Reflections as our Egon Zehnder team heads to Davos 2026
The operating environment for leaders has not become more certain nor has the path forward become clearer. But leaders aren’t retreating from the complexity or the chaos. In fact, they are stepping forward with confidence, as our latest CEO study shows: In 2025, a majority of 1,235 respondents said their organizations are prepared to face the complexities and challenges of today, compared to a more dispersed confidence response in 2024. This resilience signals a growing determination to lead with clarity and conviction, even in turbulent times.
However, this rising confidence has not eliminated the tensions that leaders face. As leaders step forward, they are increasingly pulled toward decisive actions and simplified narratives, even when the reality they face is more complex than an either/or choice. But leading today rarely allows for such a clear choice. It increasingly requires holding opposing forces simultaneously.
Power and empathy.
Conviction and curiosity.
Inner awareness and external action.
The challenge isn’t deciding between them but working within the and.
However, leading in the and isn’t so easy. Many leaders we speak with describe a growing weight to their roles that is not always visible. Expectations from stakeholders are high, the pace doesn’t slow, and the issues coming across their desks are complex. They are making decisions in real time, often with incomplete information. They do so while new challenges keep emerging, especially around technology and AI, without the time to fully process the implications.
In this type of environment, it can be tempting to fall into either/or thinking and decision-making. To prioritize speed over more perspectives or connections. But reality is not this binary. Complexity isn’t solved by choosing a side. Leaders must be able to hold tension without being paralyzed by it and act without oversimplifying the stakes.
This is the edge many leaders find themselves standing on. In times like this, leadership is often misunderstood as a choice between opposing qualities—strength or empathy, decisiveness or inclusion, authority or openness. In practice, effective leadership requires them all at once. Leaders must act with force and direction while remaining deeply attuned to the people and systems they are influencing. They must move their organizations forward without severing the relationships that make such movement possible.
The work is not choosing a side. It is being able to stay in the tension long enough to act without collapsing into false certainty.
Few forces are testing this leadership capability more than AI. For many leaders, AI adoption has forced the conversation on long-standing organizational tensions: human judgment and automation, speed and responsibility, innovation and organizational readiness. Our recent studies with CHROs, CFOs and technology leaders reveal a pattern: While AI is widely viewed as critical to their strategy, fewer than 10% say they have fully scaled use cases. And technology leaders say the biggest barriers to transformation are human not technical, stemming from culture and organizational readiness.
In this context, the challenges reflect something deeper—that leaders are still in the process of determining what they believe, what they are worried about and what they are prepared to stand behind as they move forward. AI does not introduce these tensions; it exposes them.
One of the key mechanisms for leading in the and is dialogue. The more candid conversations leaders have the more points of view they can learn from. Discussing an idea is not a pause from decision-making. It is how leaders can balance polarities while without defaulting to either/or thinking. Effective dialogue invites leaders to hold opposing truths long enough for better decisions to take shape. It creates a space for debate without eroding momentum or drifting into indecision.
Davos can amplify these tensions. It is a setting where leaders are often expected to be visionary, decisive and charismatic while they may privately be juggling these polarities and the pressure to act. The risk in these environments is that everyone brings their polished best selves to every discussion and loses out on the opportunity to raise some of the most pressing questions they face. In a time of complexity, these are more than ever not only about strategic and technical solutions—but about human capacities and decisions. Here are some of them:
- Am I able to reflect on my own capacities and shortcomings, and can I honor them?
- Have I learned to articulate all of myself in a safe space?
- Do I permit the discomfort of unlearning old habits and reflexes as a leader?
- How do you teach yourself how to quiet old habits and reflexes as a leader?
- What assumptions about talent do we need to revisit in light of a complex world?
- How do we balance the usefulness of AI with human judgment, empathy, and creativity?
- Have we created space in our organization where everyone can consistently evolve their capabilities to respond to complexity?
These questions don’t have easy or immediate answers. But asking them opens a space where leaders can speak freely about what is ahead and what they are unsure of. These conversations are a starting point for the big decisions they face ahead – and often, for their own journey.
At Egon Zehnder, we bring leaders into these types of conversations every day. And we don’t come to perfect answers and solutions, but we open the door to explore what is uncertain and what is possible.
As Davos approaches, we invite leaders to leave behind their well-prepared media remarks and speeches and embrace the power of open, unfiltered dialogue. The most impactful conversations won’t be the curated ones on stage. But the candid, difficult exchanges about the tensions leaders are managing.
Because ultimately, leadership is always about performance, but true leadership is more than that. It’s about asking the difficult questions that need to be asked and holding the and between these tensions and leading from there.
