What Does Your Approach to the Season say about your Leadership Style?

A Seasonal Leadership Reflection for 2026

Hands up who’s exhausted and ready for a pause. For many leaders, this year has demanded sustained resilience. The supercharged evolution of AI has been enough to test even the most technologically confident among us, while regulatory pressure and a persistently slow hiring market have made this something of an annus difficilis for those carrying organisational responsibility, to misquote our late Queen.

As we look ahead to 2026, leadership is increasingly defined not just by decision-making, but by how leaders hold uncertainty, distribute accountability and sustain performance through ongoing disruption.

With that in mind, we invite you to ease into the festive wind-down with our Christmas-themed leadership quiz. It is intentionally light-hearted!

Answer instinctively and tally which letter you choose most often. You may gain a useful insight into how you lead, only with less trauma than the spectral visitations and personal upheaval that accompanied Scrooge’s famous leadership transformation.

Take the Christmas Leadership Quiz

1. Which Christmas film best reflects how you lead?
   A) It’s a Wonderful Life – (focused on purpose, values, legacy)
   B) Home Alone – (like its lead character, quick-witted, decisive, self-reliant)
   C) The Holiday – (It’s all about managing other people’s needs and expectations)
   D) Die Hard – (Dealing with multiple threats and taking charge to avoid disaster)
2. You’re hosting Christmas dinner. What’s your style?
   A) Planned, tested, calm
   B) You take charge and improvise
   C) Everyone brings something
   D) Big vision, lots happening
3. Which Christmas retailer do you most admire?
   A) John Lewis – trust and emotional connection
   B) Amazon – speed and execution
   C) M&S – consistency, quality and care
   D) A small independent – creativity and agility
4. A key decision you made this year didn’t land. You:
   A) Reflected openly and adjusted course
   B) Fixed it quietly and move on
   C) Talked it through with the team
   D) Reframed it as “part of the plan”
5. Your reaction to Last Christmas on the radio:
   A) Traditions matter
   B) Enough already
   C) It connects people
   D) Incredible durability but could do with remastering for the current age
6. It’s 20 December and a problem appears. You:
   A) Check it aligns with core principles
   B) Solve it yourself
   C) Pull the right people together
   D) Absorb it along with everything else
7. Your team’s energy in mid-December is best described as:
   A) Tired but committed
   B) Running on adrenaline
   C) Supporting one another
   D) Stretched thin
8. Someone offers to help with a complex task. You:
   A) Welcome the support
   B) Decline – it’s quicker if you do it
   C) Accept and share ownership
   D) Thank them, but keep control
9. Which festive phrase sounds most like you?
   A) “Let’s do this properly”
   B) “I’ll just sort it”
   C) “Let’s work it out together”
   D) “We’ll make it work somehow”
10. If your leadership were a Christmas item, it would be:
    A) A star – guiding and consistent
    B) A lone reindeer – strong but overworked
    C) A bustling table groaning with food collaboratively prepared
    D) Fairy lights – bright, but easily tangled

Your Leadership Style Explained

Mostly As – The Purpose-Led Anchor

You provide stability, direction and a clear sense of what matters. In uncertain conditions, people look to you for reassurance and moral clarity. The risk is that consistency hardens into rigidity. As 2026 brings further volatility, regulation and AI-driven change, your opportunity is to hold purpose steady while allowing strategy, structure and ways of working to evolve around it.

Mostly Bs – The Lone Solver

You are decisive, capable and reliable under pressure. When things are urgent or ambiguous, you step in and get things moving. The risk is isolation. Struggling to ask for help or admit when something hasn’t worked quietly limits learning, increases personal strain and teaches teams to defer rather than contribute. In 2026, your leadership impact will grow fastest if you practise sharing uncertainty earlier and modelling that asking for help is a strength, not a failure.

Mostly Cs – The People-First Leader

You lead through trust, collaboration and shared ownership. Teams feel safe, engaged and supported, which builds resilience over time. The risk is drift. In fast-moving environments, a strong desire for inclusion can slow decisions or blur accountability. As the pace of change accelerates in 2026, your challenge will be to pair empathy with clarity, making timely calls while keeping people with you.

Mostly Ds – The Complexity Carrier

You are comfortable holding ambiguity, competing priorities and constant change. You keep things moving when others feel overwhelmed. The risk is overload. Absorbing too much can normalise pressure, mask structural problems and quietly erode performance. In 2026, the step-change will come from simplifying boldly, naming trade-offs clearly and designing systems that reduce dependence on your personal capacity.

Leading Forward: Reflection, Renewal and Readiness for 2026

Christmas has a habit of revealing truths. The leaders who will progress fastest into the New Year will be those who notice their patterns and habits, take time to reflect honestly and consider what might need to change, whether within themselves or the organisational culture and systems they lead.

This moment of pause matters. Rest and reflect are not indulgences; they are strategic enablers.  Also, eat drink and be merry. Fun, connection and recovery act as biological and psychological reset mechanisms for the bran and body, restoring the capacity for focus, learning and resilience.  Warmth and belonging provide emotional renewal, something no strategy deck can replace.

Or, as Dr Seuss phrased it so beautifully in How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

“Maybe Christmas”, he thought, “doesn’t come from a store”.

“Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.”

With very best wishes for the season from all at Rialto.

The wind down to Christmas offers an enriching opportunity to reflect on the year just past. Most executives would agree 2025 was characterised by intensifying change: economic, technological and geopolitical pressures transformed markets, while talent and technology reimagined how organisations assess risks, opportunities and expectations. At Rialto, we recognised early the systemic impact of AI, emphasising that its implications reach far beyond IT. We are proud to have supported thousands of leaders in preparing early for this shift.

This year, the world at large finally started to catch up. Many more organisations moved beyond experimenting with ChatGPT toward broader adoption of GenAI, Agentic systems and early Artificial General Intelligence pathways, while looking ahead to possibilities in Physical/Spatial Intelligence and even Self-Aware AI, developments we will no doubt be exploring in more depth in 2026.

AI was only one factor amid a constellation of forces reshaping the business landscape.  The UK economy continued to be buffeted by the headwinds of Brexit and the pandemic; the costs of both are becoming clearer with supply chain, import-export and hiring issues persisting.  Added to this were renewed geopolitical tensions, the Trump tariff fallout, elevated energy and inflation costs, stubborn interest rates and increased tax burdens on employers. Collectively, these forces produced a complex environment that suppressed growth and demanded heightened vigilance from boards navigating an increasingly volatile operating landscape.

For executives in transition, whether through redundancy or seeking a voluntary change, the result was a flat, cautious hiring market with greater competition for fewer roles, compounded by the march of automation and AI displacing humans at an unprecedented rate. While we expect these technologies to generate new forms of economic value and employment in time, we remain in a period of adjustment characterised by global uncertainty, contraction and spending restraint.

Still, as Albert Einstein said: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” So here, we look at six key themes and lessons we learned in 2025 and we explore what senior leaders should carry forward as they prepare for 2026.

1: Geopolitics

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan: “Our greatest risk is geopolitical risk”

Why geopolitics mattered in 2025: The year reinforced the notion that politics and geopolitics aren’t background events you can ignore. From renewed supply-chain shocks caused by export controls and export bans to the continuing war in Ukraine and frictions around China, governments and firms found shocks could arrive with little notice and enormous downstream cost.

The EU’s drive in December to secure raw materials and reduce dependence on China and repeated warnings from financial leaders that geopolitical risk is the dominant macro factor made clear that strategy today must be political as well as commercial.

The UK’s realisation that it must diversify its markets and not rely too heavily on the US for exports has driven a similar policy change here, with trade envoys seeking closer ties on the continent, in India, Australia and the Middle East.

What it means for 2026: Expect more deliberate “geo-stress testing” in boardrooms, with scenario planning that treats sovereign policy, trade controls and regional conflict as strategic variables rather than tail risks. Senior teams will need people who can read world politics, not just markets, to anticipate and prepare for global risks.
Action: Add a quarterly geopolitical heat-map to your strategy review; stress test the top three suppliers and the top two export markets under at least three political scenarios.

Read: Rialto’s Q4 executive outlooks for the US, Asia and the Middle East and for the UK and Europe.

2: Purpose

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: “I believe that business, at its best, serves the public good.”

Why purpose mattered in 2025: Stakeholders (employees, customers, investors) continue to emphasise that purpose matters. They can see through virtue signalling, it must be authentic. Guided by purpose, strategic decisions become crystal clear.

In a year defined, as stated above, by geopolitical tension, regulatory shifts, supply-chain fragility, AI disruption and shifting workforce expectations all accelerating at once, purpose emerged as one of the few reliable stabilisers in an otherwise volatile environment.

Organisations without a clear “why” are finding themselves pulled in multiple, conflicting directions. Purpose acts as a filter: it sharpens prioritisation, reduces noise, guides ethical decisions and helps leaders stay consistent when uncertainty is high.

Look at Microsoft’s renewed purpose-led strategy under CEO Satya Nadella, particularly relevant in 2025 as AI becomes embedded in every business model. Microsoft’s mission, “to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more,” isn’t simply a tagline, it has shaped the company’s entire approach to responsible AI, partnerships with governments and major investments in skills development.

As AI governance, trust and adoption became critical issues in 2024–2025, Microsoft’s purpose provided a north star that helped the company balance innovation with safety, growth with responsibility, and market leadership with societal expectations.

Similarly, Apple reinforces consumer confidence by anchoring its products and operations in verified principles such as privacy protection, accessibility and responsible sourcing, which has been a critical factor in its sustained customer loyalty, premium market positioning and long-term commercial performance.

What it means for 2026: Purpose will be a pragmatic operating lens and a decision filter. Ethical boards will demand metrics that tie social and environmental outcomes to commercial results. The companies that win are the ones that make trade-offs through that lens, consistently.
Action: Before any major initiative in 2026, ask: How does this align to our stated purpose? And What is the one measurable commercial outcome that validates it?

Read: Why Ethics Matter More Than Ever in the Boardroom

3: Innovation and experimentation

Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture: “Every leader needs to think of themselves as a reinventor.” 

Why innovation mattered in 2025: Uncertainty was the backdrop for breakthroughs: organisations that tested, learned and iterated moved faster. Whether it was new product routes, alternative sourcing or changed operating models, winners were those whose leaders explicitly created space to try, fail cheaply and scale what worked.

The Bank of America has introduced a “Speak Up!” tool, encouraging employees at every level to submit ideas, rewarding and celebrating those whose ideas are implemented.

Great Place To Work research found that this culture of psychological safety to experiment is the biggest driver of agility, making employees 253% more likely to approach change without fear.

Under Sweet’s leadership in 2025, Accenture consolidated its consulting, strategy, technology and operations functions into a unified “Reinvention Services” business unit, signalling a fundamental shift in how the firm delivers transformation for its clients.

Sweet told Fortune in November 2025: “We have a culture of progress over perfection. When you have that culture, you provide the safety to move quickly, to be able to make mistakes, and that is a deep part of our DNA.”  She argued that leaders must go beyond simply adopting new tools or technologies and rethink how they operate, how they grow talent, and how they lead, effectively committing to continuous reinvention

What it means for 2026: Expect more formal “fast experiment” systems with short cycles, measurable learnings and explicit guardrails for what counts as an acceptable failure: curiosity and rapid learning beat cautious stagnation.
Action: Create a three-month “safe experiment” fund with simple KPIs and a pre-agreed exit rule; celebrate the learning publicly, not just the wins.

Read: The interview with Sweet.

4:  Resilience

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of IMF: “We live in a world of sudden and sweeping shifts… this is a call to respond wisely.” (In her April 2025 speech, Toward a Better Balanced and More Resilient World Economy.)

Why resilience mattered in 2025: Georgieva was addressing governments but the lessons apply equally to organisations and their leaders.

Business conditions shifted fast and constantly this year with regulatory moves, tariff threats and market re-ratings forcing mid-course corrections alongside the steep learning curve of AI integration. BCG, OECD and other analysts argued the balance had moved from pure cost optimisation to the “cost of resilience” mindset: companies that invested for optionality could pivot without collapsing margins. That difference between economic agility and brittle inflexibility showed up in supply chains, hiring and capital allocation.

Traditional planning cycles are now too slow. Leaders have to absorb disruption while still maintaining momentum. Resilience was not just about endurance in 2025, it was about adaptability under pressure. Organisations that built resilient cultures, where teams could recover quickly, learn fast and reorient without losing cohesion, were better equipped to manage supply-chain disruption, shifting customer behaviour and heightened scrutiny from regulators and investors.

For leaders, resilience also became a reputational marker. Stakeholders watched closely to see who could stay calm, communicate clearly and make principled decisions during uncertainty. The companies that did so strengthened trust, protected talent and preserved optionality in turbulent markets.
What it means for 2026:  Leaders should reframe planning cycles: fewer immovable five-year plans, more rolling 12-month roadmaps with pre-agreed pivot points. Governance must allow quick reallocation of resources when the data says “now.” Expect new roles (resilience officers or heads of organisational readiness) and more capital allocated to “insurance by design”, including flexible contracts, dual suppliers, and talent pools.
Action: Instead of responding in an emergency, plan an annual resilience-building rehearsal that tests people, systems and suppliers, and budget and prepare for the changes revealed.

Read: Leading Through Transformation Without Burning Out Your Teams

5:  Prioritise people

Gabe Newell, President of Valve Corporation: “The focus should always be on your customers, on your partners, and on your employees – then everything else will fall into place over time.”

Why putting people first mattered in 2025: In a year of restructuring, layoffs in most sectors and tight skills markets in others, organisations that invested in people with coaching cultures, continuous learning and psychological safety held onto performance.

High-profile leaders emphasised empathy and social intelligence as leadership differentiators critical to business capabilities, enabling a pivot from purely finance or efficiency-driven leadership towards people-centred strategies that stress trust, long-term capability and human capital.

People-first is foundational for resilience, adaptability and sustainable business performance, stabilising workforces facing seismic disruption and uncertainty, attracting and retaining talent and ensuring the human qualities missing from AI run through the DNA of companies to secure relationships and trust with staff, stakeholders and customers or clients.

Trust drives productivity, innovation, loyalty and growth. People-first demands personalising responses to individual need, showing empathy and compassion and reinforcing EDI and mental health commitments, to optimise workforce skills and fully engage your workforce.

Klarna replaced around 700 staff, many in customer-support roles, with AI-driven systems, hoping to streamline operations and reduce costs. This led to growing customer frustration, rising complaints and a noticeable drop in service quality. The automated systems struggled to handle nuanced or emotionally charged issues.

In 2025, the company publicly admitted it “went too far” and started rehiring or redeploying staff back into customer support to restore human interaction and service quality.

What it means for 2026: Expect investment in real development infrastructure: role-based learning pathways, coaching for leaders and clearer internal mobility plus increased staff surveys.
Action: Build a 3-month programme for leaders alongside HR, including shadowing, coaching and a psychological-safety checklist for their teams, to ensure the people-first culture drips down from the top.

Read: AI-Powered Workforces – Adding Value Through Strategic Upskilling and Leadership in transition – from Boomers to Gen Z

6 Reinforcing accountability

Culture Partners CEO Roger Connors: “When properly approached, accountability can really be the low-hanging fruit for optimising organisational performance and accelerating organisational change efforts.”

Why accountability mattered in 2025: With so many moving parts – regulatory change, budget pressures, shifting suppliers, fast-emerging technologies, strategic and ethical considerations around AI adoption – organisational friction rises and mistakes are made and repeated where ownership is unclear. The Bank of England’s 2025 stress tests and corporate governance debates underlined that institutions and companies that had clear lines of accountability were quicker to act and better at protecting stakeholders.

Ensuring clear and transparent responsibilities and parameters for each senior role avoids duplication and unproductive rivalry while empowering leaders to drive progress and manage risk more scrupulously. Encouraging leaders to visibly take responsibility – and share learning from any mistakes – fosters trust and creates a culture of psychological safety with clear structures to identify and assess any issues before they become systemic or blow up.

However, a major 2025 workplace study by Culture Partners, covering 40,000 respondents from across industries, found that many organisations remain unclear about who owns what, leading to a “crisis of accountability.”

What it means for 2026: Teams will be held to clearer end-to-end outcomes, not just activity metrics. Boards and leaders will increasingly insist on named owners for resilience plans, with escalation paths and transparent reporting.
Action: Replace ambiguous KPIs with clear outcome metrics and accountable owners; publish progress fortnightly to the senior team.

Read: This Forbes article on why employees are holding leadership to higher standards of accountability in 2025.

2025 reinforced that effective leadership is no longer defined by title or hierarchy. It is measured by clarity of purpose, adaptability, accountability and the ability to foster resilient, learning-focused cultures. Leaders who succeed in multi-layered environment prioritise people, embrace innovation with curiosity and rigour and make principled decisions even under pressures around uncertainty.

At Rialto, we help executives translate these insights into action. Through our executive coaching, outplacement and transition support, strategic advisory and leadership development programmes, we equip leaders to navigate career transitions, step confidently into new roles and strengthen their influence within organisations. Our approach ensures leaders can respond decisively to change, whether driven by AI, market volatility or geopolitical shocks, while maintaining focus on people, purpose, and sustainable outcomes.

Those who internalise these six leadership lessons of 2025 position themselves to lead with impact in 2026 and beyond. Rialto partners with leaders to turn insight into action, ensuring they are prepared to respond ethically, strategically and effectively in an unpredictable environment.

Transformation is now the default condition for growth-focused organisations. Whether driven by rapid digital innovation, continuous AI integration and recalibration, competitive disruption, regulatory shifts or strategic reinvention, modern businesses operate in a near-permanent state of change. For executives, the challenge is maintaining momentum while protecting the wellbeing and capability of their teams. Mastering this balance has become a defining leadership competency.

According to McKinsey, 70% of large-scale transformation programmes fail to deliver their intended value, with behavioural barriers, including resistance, weak sponsorship and inadequate change infrastructure, accounting for much of the shortfall. Bain & Company reports an even more sobering picture: only one in eight transformations meet their original ambition, while most experience some level of value dilution – figures unchanged for two decades.

The human cost is equally stark. In a global survey by Emergn, half of employees reported “transformation fatigue”, and 45% said the associated stress had led to burnout. Crucially, half of those experiencing fatigue had considered leaving their organisation. Failure therefore carries consequences far beyond the project itself—it diminishes trust in leadership and weakens organisational cohesion..

When people are overwhelmed, engagement falls, performance drops and trust erodes. More than half of employees feel that too much change is happening simultaneously, and 71% say they are overwhelmed by the volume of change in their roles. Even those not yet at burnout often show signs of chronic stress, including reduced satisfaction, impaired judgement and lower productivity.

To counter this, organisations must find equilibrium: preventing overwhelm while sustaining progress. When transformation is thoughtfully designed, with realistic targets, clear communication, visible milestones and strategic resource allocation, teams feel supported and energised rather than depleted. Groups that experience collaborative, well-paced cycles of change with intentional peaks and periods of recovery are better able to sustain the relentless rhythm of modern organisational life.

What to Expect in 2026

Looking ahead to 2026, several transformation trends are likely to intensify, and with them, the risks of burnout.

1. Generative AI and Automated Decision Workflows

Organisations will increasingly use generative AI to underpin decision-making, customer experience and operational processes. While the potential for efficiency is considerable, these shifts require new behaviours, redesigned roles and significant capability uplift. Without strong change leadership, AI initiatives may create confusion, destabilise teams and deepen fatigue. Over half of the employees surveyed in the Emergn research said AI-driven initiatives were increasing transformation fatigue, a sign of companies putting digital transformation in before properly preparing workforces. See our previous insights on AI-powered workforces and Leading in an Era of Agentic Intelligence.

2. ESG and Sustainability Imperatives

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) imperatives will continue to reshape strategy, requiring greener supply chains, more transparent operations and more rigorous reporting. These changes demand both operational discipline and meaningful cultural evolution, not merely compliance.

3. Recalibration of Hybrid-Remote Operating Models

Hybrid work has moved from experimentation to optimisation. Organisations will further refine operating models, role expectations, productivity metrics and team structures.  Many are encouraging increased in-office presence to reduce silos, strengthen collaboration and intergenerational learning and mentoring. This will create ongoing organisational adjustment, particularly across globally distributed teams.

4. Ecosystem Partnerships and Platform Models

More organisations will build strategic ecosystems or platform businesses, partnering with technology firms, start-ups and new entrants. These transformations demand new governance new capabilities and new trust mechanisms, adding further layers of complexity.

Collectively, these forces mean 2026 is not simply another year of “large scale project’ transformation, it is likely to be defined by continuous, multi-dimensional transformation.

The Human Toll: Why People Burn Out

At the heart of transformation fatigue, executives must consider this psychological truth: humans have a strong preference for stability. Change disrupts mental models, routines and meaning. Sustained disruption accumulates into cognitive overload, diminishing engagement and increasing resistance

Middle managers can be particularly vulnerable. They translate strategic ambition into operational reality without always having the authority, time or clarity to shape the journey. When they become overstretched, entire transformation programmes stall.

Poor sequencing further compounds the strain. Anthosa Research shows that when organisations run more than seven major initiatives concurrently, failure rates climb to 83%. Prosci’s research highlights that frontline functions, Operations, Customer service, Sales, HR, experience the greatest change saturation.

Another common error is overburdening the same high-performers. “Star Players” are too often asked to carry disproportionate weight, leading to burnout and capability loss, while other talent remains underutilised. When organisations fail to manage human resources and capabilities deliberately and strategically, transformation efforts can stall. When too many initiatives run in parallel without deliberate resource management, engagement collapses and leadership sponsorship weakens.

Leading With Resilience: Key Principles for Executives

Senior leaders can protect teams, and themselves, from burnout by grounding transformation in a set of disciplined, evidence-based practices.

1. Diagnose deeply before acting

Begin with a rigorous diagnostic to understand organisational readiness, historical change load and pressure points before moving on to a bold vision.  Leading companies (Ford, Adobe, T-Mobile, Virgin Australia) explicitly manage organisational energy from the outset, recognising that it is often the true governor of transformation pace.

2. Pace change intelligently

Accelerating too fast is a common mistake. McKinsey finds that organisations adopting structured, sequenced transformation actions can more than double their success rates. Build in hybrid phases where old and new systems run in parallel, giving people space to adapt.

3. Communicate relentlessly and with purpose

Ambiguity is the enemy of transformation.  Teams need repeated clarity on the rationale, process, expectations and available support. Recent research shows that only 53% of managers and 40% of employees understood the transformation underway—despite 68% of leaders believing they had communicated clearly.

Employees expect senior leaders to articulate the vision, but rely on line managers to translate it into personal relevance. Both layers must be aligned.

4. Empower people and build ownership

One of the most effective ways to reduce burnout is to involve people meaningfully. When people have a voice and help shape change, they’re more invested and better able to absorb the disruption. Create structured forums where concerns can be voiced without fear. High-trust environments result in employees being 2.6 times more capable of absorbing change.

5. Manage capacity

As a leader, you must be ruthless about prioritisation. Transformation pressure naturally invites competing demands. Decide what must pause while new ways of working emerge. It is essential to be able to deprioritise “business as usual” when transformation peaks and communicate these choices clearly.

6. Celebrate early wins.

Small victories help sustain energy and provide tangible proof of progress. Recognising teams publicly for achieving milestones fuels morale and provides a narrative of collective achievement. Research by Bain shows that companies using aspirations rather than benchmarks to set goals (and celebrating progress toward those aspirations) maintained organisational energy more effectively.

7. Lead without neglecting yourself

You set the tone, so you must also guard your own resilience. That means setting boundaries, protecting time for rest, and crucially, building a network of support. As pressures mount, consider executive coaching or peer-group reflection to maintain perspective and prevent burnout.

The Role of Coaching and Reflection

Transformation leadership is highly demanding. Executives who engage in structured reflection whether through executive coaching, peer groups or mentorship, tend to lead with greater clarity and endurance.

One of the biggest mistakes executives can make in times of intense pressure is to cut out any activities they see as luxury and invest all their energy and time into the project as deadlines loom and inevitable complications arise.

The most confident, assured and effective leaders recognise the value of stepping back to allow both downtime – during which creativity can thrive, ideas can percolate and problem-solving can be more effective – and time for honest appraisal with a trusted and knowledgeable sounding board/mirror.

The latter will provide confidential space to test tricky decisions, process doubts and sustain strategic discipline. A coach helps you recognise when you’re pushing too hard or losing balance, and supports building a leadership practice that is resilient over a career, not just a single project or even position.

Research with successful transformation leaders (including CTOs at Dell Technologies, Desjardins, International Paper and global insurers) consistently finds that external perspective helps leaders maintain the energy required for multi-year change journeys. These leaders emphasise that energy needs to be cultivated and managed deliberately. Coaching provides structure for that discipline.

Practical Habits to Build Resilience

A few regular practices can materially improve transformation endurance:

Weekly priority reset: At the start of each week, pick three transformation-critical outcomes. Everything else is secondary. Successful transformations build change into the company’s operating rhythm rather than treating it as separate from normal business.

Frequent feedback loops: Hold fortnightly check-ins with key stakeholders and use them to engage with teams; gauge morale, anxieties, confidence and buy-in. This helps leaders spot the early signs of change fatigue: shorter tempers, physical exhaustion, increasing absence, falling energy and enthusiasm, rising anxiety and resistance, both active and passive. Praise individuals and teams when it is due but avoid singling them out for blame. Where things have gone wrong, explore what can be learned and invite feedback on how they can be improved.

Share progress through visual symbols: Use dashboards, graphs and other visual artefacts to mark smaller wins and track progress. Seeing movement and momentum builds hope and endurance. This is particularly important at the transformation midpoint, when energy is most likely to dip.

Built-in recovery: After major phases, intentionally pause for consolidation, learning and a reset. Encourage teams to reflect on what went well and how challenges were met. Companies achieving successful transformations treat change as continuous but rhythmic, with periods of intensity followed by consolidation.

Leading for the Long Game

Transformation is no longer episodic.  It is a permanent feature of corporate life that is not delivered by intensity but by endurance. Leaders who guide their organisations through meaningful change without burning out their teams understand that pace, rhythm, and energy are strategic assets. They resist the lure of heroics, building ways of working that enable people to contribute at a high level without running on empty.

Leading for the long game means treating change as an ongoing capability, something that must be fuelled, protected, and renewed over time. This requires strategic clarity, psychological insight, disciplined prioritisation and the humility to recognise human limits. It calls for an operating rhythm that creates space for focus rather than overload, setting goals that stretch without overwhelming, and the deliberate management of organisational energy with the same seriousness applied to budgets and timelines.

The long-term value of getting this balance right is immense: resilient teams, meaningful capability uplift and the organisational stamina to transform again when the environment shifts.

If you are leading transformation now or planning one for 2026, this is the moment to invest in thoughtful design, purposeful communication, coaching and reflection. These are not ancillary, they are foundational to sustainable, repeatable success.

The Executive hiring landscape has become increasingly rigorous and formalised. While senior appointments have always involved multiple stakeholders and careful vetting, today’s process has evolved into an even more highly structured, extended assessment that typically lasts three to eight months from initial contact to offer. Today’s executive searches routinely include four to eight formal interview sessions, psychometric testing, scenario simulations and board presentations, with each stage designed to assess specific leadership competencies and cultural fit, reducing the risk of costly mis-hires.

The most senior positions are rarely advertised publicly. Instead, Executive job opportunities typically emerge through several distinct channels. Executive search firms conduct strict confidential targeted searches on behalf of Boards, approaching candidates who may not be actively seeking new roles.  According to industry data from 2024, 70% of executive hires in the UK now result from personal referrals and networking, whether through board connections, industry relationships or introductions from trusted advisors. A smaller proportion then result from internal succession planning or direct approaches by CEOs and board members to known candidates.

This dynamic, which is also referred to as the ‘hidden job market’, leaves thousands of qualified executives seeking opportunities in the open market, while roles circulate quietly within closed networks.  For executives outside these circles, accessing such opportunities therefore demands deliberate relationship-building, consistent visibility within their sector and active engagement with both executive search professionals and peer networks.

Boards are also increasingly hiring externally, particularly for transformation mandates. This preference for outside leadership during major change initiatives means panels now probe change management capability and crisis readiness with far greater intensity than in previous decades. Short CEO tenures and succession planning failures have made boards acutely sensitive to early missteps.

Mastering executive interviews requires a structured approach to storytelling that reveals strategic thinking, not merely a list of accomplishments. The Rialto CAREER Framework is one of the interview frameworks adopted by Executives when working with Rialto to achieve executive transition success.

What Panels Are Evaluating at Executive Interviews

Modern C-suite and senior leadership interviews assess six core dimensions:

Diagnostic Thinking: Panels want to observe how candidates structure complex problems when faced with incomplete or conflicting information. The question “What would you change about our business today?” tests your ability to assimilate research quickly, identify key leverage points and propose sequenced interventions. Panels will be evaluating analytical thinking more intently than specific recommendations. Solid preparation into the company’s pain points, market position, competitors and potential opportunities will form an essential foundation to a credible and relevant response.

Transformation Execution Track Record:  Questions such as “Why are you the best person to lead change here?” and “Tell us about a transformation you led end-to-end” require tangible evidence of sustained organisational change with measurable outcomes. Panels distinguish between executives who merely participated in transformations and those who led them. They listen for ownership language, clear resource decisions, stakeholder management sophistication and the ability to sustain momentum through resistance.

Board Partnership and Stakeholder Fluency: Questions like “How would you work with this Board and its key stakeholders?” or “What will you need from us?” evaluate your understanding of governance dynamics. Weaker candidates focus on what they will provide to the board. Strong candidates explain what they need from the board, demonstrating understanding that executive success requires board support, clarity on authority boundaries and aligned expectations. This reveals an understanding that executive roles involve genuine partnership rather than hierarchical reporting.

Digital and AI Literacy: Questions along the lines of “How have you used data and AI to improve outcomes while managing risks?” have become standard across executive interviews. Panels evaluate three layers: practical fluency with AI applications, governance mindset regarding risk and ethics and ability to lead teams through technological adoption. A strong response demonstrates hands-on experience, quantified business outcomes and awareness of implementation challenges including employee resistance, data quality issues, model limitations, managing disruption and ethical and security imperatives.

Learning Mindset and Adaptive Capacity: When asked, “Tell us about a major failure…what did you learn and how did you change?”, panels are seeking to determine learning mindset, courage in admitting to failures and capacity to analyse and recalibrate for success.  Strong candidates take ownership of mistakes, show evidence of behavioural change and display courage in acknowledging limitations.  The US variant, “What is the last thing you unlearned as a leader?” probes similar territory, evaluating agility to adapt and adjust and abandon outmoded approaches and evolve with shifting organisational needs.

Financial and Commercial Judgment: Questions about resource allocation, margins and ROI test whether a candidate can connect strategic initiatives to financial outcomes.  In many contexts, there is often a sharper emphasis on revenue growth, profitability and measurable value creation. Strategic narratives should be firmly anchored in sound financial logic demonstrating fiscal discipline and business acumen.

The CAREER Framework for Executive Interviews

The Rialto CAREER Framework provides Executives with a structured approach to articulating complex experiences and demonstrating strategic leadership capability under interview pressure. It ensures that your responses reveal not only what you have done, but how you think, make decisions and evolve as a leader.

CAREER stands for Context, Accountability, Roadmap, Evidence, Evolution and Relevance, and each component aligns directly with what executive panels seek to evaluate.

Context enables you to establish the analytical foundation of your story, demonstrating diagnostic thinking, commercial awareness and understanding of the wider business environment.

Accountability clarifies your ownership and leadership scope, separating those who truly led change from those who simply contributed.

Roadmap reveals your strategic sophistication, the decision-making logic, prioritisation and sequencing that underpin transformation success.

Evidence anchors your narrative in tangible, measurable business outcomes, confirming your ability to connect strategy to commercial impact.

Evolution exposes your learning mindset and self-awareness, showing that you grow through experience and can adapt to future challenges.

Relevance ensures your story resonates with the interviewers’ own organisational context, demonstrating that you’ve done the work to understand their challenges and culture.

Executives consistently find the CAREER Framework powerful because it evidences leadership maturity in real time. It allows interviewers to distinguish between executives who merely participated in organisational success and those who genuinely drove it. When applied effectively, it demonstrates analytical clarity, ownership mentality, commercial judgment and the agility to lead through complexity and change.

For further information on the framework, click here.

Preparing for Executive Interview

Applying the CAREER Framework begins well before the interview. Preparation involves researching the organisation in depth, understanding its market position, governance structure, current strategic priorities and performance challenges. From this insight, it is useful to identify three or four signature leadership stories that collectively illustrate different aspects of your capability: transformation delivery, people leadership, crisis management and/or financial turnaround. Then, structure each story using the CAREER elements as a mental map.

During the interview, draw on this structure naturally rather than reciting a script. The goal is to sound conversational and responsive, not rehearsed. Use CAREER as a flexible architecture to organise your thinking, allowing you to adjust emphasis depending on the interviewer’s focus. Listen actively, expand on areas of interest and maintain relevance by continually linking your experience back to their business context.

A practical way to internalise this approach is to choose one significant leadership experience and practise framing it using CAREER. Describe the Context – the strategic challenge, market dynamic or governance constraint. Define your Accountability – what you were specifically responsible for delivering. Outline your Roadmap – the key decisions, interventions and rationale behind them. Present Evidence – quantifiable results, metrics or stakeholder outcomes that demonstrate success. Reflect on your Evolution – what you learned and how your leadership evolved. Finally, articulate Relevance – how this experience directly connects to the organisation or role you are targeting. Rehearse it as a natural conversation lasting three to four minutes, ready to expand or shorten depending on interviewer cues.

By mastering this structure, executives move beyond listing achievements to showcasing how they think, lead, and grow which is precisely what executive Interviewers are looking for in today’s complex leadership landscape.

The CAREER Interview Advantage

Executive interviews are won through revealing authentic strategic capability, NOT rehearsed perfection. Panels want to see candidates think on their feet, apply their knowledge and ask the right questions to gain contextual understanding. The CAREER framework provides the architecture for demonstrating depth while maintaining conversational flow.

Candidates who master this framework stand out because they reveal how they think, how they lead through complexity and how they learn from experience, precisely what organisations need as they navigate sustained uncertainty and transformation.

Remember, panels are not buying your past, they are buying your future capability. CAREER helps to translate experience into evidence of that capability.

Preparing for executive interview is just one part of any executive career and of the work Rialto do with our global C-suite and senior leadership clients.

Rialto has 85 consultants specialising in different aspect of executive transition, executive outplacement, leadership development, business transformation and AI readiness and adoption, supporting leaders globally to achieve meaningful career outcomes.

In the first two parts of our AI skills special, we explored why and how executives should build continuous AI learning into leadership development programmes.

This third and final part turns to an equally – if not more – critical issue that will define which organisations truly thrive in this fast-moving era: preparing the workforce through upskilling, rather than simply seeking to reduce headcount.

When used responsibly, under secure and ethical supervision, and embedded across all levels of the organisation, AI capability and confidence can combine to act as rocket fuel for performance and innovation.

AI has the potential to serve as a highly responsive, interconnected nervous system that touches every part of the business. It can bring data-driven insight to the very core of strategy – from how the company goes to market, to how it manages talent and responds to competitive pressures.

While it’s essential that implementation is led by an AI-literate CEO and CFO, supported by functional leaders, any blockages caused by ineffective or unsafe use across the wider organisation will limit progress, ROI, and stakeholder confidence.

According to McKinsey, C-suite leaders are 2.4 times more likely to cite employee readiness as a greater barrier to AI adoption than their own skills. Yet employees are already using GenAI tools three times more than their leaders realise.

For executives and HR leaders facing this disconnect, and the broader disruption required to realise AI’s full potential, the first step is to address a structural challenge: most employees lack the cognitive tools to thrive in transformed workflows, while those leading workforce strategy often lack the diagnostic tools to measure capability gaps accurately.

Research from McKinsey and the World Economic Forum continues to highlight skills shortages as the single biggest obstacle to organisational transformation. Sixty-three percent of employers see capability gaps as a major barrier through to 2030. Despite this, many still look externally for talent that could be developed internally, often at lower cost and with less disruption, while laying off staff displaced by automation.

This pattern reflects an absence of understanding and systematic workforce assessment that risks destabilising businesses, society, and even the wider economy.

A more constructive approach is to audit workforce skills against current and future objectives – uncovering untapped potential, latent strengths, and opportunities to enhance capabilities from within.

Establishing a credible baseline: The audit framework

Assessing workforce readiness for technological change requires moving beyond traditional talent assessment methods. Standard competency frameworks, based on current job roles, simply don’t provide the data organisations need in a constantly evolving technological environment.

Instead, a multidimensional evaluation is needed, one that captures three critical dimensions: technical proficiency in emerging tools, cognitive flexibility across domains, and the ability to adapt behaviour under uncertainty (in other words, resilience, agility, and adaptability).

An effective audit should map current capability against anticipated requirements around 18 months ahead, not just today’s job descriptions. This requires cross-functional collaboration and open data sharing.

Organisations should conduct this assessment through structured interviews with functional leaders rather than relying exclusively on self-reported surveys These discussions reveal not only competence but also psychological readiness and appetite for change. The distinction matters: a moderately skilled employee with high motivation can outperforms technically proficient colleagues resistant to new ways of working.

The audit should also reflect the organisation’s unique context. For instance, manufacturers may need capability in computer vision or predictive maintenance; customer service teams in natural language processing and data-driven platforms; finance teams in modelling and causal inference; and content creators in understanding the limits and verification needs of generative models. This level of specificity helps avoid the all-too-common pitfall of theoretical training disconnected from practical reality.

Distinguishing trainable from structural capability gaps

Not every capability gap can be bridged through training alone. Some deficits stem from deeper factors, such as cognitive orientation or the nature of experience built up over years of professional practice.

For example, sometimes individuals who have constructed careers through hierarchical advancement within narrowly defined specialisations can find it difficult to sustain the continuous reorientation that technological change demands. Addressing these cases requires sensitivity and support, not blame. Senior executives may benefit from targeted leadership development and coaching to strengthen the soft skills that underpin digital and AI-driven transformation.

Recognising the difference between trainable and structural capability gaps allows for more informed decisions about retention, redeployment, and recruitment. The World Economic Forum highlights analytical thinking, resilience, and cognitive flexibility as the most in-demand competencies for 2025, qualities that require cultural reinforcement across the organisation, not just classroom instruction therefore a task which can be more complex and challenging than hard skills training.

Organisations that take this nuanced view can avoid costly mistakes such as unnecessary restructuring or over-automation, which can lead to anxiety and disengagement.

Audits should therefore include behavioural indicators of adaptability beyond anything that standard competency assessment can provide such as how individuals have handled previous operational change, their curiosity about unfamiliar domains, and their willingness to self-learn. These behavioural markers often predict success in technological transitions better than traditional performance measures.

Identifying roles requiring structural transition

Up to 40% of current roles could be displaced by AI, meaning some restructuring will be unavoidable. Certain jobs face genuine obsolescence, not just transformation requiring skillset adjustments. Research from Adzuna demonstrates that graduate positions, apprenticeships, internships and junior roles without degree requirements have fallen by approximately 32% since November 2022, now comprising 25% of all UK job listings down from 28%. These shifts call for honest reflection rather than optimistic retraining narratives.

The strategic question organisations must confront is whether investing resources in retaining individuals in functionally declining positions serves institutional or individual interests. Often neither party benefits from extended employment in roles that gradually diminish in scope and compensation. Acknowledgment of this reality, coupled with genuine transition support including financial security, career coaching and skills assessment for alternative employment, can serve departing employees better than struggling on in positions of diminishing significance.

Roles requiring such structural transition should be identified through financial modelling rather than hope. Evaluate which functions will consolidate through automation or shift to fundamentally different competencies within two years. The results will support workforce transition planning with greater honesty than aspirational but unevidenced upskilling narratives.

Building continuous learning architecture aligned with strategic objectives

Organisations that navigate technological change successfully tend to share one structural feature: learning is embedded into day-to-day operations, not treated as a separate HR function.  This approach transforms learning into a process of structured problem-solving within real work contexts, supported by data and feedback loops.  Agentic AI platforms can support and augment this process.

This requires establishing a dynamic skills architecture that maps current organisational competencies against anticipated future requirements at the level of specific work functions rather than abstract capabilities. This might involve identifying precisely which analytical techniques the finance team will require, which communication protocols the sales force needs, which quality assessment procedures the manufacturing operation demands. This specificity transforms learning from generic skill acquisition into targeted capability development demonstrably connected to organisational performance.

Implementation involves designating accountability for this architecture at the executive level, not within training departments. The Chief Financial Officer bears responsibility for ensuring the analytical and technological capabilities necessary for projected operational models. The Chief Operating Officer owns capability alignment in production operations. This assignment of accountability could prove more important than the quality of any particular course offering.

Organisations should expect that roughly 70% of capability development will occur through structured problem-solving within actual work contexts rather than formal instruction. The remaining 30% can benefit from targeted coursework, typically micro-credentialed programs of four to eight weeks rather than extended academic sequences. Timing matters. For example, technical instruction proves most effective when delivered immediately before operational application rather than months in advance. Lessons that can be applied quickly and practically help contextualise and reinforce learning.

Sustaining Organisational Adaptability Beyond Current Change Cycles

The capability requirements focused upon in 2025 may be less relevant by 2027 while specific technical competencies in demand will shift and soft skills that differentiate performance will evolve. Organisations that construct learning systems flexible enough to accommodate successive technological transitions outperform those that optimise for current requirements.

This flexibility requires close collaboration between HR leadership and executive coaching. Coaching relationships with senior leaders catalyse the self-awareness and cognitive flexibility that enable them to lead organisational evolution, minimising any resistance grounded in lack of confidence or fear of displacement.

Individuals who engage authentically with executive coaching demonstrate markedly greater capacity navigating structural change, maintaining team engagement during transition and modelling the adaptability organisations require of their broader workforces.

The investment in executive coaching during periods of material technological change generates returns that extend well beyond individual leader development. It establishes organisational culture where development is seen as built in rather than remedial intervention, where explicit acknowledgment of capability gaps reflects analytical maturity rather than professional vulnerability and where learning partnerships with external experts enhance rather than threaten internal capability building.

Organisations that embed executive coaching alongside workforce auditing and continuous learning architecture can significantly outpace competitors approaching these elements separately. The senior leader who has examined their own constraints and potential through coaching partnership will appear more credible when advocating difficult organisational transitions. A leadership team aligned through shared development experience makes more coherent strategic decisions regarding workforce capability realignment. Organisational cultures that show senior leadership engaging continuously in external refection and development normalise the adaptability the organisation requires throughout its workforce.

Measuring what matters: linking development to performance

One of the most common pitfalls in workforce development is failing to connect learning initiatives to measurable business outcomes. Upskilling only delivers real value when employees can apply new capabilities directly to their roles and when the impact is visible to leadership, stakeholders, and the board.

Measurement systems should therefore track how specific skill investments translate into performance. For example, if customer service functions deploy natural language processing tools, measurement systems should track what different interactions and tools are designed for  and what quality improvements were achieved. If finance teams develop advanced modelling capabilities, systems should quantify how these capabilities improved forecast accuracy or decision quality.

This level of specificity requires that HR leaders and finance leaders collaborate to build measurement frameworks rather than each maintaining separate administrative systems. The collaboration may reveal misalignments between capability investments and actual strategic priorities and enable careful and ongoing recalibration.

Ultimately, auditing workforce readiness for AI isn’t just about tracking current skills against job descriptions. It’s about honest evaluation, identifying which roles can evolve, which require transition, and how learning can be embedded into operations and linked directly to performance outcomes.

Organisations that approach this challenge with rigour, empathy, and transparency will build the resilience and agility needed to thrive through successive waves of technological change.

If you would like to discuss strategic planning of upskilling and reskilling needs for individuals or teams, Rialto has 85 consultants specialising in every aspect of organisational transformation and executive leadership development. Please do get in touch to arrange an initial consultation.

In this second part of our three-part series on upskilling for the AI era, we explore the distinct AI skills needed by today’s executives and how they fit into any ongoing programme of professional development.

Whether making a personal executive transition, receiving executive outplacement or driving organisational transformation, AI literacy is now an essential skill that should be considered as part of any development or change initiative. Executives who integrate AI mastery into a continuous learning agenda, spanning both personal and organisational transformation, will remain competitive and relevant in a rapidly evolving landscape.

As highlighted in our previous insight on how executives can stay ahead of the AI curve, of the $30 billion spent on AI globally, only 5% is seeing a return on investment. T his may be partly due to metrics and measurements not catching up with what success looks like, but progress is too often also impeded by executives’ glacial response as the technology accelerates exponentially in real time.

As former Cisco CEO John Chambers observed, half of executives “won’t have the skills to adjust to this new innovation economy driven by AI because they were trained to move at the speed of a five-year cycle as opposed to a 12-month cycle.”

Senior leaders therefore need to continuously reinvent themselves to stay aligned with the pace of technological evolution.

Building the right AI competencies

Below, we look at specific AI skills sets for executives who face distinct requirements when building AI competency. This guide provides an overview of core AI skills executives should consider acquiring and examines how training can be incorporated into broader leadership development strategies.

Skill 1: AI Strategy, Appraisal and Value Framing

Why it matters: Executives must identify where AI creates measurable return, build business cases and sequence pilots into scaled capability, recalibrating and updating according to technological advances which may otherwise outrun specific projects and lead to shareholder value erosion through misaligned investments or missed opportunities. Leaders who map use cases to financial outcomes gain competitive advantage.
Related competencies: Strategic foresight, scenario planning, critical and creative thinking.

Skill 2: AI Governance, Risk and Compliance

Why it matters: Boards and C-suites are prioritising governance, auditability and regulatory readiness amid a fragmented regulatory landscape, where inadequate oversight can expose organisations to severe fines or reputational damage from incidents such as bias scandals. Governance is a rising board agenda item, helping attract top talent through ethical practices and building resilience by managing the inherent complexities of scaling AI, while fostering ESG alignment and stakeholder trust.
Related competencies: Stakeholder collaboration, ethical decision-making, resilience.

Skill 3: Data Literacy and Decision Science

Why it matters: Executives who interpret model outputs, ask the right questions of data teams and set measurable KPIs are more effective sponsors of AI projects. This skill facilitates literacy in relation to decision frameworks, enabling navigation of volatile markets and bridging analytical gaps for informed sponsorship, particularly when aligning with UK initiatives around data protection and digital information that demand robust, privacy-conscious handling.
Related competencies: Data governance, analytical and critical thinking, cultural sensitivity.

Skill 4: Generative AI Literacy and Prompt Design

Why it matters: Executives need practical fluency with generative tools so they can assess vendor claims, pilot real workflows and set safe guardrails, unlocking productivity gains while mitigating risks such as hallucinations leading to flawed decisions or unintended outputs. Amid the rise of multimodal trends, this becomes essential for integrating tools like enterprise Copilots and scaling pilots without misuse, in line with UK recommendations for safe adoption that emphasise responsible experimentation and organisational safeguards.
Related competencies: Strategic foresight, ethical decision-making, change management.

Skill 5: People Leadership for Augmented Work

(Part three of this series will examine workforce upskilling.)
Why it matters: Adoption failures arise when leaders treat AI as a technology or tooling problem rather than one of people and process change, overlooking the human elements of redeployment and upskilling that can enhance team creativity and improve retention in blended workforces. This fosters resilience in hybrid AI-human environments, addressing the transformative shifts in job roles and skills needs, and ties into broader workforce strategies. Leadership skills supporting redeployment and upskilling are flagged in employer surveys as essential.
Related competencies: Strategic workforce foresight, stakeholder collaboration and influence.

Skill 6: Responsible AI and Ethics

Why it matters: Bias mitigation, explainability and responsible deployment are areas where executives must make trade-offs between speed and trust. Courses increasingly include practical governance frameworks to support these decisions.
Related competencies: Ethical judgement and integrity, strategic foresight and systems thinking.

From learning to leadership practice

Developing the above competencies requires structured and intentional learning. The next step is therefore understanding how executives can build and apply them effectively. While AI learning opportunities are widely available, their effectiveness depends on context and application. As with learning a new language, the greatest value comes not from theory alone but from practical use and cultural understanding.

A range of flexible programmes now support executives in building these capabilities. Some offer on-demand, video-based content with downloadable certification (e.g. LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft, DeepLearning.AI). Others blend live instruction with self-guided modules or in-person engagement.

However, without strategic framing, such courses may lack the nuance required to translate learning into leadership impact. Incorporating executive coaching or providing structured professional development can help align AI learning with transition goals, business transformation objectives, and broader leadership capabilities such as ethics and human-first implementation.

Learning formats: matching goals and learning style

A wide spectrum of AI learning options is available to meet different executive needs, schedules, and learning preferences. To optimise the benefits of AI education, Rialto consultants recommend beginning with compact, high-quality micro-courses for immediate familiarity, followed by targeted intensive programmes aligned to sector or functional priorities. Ongoing micro-learning and peer discussion groups can then sustain progress.

Bite-size and micro-learning courses provide rapid, low-cost access to foundational AI literacy, typically requiring a commitment of four to twenty hours. They are particularly effective for boards and senior teams seeking immediate fluency, offering practical exposure to areas such as prompt engineering and vendor assessment. These short, modular courses, available from providers such as DeepLearning.AI and LinkedIn Learning, make learning highly accessible and inclusive. However, they generally offer limited depth in areas like governance, data architecture, and strategic trade-offs, and they tend to provide fewer networking opportunities or weaker credentials. As a result, they are best suited for establishing baseline literacy, developing tool-specific competence, or supplementing more intensive development initiatives.

For leaders seeking deeper engagement, intensive executive AI programmes offer a more comprehensive approach, often spanning three to eight weeks. These programmes address advanced themes such as AI governance, data architecture, vendor strategy, and organisational change management, while also enabling participants to build peer networks with other senior leaders. Providers such as MIT Sloan, Harvard Business School, Oxford, and Wharton offer faculty-led experiences with access to implementation playbooks and sector-specific case studies. Although these programmes require a higher time and financial investment, they provide the strategic depth and board-level perspective essential for developing AI maturity across organisations and for positioning executives for future leadership transitions.

Sustaining relevance through responsible AI Leadership

As AI continues to redefine the leadership landscape, executives who commit to continuous, structured learning will be best placed to lead responsibly, transform their organisations, and remain relevant through disruption. AI fluency is not an isolated technical skill; it is now a cornerstone of strategic foresight, ethical leadership, and cultural adaptability. Embedding AI capability within broader professional and organisational development enables leaders to make informed, values-driven decisions that build resilience and trust in a rapidly evolving economy.

Rialto supports this journey through its programme of complimentary invitation-only events  exploring AI and leadership topics. With 85 consultants operating globally, Rialto helps executives strengthen leadership capability, navigate transition, and align AI learning with strategic transformation goals.

Executives can also contact our research department for examples of leading AI learning programmes and providers—including Harvard Business School, LinkedIn, Deloitte, and others—that Rialto clients have successfully undertaken. To learn more, email research@rialtoconsultancy.com.

Despite £30 billion global investment in AI, just 5% is seeing ROI. The potential is there – how can organisations convert it into real returns? In the first of our three-part AI skills special, we look at how the landscape is changing and what leadership must do to stay ahead, stay relevant and seize the initiative through executive transitions and organisational transformation.

The Risks of Outdated Leadership in the AI Era

It has become unequivocally clear that the executive and economic landscapes are undergoing structural change, irreversibly and at unprecedented speed, as AI capabilities and reach expand exponentially. What were previously long-term trends have become short cycles and the skills required to remain competitive are now evolving in real time.

Meanwhile, the market is becoming increasingly challenging (see our latest executive outlook), meaning it has never been so crucial for senior leaders to be able to differentiate themselves and stay a clear length ahead of technological and cultural trends.

Thus, all executives are facing a stark reality: traditional leadership qualities remain essential, but without demonstrable, up-to-the-minute digital and AI capabilities, they risk being seen as out of touch with the markets they serve.

Leaders who allow their skills to become dated or even obsolete can also become an organisational risk if they are trying to operate in the same ways they have done traditionally.

Agility and adaptability are key to leaders and their workforces.

Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, said his top piece of advice in this febrile business culture is to “remain a lifelong learner…seek out opportunities to learn new technologies, because the ability to adapt and learn how to learn is going to set you apart.”

In the first of our three-part AI skills special, we will look at why executives need to commit to continuous learning – how the market is changing now and how it is shaping up for the rest of the decade. What do C-suite and other senior leaders need to understand and why are AI skills for executives replacing traditional skills and qualifications in executive and board level job specifications?

Part two will define and explain the most in demand AI-related technical and soft skills which are relevant to different C-suite roles and how executives can access effective learning to adapt their management style, culture and skillsets to stay relevant, including the highest rated education tools.

And the third part will examine how to audit and upskill workforces, identifying any shortages on the market of in demand expertise and soft skills and ways of future-proofing human-first organisations.

Why every executive must commit to continuous AI learning

In brief, guesswork based on fragmented or limited understanding is dangerous.

Too much AI adoption has been ill thought through or driven by hype, leading to failing pilots, disappointing ROI or financial losses, misdirected resources, stakeholder and staff scepticism and investor hesitance.

A recent MIT report found that despite up to £30 billion worth of global investment in AI, an astonishing 95% is not yet seeing any return.

Here is the difficulty: go too quickly, and leadership risks reputational and organisational damage; too slow and the landscape will have already evolved, allowing the more agile, AI-literate and aligned competition to streak ahead, gaining the innovative edge and grabbing new markets.

Choose the wrong projects and a business’s trajectory could be thrown way off target. Yet blanket adoption – expecting every knowledge-based employee to use Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini without training, oversight, ethical and security precautions or impact assessment – carries its own extremely high risks.

It’s a precarious balancing act, and only the most AI literate who are willing to commit to constant learning can keep that tightrope taut.

AI Fluency: The Core Executive Skill of the Future

The MIT study concluded: “The core barrier to scaling is not infrastructure, regulation, or talent. It is learning. Most GenAI systems do not retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time.”

While it was referring to the failure of systems to learn, it is up to leadership to define the goals, mechanisms and understand the capabilities and limitations of any AI end use under their management.

Executives need to understand the tech and what they want it to do, to set metrics and measurements. They must start with the problem, look for AI solutions and constantly analyse the data/output and recalibrate the mechanism, input and goals accordingly.

They need to work with data analysts, department leadership and teams to identify which pilots are showing the best potential for scaling up and what organisational transformation and resource allocation is needed to optimise the technology.

The Changing Leadership Job Market and AI’s Impact

AI fluency will, then, be the most important core executive skill to lead the best prepared organisations as we move into the next phase of the AI hype cycle: past the peak of the hype – possibly where we are now – and through the trough of disillusion, into the scope of enlightenment and on to the plateau of productivity.

This shift is reflected in recruitment data and in the way that executives are presenting themselves online.

According to LinkedIn, global C-suite executives listing AI literacy on their profiles have tripled in two years and 88% of senior leaders said accelerating AI adoption was a top business priority for 2025.

Labour market analyst Lightcast reports that postings mentioning generative AI skills specifically are up 800% for jobs outside IT and computer science since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, This is not marginal demand. It represents a core realignment of what employers are seeking and organisations need.

It also found that postings mentioning at least one AI skill came with a 28% salary bump, including in business management and operations and human resources.

According to Indeed, management consulting roles saw the biggest increase in Gen AI job titles.

From MBAs to Continuous AI Learning: The New Executive Education

A generation ago, it was enough to invest in an MBA, professional qualifications or sector-specific training early in a career and then rely on experience and reputation during executive transition.

Today, the pace of change is so rapid that Gartner predicts 30% of current executive skills will be obsolete by 2030. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 says 44% of workers’ core skills will change in the next five years, with leadership roles no exception.

Every few months, emerging technologies are developing beyond recognition – in just the two years since ChatGPT4 brought generative AI to the masses (see previous insight on how it impacts leadership) it is now being used in one form or another by 65% of the global knowledge-based workforce. Just as most of us were getting to grips with it, along came agentic AI, which can reason and execute complex workflows, and now we must anticipate the seismic impact that emerging Artificial General Intelligence will have.

Continuous upskilling is becoming as integral to senior leadership and executive transition as financial acumen or strategic foresight.

So, the challenge for executives is to demonstrate ongoing mastery of core leadership and governance skills while integrating technological literacy into their professional identity.

The online learning market reflects this urgency. Coursera, which offers 10,000 courses from universities and businesses, says enrolments on its 700 GenAI modules surged 195% in a year, with 8 million people signing up while platforms such as edX, LinkedIn Learning, and Udemy report that courses tagged “AI for executives” or “AI governance” are among the fastest growing.

Executives who commit to learning report tangible benefits. A 2024 PwC study found that leaders who invested at least 10 hours per month in structured learning were twice as likely to achieve promotion into board-level roles compared with peers who did not.

It also found that 88% of directors believed a single action could improve board effectiveness and 45% of them said seeking education or training on key topics was likely to have the biggest positive impact.

AI-literate leaders also report higher confidence in navigating disruptive change and greater retention of top-performing teams, as employees responded to leaders seen as forward-looking and capable of guiding organisations through uncertainty.

The nature of continuous learning is also changing. Where once it was dominated by in-person training and formal qualifications, the growth of online platforms has lowered barriers to entry. Executives can now engage in micro-learning, modular courses and personalised coaching, often alongside their daily responsibilities.

This flexibility is vital. Evidence is increasingly showing that “bite-sized” online courses that fit into a working week yield greater returns than traditional longer qualifications. This aligns with the rise of “stackable” credentials that allow leaders to build recognised expertise in areas such as AI ethics or advanced analytics without taking time away from work.

Looking ahead, the next two to five years will further intensify these demands. In 2023, McKinsey forecast that generative AI could deliver $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy by 2030 through corporate use cases, while simultaneously displacing or reshaping millions of jobs.

It now identifies the greatest challenge being how to unlock that long term potential while steering organisations through the shorter-term disruption with fewer measurable rewards. Executives will need to navigate this difficult period by combining governance and foresight with hands-on understanding of new technologies.

The New Baseline: AI Competence as a Leadership Expectation

The implications for leadership are profound. Those who embrace continuous learning will be positioned to seize opportunities in growth sectors, from healthcare technology and green energy to advanced manufacturing and financial innovation. Those who resist risk being left behind in roles that no longer exist. Evidence already suggests that traditional functions are declining. In the UK, entry-level corporate support roles fell by over a third in the past year and routine managerial oversight positions are shrinking in number and remuneration. In contrast, leadership roles requiring digital transformation skills are growing faster than average, even in a broadly flat labour market.

Executives should be using AI in almost every task – from preparing meetings and briefings to auditing and enhancing their own skills and those of the workforce; digesting the latest and most relevant market news and information; identifying risks and opportunities, driving innovation and efficiencies and getting closer to the market; improving customer and employee experience and anticipating trends and opening markets and preparing their organisation’s response; allocating resources and analysing data. The possibilities are, literally, endless and evolving every day.

Skills once considered optional are now a baseline expectation. Demonstrating competence in AI strategy, data governance and digital transformation is becoming as fundamental to boardroom credibility as financial discipline or regulatory compliance. The path to relevance lies in proactive learning, visible adaptation and the ability to tell a convincing story about how personal skills align with emerging business needs.

Staying Relevant in Executive Transition with Rialto

As the pace of change accelerates, every executive must think seriously about how to stay relevant, maintain credibility, and secure a strong executive trajectory in today’s market. This requires not only mastering the fundamentals of leadership but also committing to continuous AI learning and digital fluency.

If you are considering how best to position yourself for the next stage of your career or an upcoming executive transition, Rialto can support your journey. In addition, you can join the Rialto AI Business Leaders Circle — a forum enabling members to gain insider access to the conversations shaping the future of AI, including private briefings in the House of Lords, strategic insights from global AI experts, and the chance to influence national policy through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI.

Designed specifically for Executives, C-suite leaders, and senior decision-makers, membership offers a unique vantage point on real-world AI adoption and sector-specific ROI.

This is your opportunity to shape the dialogue, build organisational AI fluency, and secure your place at the forefront of business model transformation.

To find out more, book an appointment to speak to one of our team today:

In Part one of our Q4 Executive Outlook, Rialto economic and executive market analysts found the UK in stagnation with job vacancies on a continuous trend of constriction and an increase in candidates flooding the market with each wave of redundancies, thereby increasing competition for the limited roles available.

Here, we turn to the US, Asia and Middle East, which are facing similar uncertainty and disruption, but showing greater resilience with growth in technological innovation and AI scaling up.

Executive Outlook: United States, Q4 2025

August produced notably soft job growth in the US while July saw unemployed people outnumber job openings for the first time since April 2021.

Select pockets of technology and AI-adjacent roles, where firms still invest to capture digital advantage, continue to strengthen. These are concentrated in firms that can demonstrate rapid ROI on automation and platform initiatives. Executive search data shows fintech and AI strategy leaders are in high demand.

One of the most visible trends is a surge in demand for data centre infrastructure, fuelled by generative AI and machine learning investment. In June 2025, data centre construction spending hit a record high of $40 billion, up 30% in a year. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are leading that infrastructure build-out.

Another fast-growing sector is healthcare and healthtech. Despite broader labour market cooling, the healthcare and social assistance sectors have been among the most consistent job creators. Private sector hiring data shows healthcare roles accounting for up nearly two-thirds of recent monthly job growth. Meanwhile, venture funding in healthtech, driven by AI diagnostics, telehealth, and medical software, is rebounding strongly.

The most resilient corporate functions are tied to compliance, risk and transformation. Evidence from recent executive surveys indicates boards are still prioritising risk, digital leadership and CEO accountability. Companies want leaders capable of leveraging digital tools, managing risk and building resilient operations.

CEO turnover and board renewal are more frequent, as companies adapt leadership to better respond to disruption and regulation. Interim and short-term leadership assignments are increasing. Organisations are less patient with underperformance and more willing to bring in temporary leaders or successors from within. Executive search cycles remain lengthy but are shortening in some sectors.

Compensation growth for senior roles is modest but present; executives with transformation, AI or sustainability expertise command premium salaries.

Remote and hybrid leadership roles are more common. Companies are broadening their talent pool across geographies and expecting executives to lead distributed teams effectively, opening opportunities for global candidates.

UK and European candidates looking for US roles should, then target sectors that are booming there: healthtech, AI/data infrastructure, climate tech, reframing experience in tangential fields for relevance and demonstrate  experience in leading digital or tech initiatives.

US firms increasingly look for clear stories of transformation, resilience, risk management and stakeholder leadership.  Candidates should also demonstrate that they are confident managing across time zones, hybrid teams and multiple geographies. Fluency in remote leadership tools and protocols is a plus.

Understanding US regulatory frameworks will also give an edge, whether on privacy, environmental regulation or data governance, especially in healthtech, fintech, ESG and sustainability domains.

Laying the groundwork includes establishing a presence in US networks via industry conferences, virtual events and online. Recruiter relationships are important; many leadership opportunities are not broadly advertised.

Executive Outlook: Asia, Q4 2025.

Asia-Pacific has seen a ramp up in corporate banking and financial services leadership hiring, as firms look to service growing trade and cross-border corporate demand. JPMorgan Chase has doubled its target to 20% growth, with plans to maintain similar levels in 2026. Digital transformation, AI governance, and trade-oriented corporate services are among the most dynamic sectors.

Employment growth projections are moderate, around 1.7% for 2025, and becoming increasingly cautious, but still leading globally.

Hiring intentions are stronger in India (43 %), China (32 %) and Singapore (27%), where demand is high for senior technical, transformation and strategic leadership roles, while weaker in Hong Kong and Japan.

Increasing inter-Asia trade in the wake of US tariffs and globalisation of corporate footprints are driving the need for executives who can operate across markets with regional sensitivity and fluency.

The talent pool for executives who combine cross-border experience with technical acumen, leadership, strategy and stakeholder relationship skills is stretched, holding back growth in some areas. High performing executives looking for portfolio or permanent posts who are struggling in the UK might find greater and better paid opportunities in these Asia growth areas.

Executives aiming for senior roles should emphasise hybrid skills, ability to scale operations across Asian markets, navigate regulatory complexity, trade-tailored risk and stakeholder management.

Those in technology roles should move toward growing strategic, leadership, architecture and transformation roles and away from shrinking implementation and development work.

Candidates open to a position in Asia should be ready to pivot regionally or functionally.

Executive Outlook: MENA (Middle East and North Africa) 2025, Q4

This region is becoming increasingly attractive to executives as it leads globally in several metrics. Around one in six major companies have made new CEO appointments in recent years, drawing overwhelmingly from c-suite experience.

According to a PwC survey, about 90% of CEOs in Gulf Cooperation Council countries expect revenue growth through 2025 and 61% expect to increase headcount, especially in healthcare, energy, utilities, technology, media and telecommunications, transport and logistics. Also growing are consulting, business development and transformation roles within financial institutions.

As oil export revenues continue to be important, there is simultaneous large investment in non-oil infrastructure: renewable energy, green infrastructure, electric vehicle infrastructure, data centres and new utilities are growing rapidly. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plays a central role here.

Demand is growing in real estate and project delivery, particularly in UAE and Abu Dhabi, tied to large infrastructure and development projects, while public sector hiring has also increased, especially in governance, citizen services and digital administration.

Consumer markets are also broadly optimistic.

Retail and hospitality are experiencing a dip.

Organisations are looking for executives who can lead digitalisation, AI, data analytics and cybersecurity. Traditional sectors like energy, banking and manufacturing are increasingly seeking digital-savvy leaders, with roles such as Chief Data and Analytics Officers, CDOs and CIOs as well as regulatory positions in high demand.

They also want leaders who can navigate multiple markets or have worked across different borders and sectors.

There is a clear move toward using independent professionals and consultants for specialised, project-based work. Skills in payments, product development, risk, business development and analytics are in high demand. Freelancers and interim executives are being engaged increasingly in strategic execution roles

There is, however, growing pressure to localise leadership, especially in UAE and Qatar, which may restrict opportunities for those from outside the region.

Candidates can boost their chances by positioning as specialist, not just generalist, especially those with experience in digital transformation, AI, data analytics, sustainability, renewables, or risk and compliance.

Fluency in regional business culture, regulatory regimes, localisation policies and relevant languages help.

Employers look for leaders who can adapt, deliver results under budget constraints, lead hybrid or remote teams or take project-based roles. Being open to interim or consulting work can initiate entry.

Those exploring the region cold should make connections in GCC hubs (Dubai, Riyadh, Doha), participate in regional professional forums and virtual events. If possible, take on regional assignments or secondments.

Packages often include more than base salary: housing, schooling, relocation, expat benefits, sometimes allowances or profit-sharing.

Certifications or demonstrable experience in AI, cybersecurity, data science, cloud, product leadership or sustainability will make a difference, especially where demand exceeds supply.

So, while regional differentiations exist and must be taken into account, the executive markets in the UK, EU, US and MENA all reflect a common reality: opportunities exist, but they are increasingly sector-specific, competitive and shaped by rapid technological, regulatory and cultural change. Whether targeting the buoyant US healthtech and AI markets, the transformation and infrastructure agendas of the Middle East, or navigating a slow-growth UK economy, executives need to demonstrate more than technical expertise. They must show adaptability, clarity of vision, and the ability to deliver outcomes under scrutiny.

For those considering overseas roles, there may be a need to consider executive coaching which can offer support on multiple levels:

• Reframing leadership narratives: Coaches work with executives to translate their domestic achievements into globally relevant stories. This ensures experience gained in the UK can resonate with US, Asia or MENA boards seeking innovation, resilience and digital fluency.
• Building cultural intelligence: Transitioning overseas requires sensitivity to local business practices, governance structures, and stakeholder expectations. Coaching helps executives anticipate and adapt to these cultural dimensions with confidence.
• Strategic positioning in growth sectors: With hiring pipelines tightening, coaches guide clients to identify niches such AI and data infrastructure, where demand is strongest, and to reposition their skills accordingly.
• Resilience and agility under uncertainty: Overseas transitions bring additional stress: relocation, new teams, different compensation structures and higher performance pressures. Coaching builds resilience, helping leaders remain calm, decisive and credible through change.
• Succession readiness and interim opportunities: In markets where leadership turnover is rapid, coaching helps executives develop a “first-90 days” impact plan, ensuring they can deliver immediate results in new or interim roles.

Ultimately, executive coaching provides the bridge between aspiration and execution. It equips leaders to navigate the complexity of global hiring markets, strengthens their capacity to lead across borders and ensures they approach opportunities overseas with clarity, confidence and competitive positioning.

In today’s market, technical expertise alone is not enough. Boards and recruiters are looking for proof of adaptability, cultural intelligence and the ability to deliver results under scrutiny. Executives who can translate their achievements into globally relevant narratives, show fluency in digital and regulatory domains, and demonstrate resilience in uncertain environments will stand out. Coaching accelerates this process, turning experience into a competitive advantage and ensuring leaders step into overseas opportunities ready to make immediate impact.

Seeking opportunities in an evolving market

As we move into the tail end of what has been another challenging year, Rialto analysts bring you our latest quarterly insight into the executive job market, emerging growth areas and risks, and ask what executives should focus on to stay relevant and/or repivot.

We are seeing a very definite shift in the executive market across the globe from legacy functions and sectors to emerging technologies, regions and digital transformation, and big trends of automation and restructuring.

Rialto director Richard Chiumento said: “This is a real tightening of the market which is being reset. We are seeing a tsunami of restructuring announcements. This is not cyclical, it’s structural. I fear many executives and senior leaders have not yet grasped the direction in which we are headed.

“Generative AI, Agentic AI, and fast-evolving Artificial General Intelligence, which will add human-like cognitive capacity to technology, will wipe out and/or disrupt millions of jobs in the next few years. The process is underway already.

“For those who embrace this revolution, the future looks exciting and full of opportunity. For those who feel intimidated by it or are avoidant, it is going to need a new strategy to survive & thrive.”

UK Economic Outlook

The economy flatlined in July, following 0.4% growth in June, a continuing trend of month-by-month volatility.

The ONS attributed the July slowdown to a 0.9% fall in production, particularly in manufacturing, which offset gains in services and construction.

Services such as health, IT, and business support held up well, offering some resilience.

Most forecasters expect modest GDP growth in Q4, but at a slower pace than earlier in the year. The Bank of England and the OECD suggest around 0.1–0.2% through the end of 2025.

Looking to 2026, the Office for Budget Responsibility and IMF suggest the UK will expand by roughly 1% in 2026, weaker than the G7 average, as the effects of higher taxes and slower productivity gains weigh on output. The Resolution Foundation warns that real household disposable income will be squeezed again unless inflation falls faster than expected.

The UK’s goods deficit increased by £3bn to £61.9bn in the three months to July, though exports were beginning to rise again at the end of the period and the UK was saved from the worst of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs chaos.

The Consumer Prices Index rose by 4.1% in the 12 months to August 2025, down from 4.2% in the 12 months to July but still twice the Bank of England target.

Interest rates remained unchanged at 4%, remaining cautious until inflation falls, but two of the nine Monetary Policy Committee members voted for a 0.25% cut.

This all adds to the fiscal bind Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces, as debt servicing costs climb and demands for higher public spending persist. That infamous £22 billion blackhole appears to have expanded into a £40 billion one. Something’s got to give.

UK government borrowing rose to a five-year high in August, up £3.5 billion in just a month to £18 billion, raising the spectre of tax rises in the Budget.

Bright Spots

Despite the gloom, there are limited areas of strength. Digital and IT services remain buoyant, with computer programming and support services growing steadily. Construction and engineering have shown resilience, aided by infrastructure spending commitments. Importantly, real wages are still rising, albeit more modestly than of late, giving households some buffer against cost pressures.

While the economy feels “stuck,” as Treasury officials admit, the UK retains pockets of dynamism. For executives and businesses, success in 2026 will hinge on aligning with these growth niches and embracing emerging technologies while weathering a period of slower overall expansion.

The Executive market: Steep fall in vacancies down, jobseekers up

The latest data shows vacancies have fallen for 23 consecutive months, and they are falling more quickly. According to the ONS, they dropped 119,000 in June–August 2025 on the previous year, (-14% ) and are now 8.4% below pre-pandemic levels.  The fall was steeper for permanent roles and in the southeast of England. Decline was seen in half of UK sectors.  The number of unemployed people per vacancy was up to 2.3 in Q2 from 2.2 the previous quarter.

Vacancy numbers have now dropped compared with the previous three months for more than three years, and by around 571,000 since March to May 2022.

Payrolled employees in the UK fell by 142,000 (0.5%) in the year to July 2025, but were stable on the month and early estimates show they were likely to stay the same for August.

(NB ONS labour force statistics are acknowledged to be variable in accuracy.)

Employer caution around economic uncertainty coupled with waves of redundancies, many triggered by the impact of AI, drove the steepest upturn in candidate availability since November 2020, according to KPMG and REC’s report on UK jobs for August.

Earnings growth remains positive, nominally, at around 4.9%, but when adjusted for inflation, just 0.7%. Salaries increased faster in the public sector, 5.6%, compared to 4.7% in the private sector

Macro headwinds will continue to affect hiring pace, but pockets of executive demand remain. Firms are prioritising targeted senior hires rather than broad headcount expansion.

FTSE boardrooms continue moderate renewal while the drive for female representation and governance capability continues to shape NED recruitment and board agendas. Boards are meeting frequently and scrutinising strategy, risk and succession planning.

Executive Outlook: European Union, Q4 2025

The EU unemployment rate was 5.9% and the euro-area rate 6.2% for July 2025, a modest monthly improvement and a small improvement year-on-year.

There was a contrast between the cooler north and hotter south. Postings in Germany and France have fallen 15% and 19%, respectively, over the past year, while vacancies in Spain and Italy were 46% and 53% above pre-pandemic levels, according to Indeed.

Demand for transformation, governance, sustainability and compliance skills strengthened as companies prepare for AI automation as well as stricter reporting regimes, while general hiring softened in more cyclical consumer sectors. Staffing and executive search data for Q3 show cautious employer sentiment but persistent need for specialised executive talent.    

Professional and engineering roles tied to public sector or infrastructure spending were also strong.

With consumer demand slow, relevant sectors including leisure and retail are showing weak executive hiring.

Placements in non-specialist corporate support functions are facing downsizing as companies consolidate technology platforms and centralise operations.

What Executives Should Watch and Do:

• Executives will need to demonstrate evidence-based growth stories alongside cost discipline, resilience and agility. They must articulate clear value creation in a slow-growth environment.
• With weaker hiring pipelines in traditional sectors, executives may need to pivot toward growth areas such as digital services, infrastructure, health and technology-enabled models. Repositioning or reskilling into these niches will help maintain relevance.
• Leaders across public and private sectors will face constrained budgets. Executives must show they can deliver results with limited resources, manage stakeholders effectively and maintain morale during uncertainty.
• Boards under pressure are more likely to reshuffle or appoint interims. Executives should be ready for accelerated succession opportunities and prepared to deliver short-term impact.
• With the UK projected to lag the wider G7 in 2026, executives should strengthen their international outlook, framing skills and experience to meet global demand.
• Executives also need to build a compelling narrative demonstrating resilience, innovation, clear communication and vision. The ability to motivate and steady teams will be critical in a stagnating economy and through any restructuring.
• Compensation expectations should remain realistic. Pay growth is cooling. While negotiation power is weaker, total compensation packages may be flexible through bonuses, benefits, equity or hybrid arrangements. Candidates should seek advice on current trends within specific roles and sectors and in benchmarking their own value proposition.
• Organisations are less likely to hire externally when they can promote from within. Internal successors and those open to shifting roles internally may find more opportunity.
• Those seeking pan-EU roles must show familiarity with divergent national implementations of EU rules and the stakeholder engagement required across markets.

Alongside traditional strategy and people skills, boards are asking executives to combine commercial judgement with the ability to deploy and govern generative AI and analytics-led decisions.

The outlook for Q4 is one of stability rather than expansion. Growth will be subdued but is not expected to collapse.

So, across the UK and the EU, a structural change in hiring and an accelerating decline in traditional sectors and functions continues apace, with opportunities in c-suite and senior leadership roles evolving to oversee successful digital transformation and ensure competitive performance to steer organisations through uncertainty and restructuring. AI literacy is a must for ALL executives, not just those in technology-heavy functions.

Organisations are investing in executive learning (digital, people leadership, AI governance). LinkedIn and other corporate-learning reports show rising demand for upskilling and role-readiness programmes targeted at leaders. Executives who are not developing their own skills will be left behind.

Q4 2025 promises to be a test of adaptability for executives. With vacancies continuing to decline, pay growth cooling and certain sectors softening, the edge will go to leaders who anticipate where demand remains strongest, can show measurable value, and remain flexible in their role expectations and compensation.

The challenge for executives is no longer just to ride out short-term cycles, but to pivot decisively toward growth niches including AI literacy and international relevance. Those who adapt their leadership narrative now will be best placed to turn today’s structural disruption into tomorrow’s opportunity.

As we enter the final stretch of the business year, leaders across industries and geographies are navigating a critical transition, from Q3’s build-up to Q4’s culmination. While the calendar may differ across global regions, this period consistently represents a strategic inflection point: a chance to harness momentum, sharpen focus and lead with renewed intent.

For those in the UK and Europe, the past weeks may have included time for reflection, whether through a formal break, a shift in pace, or simply the mental space to zoom out. For others, it may have been business as usual, with teams accelerating key initiatives to set up a strong Q4. Regardless of how the quarter unfolded, what matters now is how leaders use this moment to elevate impact and finish the year not just delivering results, but growing as leaders.  How leaders show up now will determine how they finish the year – and how they’re positioned to lead into what’s next.

Navigating Q4: Leading Through Complexity and Change

As organisations contend with fast-changing market dynamics, shifting stakeholder expectations and increased operational pressure, Q4 places leaders squarely at the intersection of delivery and disruption. Strategic plans made earlier in the year may now need recalibrating. Budget scrutiny tightens. Execution timelines compress. And yet, the need for clear, forward-facing leadership has never been more urgent.

Those at the top are expected not just to hit targets, but to inspire confidence, create clarity in uncertainty and drive initiatives forward amid competing demands. From economic headwinds to internal transformation efforts, the pressure is multi-dimensional. But high-performing leaders use this pressure to sharpen focus, align teams around what matters most and lay groundwork for sustainable growth.

Leading through complexity demands operational control which means maintaining perspective, identifying areas where adjustments are needed and redirecting resources if necessary, and ensuring decisions reflect both short-term imperatives and long-term strategic intent.

For some sectors, such as retail and sales, Q4 can represent a seasonal push to meet rising pre-Christmas demand while companies operating within or trading with regions approaching the end of their fiscal year may be under pressure to finalise deals and increase enterprise transactions as deadlines approach for budgets to be spent or allocated. Leadership may need to channel resources and focus into B2B or B2C sales.

For other regions, where fiscal year ends in April, sustaining energy and engagement levels and a focus on continuing growth towards the Q4 year-end can be a priority.

Q4 as a Career Catalyst: Elevating Personal Leadership Impact

This final stretch of the year is also a critical moment to reflect on personal positioning and career trajectory. In times of heightened visibility, how a leader engages, where they focus their time and how they influence outcomes all contribute to their broader leadership brand.

Q4 should be viewed not only as a time to deliver on organisational performance goals, but to elevate personal leadership impact. Every business-critical initiative, board interaction, or cross-functional collaboration becomes a platform for growth, influence and development. Effective leaders take ownership of their narrative, using this period to demonstrate agility, decisiveness and the ability to lead through pressure

Training and development initiatives can easily fall by the wayside at this point of the year as energy levels are drained, and pressure builds into and through Q4 to ensure KPIs and revenue targets are hit. Forward-thinking leaders, however, will have a plan for year-round development, and will be thinking about how they can build time into their busy schedules to focus on their own performance and growth even through this critical period.

Self-awareness is key. Step back regularly to consider where you are investing energy, how your leadership is being perceived and what capabilities you need to build to remain effective. The leaders who thrive long-term are those who take stock, invite collaboration and constructive feedback and listen. Only then can they continue to challenge themselves to constantly improve their own performance and productivity and to be better leaders.

Staying Relevant: Preparing for the Leadership Demands of Tomorrow

Q4 requires both tactical delivery and strategic foresight. With the business landscape constantly evolving, future relevance can’t be left to chance. Leaders must now assess whether their current capabilities, mindset and networks are fit for the future.

Remaining relevant means actively developing the skills, insight and influence required to lead in a world where agility, innovation and cross-functional leadership are increasingly non-negotiable. This is the time to act on that feedback, build strategic relationships and stretch your personal contribution into new areas. It’s about identifying where you are adding value now, but also where your impact can grow next and planning actionable steps to ensure continuous personal and professional development and expansion of your influence and expertise.

Leaders who embrace Q4 as an opportunity to evolve, not just perform, are the ones who set themselves apart. They move from delivering results to shaping what’s possible.

How Rialto Supports Leaders to Deliver and Evolve

At Rialto, we work with senior leaders navigating exactly these moments, where delivery and transformation go hand in hand. Whether you’re refining your Q4 strategy, seeking to amplify your leadership impact or planning for the next chapter in your career, we help turn intention into implementation.

Our work is focused on aligning individual leadership ambition with business strategy, providing the tools, insights and frameworks to stay relevant, impactful and future-fit.

As you lead through Q4 and into a new business cycle, it is critical to plan strategically how to close the year for your organisation optimally, but high-performance leaders will also be consciously and constructively setting the stage for their own self-improvement and career development.