Encore: The 2026 Executive

Leadership Sabotaging Leadership: An Ounce of Prevention

There are plenty of stories on how leadership can sabotage its own leaders. Some of these stories revolve around newly hired leaders who are having difficulty achieving credibility and influence with their new managers, and how a company’s senior execs or owners can make things worse and prompt unnecessary failures. Here is one such story involving yours truly where unintended sabotage will likely be prevented.

Blind Leaders; Their Self-Defeating Habits

Blind leaders can create cultures that drive out top performers through bad attitudes and practices, and self-defeating defense mechanisms. They too often compromise trust which is the core factor in engaging people and enabling their talents to flourish and synergize. Blind leaders too often lack the core principles of integrity, accountability and servant leadership we discussed during our last episode.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Managers in the Middle

You’re a middle-manager reporting to a senior exec or perhaps a Director. You have four direct reports and several indirect reporting people. And you’ve got your share of peers across the other departments.

The Futuristic Edge of Leadership

In prior episodes I described “people for all seasons” as the most equipped leaders for 2026 and beyond in a business environment being transformed by AI. In this episode, I’m going to present two AI innovators from different walks of life who merged their unique personal characteristics and skills to develop an AI product that adds key memory utility to current AI platforms.

The 2026 Demand for Purpose Driven Leaders. Is it real?

In our last episode, we discussed the profile of the 2026 Executive as defined by a substantial executive search firm. We didn’t get to the last element of the profile: Purpose Driven Leaders: Those that align business results with a societal purpose: A broader benefit to employees, customers, vendors, communities, and perhaps the environment. As a business psychologist, I do think this leadership standard is real, but I’m a bit skeptical as to whether it is really in higher demand today. I’m glad we didn’t cite this Purpose Driven profile aspect last time because I think it deserves a full show focus today.