mode. The urgent crowded out the important. Reflection felt indulgent. Thinking time disappeared. Several leaders remarked that simply talking things through with me created clarity they had been missing for months.

At the senior level, what matters most is not how much you do, but what your actions signal to others about what matters. How leaders show up sets tone, pace, and permission for others. Yet many were overly available and insufficiently intentional with their attention. Over time, this eroded clarity and presence and made leadership feel heavier than it needed to be. The shift was not about working less, but about leading differently: slowing internal pace, speaking less and later, and treating reflection and prioritization as core leadership responsibilities.

Heading Into 2026

Artificial intelligence, workplace change, and ongoing cost pressure are often framed as strategic challenges. What this past year made clear in my work is that they are also leadership accelerants. They expose how leaders exercise judgment without certainty, create capacity through others, and manage their attention under pressure. In this environment, the quiet leadership work described here is no longer optional. It is what allows senior leaders to meet the moment without being consumed by it.