Leadership used to reward certainty. Senior leaders were expected to know the answer, set direction and move decisively.

Today, the environment rarely provides enough stability for that model to work on its own.

Harvard Business Impact’s 2026 Global Leadership Study, No Stable Ground: Balancing Competing Tensions to Win in an Uncertain World, draws on 1,139 survey responses and interviews with senior leaders across more than 15 countries. The study found that 80% of respondents now consider the ability to function effectively amid ongoing change, uncertainty and stress to be very or extremely important. That figure has risen from 58% in 2024 and 75% in 2025.

The implication is clear. Leadership development can no longer be built only around scheduled programmes and fixed capability models. Leaders need ongoing access to trusted ideas, practical guidance and opportunities to strengthen their judgment while real decisions are being made.

Leaders Must Perform and Reinvent at the Same Time

One of the central tensions identified in the study is the need to deliver current performance while preparing the organisation for what comes next.

Current performance funds reinvention. Reinvention, in turn, protects future performance. But focusing too heavily on either side creates risk.

An organisation that concentrates only on immediate productivity and efficiency may deliver strong results today while gradually losing relevance. An organisation that constantly pursues reinvention may create distraction, change fatigue and weaker execution.

The study shows how strongly these priorities are already competing for leadership attention. Among the senior leaders surveyed, 51% said their organisations were prioritising the deployment of AI to improve business practices, 45% were automating workflows to improve productivity, 43% were strengthening cybersecurity and data privacy, and 42% were optimising operational efficiency.

These are not isolated initiatives. They affect investment choices, customer expectations, roles, capabilities, culture and the future direction of the business.

No single framework or data set can tell a leader exactly how much attention to give each priority. Leaders must interpret incomplete information, manage competing expectations and make choices whose full consequences may only become visible later.

This is why senior leadership development must go beyond transferring knowledge. It must help leaders think through tensions where there may be no obvious answer.

AI Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Leadership Readiness

The leadership readiness gap becomes even clearer when we look at AI adoption.

The research found that 82% of respondents said AI was already significantly or extensively integrated into daily workflows. Yet only 35% said their leaders were fully prepared to integrate AI generated insights, apply judgment and navigate the associated risks.

Technology is moving into everyday work faster than leadership capability is being developed around it.

The study also found that 96% expect leaders in their organisations to work effectively in human and AI fusion roles. In these roles, leaders will need to guide, refine, challenge and integrate AI outputs into decisions and workflows.

The leadership requirement is not simply knowing how to use an AI tool. Leaders must know when to trust an output, when to question it, what evidence may be missing and which human considerations cannot be delegated.

They must also protect accountability. A polished analysis can appear authoritative even when it rests on incomplete assumptions. Leaders therefore need the confidence and discipline to pause before acting, test the reasoning and consider who may see the issue differently.

The Best Leaders Will Ask Better Questions

For generations, expertise has been associated with having answers.

But when information and analysis are widely accessible, expertise must be used differently. Its value increasingly lies in helping leaders ask better questions, examine assumptions and expand what the organisation is able to see.

The study describes this shift as moving from being an owner of expertise to becoming an architect of inquiry.

An owner of expertise is likely to rely on established frameworks, proven practices and previous experience. This can support execution, but it can also keep the organisation tied to assumptions that are no longer valid.

An architect of inquiry uses experience as a starting point for exploration. They ask what has changed, which assumptions no longer hold, what signals are being overlooked and where current success may be hiding future risk.

More than four in ten leaders surveyed said they wanted their leadership development to place greater emphasis on creating a culture of continuous learning and adaptability, as well as promoting innovation and experimentation.

Developing this mindset requires more than a single workshop. Leaders need regular exposure to new perspectives and structured opportunities to question, reflect and apply what they are learning.

Leadership Learning Must Enter the Flow of Work

Scheduled leadership programmes remain valuable. They create space for reflection, shared learning and deeper conversations.

But critical decisions rarely wait for the next workshop.

A senior leader may need to prepare for a difficult stakeholder discussion, respond to resistance, rethink a strategic assumption or make sense of an unfamiliar business challenge within hours.

This is where HBR Spark becomes highly relevant.

HBR Spark is a customised leadership development experience designed to support learning in the flow of work. It combines skill and AI based personalisation with timely leadership and management content. Leaders can access more than 25,000 resources, receive responses to pressing leadership questions backed by Harvard Business Review content, follow customised learning pathways, and use 219 practice and reflection lessons along with 34 application focused labs.

This makes HBR Spark more than a content platform. It becomes a continuous leadership development environment that leaders can return to as their priorities, roles and challenges evolve.

A leader confronting resistance to change can immediately explore relevant thinking. A leader considering a complex decision can examine alternative perspectives. A leader preparing for an important conversation can strengthen their approach before entering the room.

Learning moves closer to the moment of application.

Building the Capacity to Lead Through Complexity

The study found that 79% of respondents believe sensemaking under uncertainty will be very or extremely important for successful AI transformation over the next three to five years. It also highlights psychological safety, ethical discernment, emotional endurance and the ability to challenge AI decisions as essential leadership capabilities.

These capabilities cannot be developed through information consumption alone.

They are strengthened through repeated practice. Leaders must learn to pause, question, test, reflect and adjust. They need opportunities to consider different responses, examine their assumptions and understand how their choices may affect people, trust and culture.

HBR Spark supports this movement from knowing to doing by combining trusted insights with practice based learning and application.

A New Model for Senior Leadership Development

The competitive advantage of an organisation will increasingly depend on how quickly it learns, how wisely it exercises judgment and how effectively it adapts without losing trust or distinctiveness.

Senior leaders do not simply need more information. They need relevant ideas at the right time, trusted perspectives when the answer is unclear and practical ways to turn insight into action.

HBR Spark brings leadership development into the everyday realities of senior leadership. It extends learning beyond scheduled interventions and supports leaders in the moments where decisions, conversations and strategic choices actually happen.

In a world with no stable ground, this ability to keep learning may become one of the most important leadership capabilities of all.

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Explore how HBR Spark can give your senior leaders trusted Harvard insights, practical application and personalised leadership learning in the flow of work.

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