Five Shifts That Continued Through 2025 and Matter Even More in 2026
Five Shifts That Continued Through 2025 and Matter Even More in 2026
A New Year’s Eve Reflection on Leadership, Goal Setting, and Human Performance
2025 was a good year. It was also a hard one. It moved fast. Not chaotic, just fast. Faster than many leaders could comfortably keep up with. The pace itself was not new, but it was felt more consistently. Leadership did not necessarily feel heavier, but it did feel more complex and more challenging to hold well.
At times, it may have seemed like this intensity was specific to a particular organization, industry, or role. Yet across conversations and contexts, similar dynamics kept surfacing. The speed, pressure, and competing demands were not isolated. They reflected broader, shared conditions shaping leadership work right now.
Leadership has been evolving alongside the Industrial Revolution 4.0 shift that began in the early 2010s. I began writing about leadership evolution in 2018, developing language and frameworks for changes that were already well underway. In 2020, COVID accelerated that shift. What some experienced as disruption was really acceleration. The change was already happening, but COVID became a season when many more leaders were forced to engage it directly.
In 2025, with five years of distance from COVID, the leadership dynamics of this year stood on their own. They were no longer explainable as situational or temporary. The patterns showing up reflected broader, ongoing shifts consistent with Industrial Revolution 4.0, with leadership continuing to evolve inside that reality rather than moving past it.
What I refer to as Leadership 4.0 and Leadership 5.0 does not introduce new ideas. Empathy, compassion, agility, simplicity, and people development are familiar concepts. What has changed is the degree to which these capacities are required and integrated at the same time. They are becoming more pronounced and more demanding of attention and mastery, while results are still expected. This past year, 2025, that squeeze was even more evident. Not because leaders were failing, but because the environment continue to ask more of leadership on multiple levels at once.
Here are five shifts to consider as you reflect on 2025 and plan for and navigate them in 2026:
Shift 1: SIMPLICITY – Simplicity Became Necessary to Keep Moving
For many leaders, 2025 carried continued and compounding complexity. Not necessarily chaos, and not for everyone, but layers kept adding. More inputs. More stakeholders. More tools. More decisions. The work itself often was clear yet holding all of it at once absorbed capacity. There was often a desire to move faster and with greater clarity, while simultaneously feeling weighed down. Not because leaders were doing something wrong, but because environments and expectations continued to expand. The accumulation stretched attention and energy, making it harder to move at the pace the moment seemed to require. The mountain analogy applies here. As the climb becomes steeper, the backpack needs to get lighter. Not because standards change (the skill must increase), AND the load must lighten because carrying everything creates fatigue and sabotage success. In this context, simplicity showed up less as a preference and more as a practical response to the terrain we are now were navigating.
In 2025, some things you may have noticed:
✓ Feeling stretched with increasing priorities that were none comprisable
✓ Systems and processes that once helped now competing or not quite working or falling apart
✓ Teams working hard but not getting momentum or accidentally working against each other
✓ A sense of wanting to move faster but being bogged down by everything needed
As leaders look toward 2026, things to consider:
☐ Letting go of what no longer helps with traction and simplifying systems
☐ Clarifying what can be simplified
☐ Creating space by reducing complexity rather than adding effort
Reflection: What can you simplifying in your own systems and in the processes and work flow for others (team, business, etc.)?
Shift 2: COHERENCE – Greater Alignment Is Essential to Move with Shared Mindset and Direction
Teams and leaders desired to move in the same direction however competing priorities and pressures pulled in different directions at the same time. Shifting demands made shared focus harder to maintain. Take for example hiring... it was challenging to find a job but also challenging to hire great workers. It felt like it was not a job seeker or hiring market. Take performance as another example... solid results are essential but the ability to drive them is harder to sustain. It often felt like two canoes pulling in opposite directions, making success more challenging. Coherence became less about having a strategy and more about maintaining shared understanding. Shared language. Shared priorities. Shared expectations. Without that, energy scattered even when effort remained high. There is more happening in the “white space” and the art if seeing the invisible and adapting to it because essential. This is why this is an energy shift. Coherence is the ability to take what is and the energy between that and stay in alignment. It is about sensing and adapting by staying in sync and synergy with one another, mission and purpose.
In 2025, some things you may have noticed:
✓ Teams working hard but not always in sync
✓ Misalignment showing up as friction rather than conflict
✓ Increased effort required just to maintain direction
✓ Repeated clarification needed to keep momentum
As leaders look toward 2026, things to consider:
☐ Reinforcing shared priorities more intentionally
☐ Strengthening common language and expectations
☐ Checking alignment before speeding up execution
Reflection: Where do you sense coherence vs where is there friction? What alignment is needed to create coherence in the white space (it is the feel of the invisible that happens between the lines)?
Shift 3: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – Expanded Leadership Maturity Is Required to Discern, Decide, and Develop People at Speed
As pace increased, so did the cost of leadership gaps. In 2025, speed amplified everything. Decisions landed faster. Consequences surfaced sooner. People dynamics escalated more quickly. What once could be absorbed over time now requires earlier attention. This continues to put a greater demand on emotional intelligence and leadership maturity. Not as a soft skill, but as a stabilizing force. Discernment, judgment, self-awareness, and the ability to read situations well became essential to leading effectively at speed. Leading well in this environment required more than decisiveness. It required understanding people, sensing undercurrents, and responding in ways that reduced reactivity rather than added to it.
In 2025, some things you may have noticed:
✓ Faster escalation of people issues when left unaddressed
✓ Decisions needing both speed and nuance
✓ Less tolerance for weak performance and greater leadership accountability for performance gaps
✓ Greater pressure from the gaps
As leaders look toward 2026, things to consider:
☐ Continuing to develop emotional intelligence alongside execution
☐ Strengthening discernment in decision-making
☐ Investing in maturity that supports both results and people
Reflection: What level of emotional intelligence and leadership maturity is now required to lead well in your environment?
Shift 4: ACCOUNTABILITY WITH COMPASSION – Driving Results While Developing People with Human Regard
One of the clearest tensions in 2025 was the simultaneous demand for stronger results and greater humanity. Performance expectations remained high. Accountability mattered. At the same time, people were carrying more. Health sensitivities, family demands, emotional fatigue, and long-term stress continued to shape how work was experienced. This was not a contradiction. It was the context. Accountability without compassion fractured trust. Compassion without accountability eroded momentum. Leaders were asked to hold both at once, with less margin for missteps. This will continue to increase and be a catch 22 or ying/yang that both need to be held masterfully and intentionally.
In 2025, some things you may have noticed:
✓ Strong reactions to how accountability was delivered or lacking
✓ Less tolerance for unclear expectations (or great frustrations when expectations were unclear)
✓ Greater impact from leadership tone and follow-through
✓ Trust eroding when either side was missed
As leaders look toward 2026, things to consider:
☐ Holding clearer expectations with steadier presence
☐ Practicing accountability that strengthens trust
☐ Developing people rather than managing around issues
Reflection: How are you holding accountability in ways that support both results and human regard?
Shift 5: ATTUNEMENT & INTEGRATION – Staying Proactive, Strategically Grounded, and Planned While Increasing Dynamic Agility and Awareness
Finally, 2025 surfaced growing fatigue around traditional planning. Not cynicism. Not disengagement. Simply exhaustion. Plans often felt heavy in an environment that continued to shift. It could feel like it didn’t matter if things were just going to change, yet without the planning it feed the unhealthy and toxic reactionary erosion of performance. Operating purely in reaction mode created instability. Planning and reacting began to feel similar when plans could not adapt, even though they are not the same. What is continuing to evolve is a greater need for attunement (awareness) and integration (swift application and adjustment). Awareness of what is changing. Integration of strategy, systems, and daily decisions. Planning that supports adaptability rather than rigidity.
In 2025, some things you may have noticed:
✓ Planning cycles feeling quickly outdated
✓ Reaction masquerading as agility
✓ A desire for steadiness without rigidity
✓ Fatigue from constantly recalibrating
As leaders look toward 2026, things to consider:
☐ Planning in ways that allow for adaptation (regular sync points and checks and balance that are simple and quick)
☐ Staying grounded in goal, focus and priorities while remaining aware, sensing and in touch vs vibe / energy
☐ Integrating strategy with real-time decision-making (hold strategy loosely while being nimble in integration)
Reflection: How and what do you need to be in greater attunement with and how can you integrate more consistently and quickly to allow movement in a more constant changing environment?
Closing Reflection
As we close out 2025, it is a good opportunity to reflect on what was good, what was not, and what was learned. It is also important to assess what is changing and where adaptation is needed. 2026 is a new year within an ongoing season of change and evolution. Leadership continues to require stronger results, higher emotional intelligence and accountability, simpler systems to move faster, greater maturity in judgment and people development, and planning that supports adaptation rather than reaction.
Reflecting on 2025:
• What did 2025 require of you as a leader that would not have been required even a few years ago?
• Where did leadership feel faster or more demanding, and what did that reveal about your environment?
• What patterns around results, people, and pace are important to carry forward?
Planning for 2026:
• What needs to be simplified to move faster and make better decisions?
• What level of emotional intelligence, judgment, and accountability will be required to lead well?
• How can planning support adaptability, clarity, and sustainability rather than reaction or exhaustion?
This kind of reflection is not about setting bigger goals or doing more. It is about orienting yourself well in the environment you are leading in.
If it is helpful, my Performance Planner was designed to support this kind of reflection and forward planning, beginning with clarity and identity, then shaping habits, systems, and outcomes in a way that fits the realities leaders are navigating today.
Get the planner here: https://www.synergystrategies.com/performance-planner-reflect-focus-achieve/
Sometimes the most valuable work is a clear and honest assessment of what is being asking of us now and intentionally designing what we will do and develop next.
While things are changing quickly, planning still matters. Take a day or an hour every day for the next week and work through the planner to give yourself a solid foundation to launch into 2026!
Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2026 together!
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