When I first met her, she was a new manager navigating the transition from team member to leader.  One of her biggest fears?  That she wasn’t approachable and that it would undermine her and her team's effectiveness and success.

She explained how her natural tendencies—being direct, task-focused, and results-driven—made her doubt whether her team felt comfortable coming to her with questions or concerns.  Through coaching, we uncovered the real issue:  She had never sought feedback on her approachability.  She was operating on assumptions rather than facts.

With encouragement, she began asking key direct reports, colleagues, and even her boss for their honest input.  The results were eye-opening.  Far from being unapproachable, she learned that her team valued her focus and clarity, seeing her as a strong, supportive leader.  They felt that she was indeed approachable and that her approachability was built on a genuine human connection tied to a shared team purpose and her concern for their development and success.  That insight transformed her self-perception and, more importantly, boosted her confidence in herself and her new role.  Several successful months later, she was  promoted, once again.

Her journey underscores a critical truth:  Leadership isn’t just about technical skills—it’s about accurate self-awareness, genuine connections, collaboration, growth, and shared purpose.

Business, the economy, technology, and talent are moving at a breakneck pace and becoming more complex just as consumer expectations rise.  Leaders are at the forefront of all of this change.  Whether you are a new or seasoned leader, success in 2025 will depend on addressing four key leadership trends. 

SHARED PURPOSE, GENUINE CONNECTIONS, & INNOVATION
Shared team meaning and purpose are the bedrock of team effectiveness and success.  Let's connect the dots between shared meaning and purpose (a.k.a., purpose-driven leadership) and success.

You see, when people are aligned with a clear and strong sense of shared purpose, they not only bond together in the tasks that they do together while moving toward realizing that purpose, but they bond emotionally.  They will feel connected.  Those experiences form the common ground that fosters trust and collaboration—and that yields creativity, innovation, and success.  As a recent DDI article on 2025 leadership trends explains, "When team members feel connected and aligned, they bring creativity, insight, and flexibility to their daily work."

The most effective leaders in 2025 will leverage these principals.  They will guide their team through the process of identifying, clarifying, and articulating a shared team mission, vision, and goals—even if that means integrating organizational goals and expectations.  They will foster psychologically safe environments while balancing autonomy and empowerment with a focus on common goals and purpose.  They will recognize and reward towards those ends and celebrate successes along the way.

BURNOUT & THE LEADERSHIP PIPELINE CRISIS
DDI and others have identified these two interconnected leadership trends.  The stress of leadership is on the rise causing many to feel isolated, burned-out, and disengaged.  Team members see the toll that being a leader takes on their managers and become less likely to pursue leadership roles, themselves.  Organizations then struggle to identify emerging leaders in this ever-shrinking leadership pipeline. 

Executives and senior leaders, HR, and L&OD must rethink how they nurture, support, and develop leaders in 2025 to reverse this negative feedback loop.  Senior leaders who seek feedback through instruments such as the LPI360, can gain insights into their own leadership behaviors in order to more effectively lead and serve those under their umbrella.  Proactive solutions can be prioritizing leader wellbeing, fostering a sense of connection and purpose, offering professional leadership coaching, and rethinking leadership development programs and support structures.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME & LEADERSHIP
Korn Ferry's Workforce 2024 Global Insights Report was released just a few months ago.  They surveyed 10,000 global employees and the data revealed some surprises.  

More than 70% of American CEOs admitted that they struggle with imposter syndrome.  And while CEOs reported the highest levels, imposter syndrome was pervasive across all levels of leadership and management.  This led them to conclude that this "might suggest that companies aren’t investing in the right kind of leadership coaching and training—or that they’re promoting people without giving them the tools they need to succeed."

Organizations can address this trend by shifting away from transactional training to true developmental experiences and transformational coaching.  The empowerment that purpose-driven leadership (mentioned above) can give leaders and teams and professional coaching are strong and cost-effective ways that organizations can respond to this trend.

HOLISTIC LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Blanchard's 2025 HR/L&D Trends Survey took a look at what over 900 people had to say were the most pressing challenges as they looked ahead to the new year.  Some of the seven identified challenges aligned with what DDI and Korn Ferry identified, such as leadership development and leadership bench strength, employee engagement and culture, change management, and resilience. 

These recurring themes iterate and reiterate in variations and degrees most years for leaders and organizations.  Certainly, the solutions mentioned previously are solid answers to 2025 challenges.  Additionally, fostering a culture where continuous learning is encouraged up and down the food chain and ensuring leaders are developing the necessary skills to navigate evolving challenges are also effective ways to navigate these themes. 

However, when it comes to culture and employee engagement, many organizations bring in outside eyes and ears in the form of an expert consultant.  Unbiased and uninfluenced by the organization's culture, personalities, and command structure, a seasoned organizational and leadership development consultant can provide an assessment and offer possible solutions through a clearer lens.

OVERVIEW
The leadership landscape of 2025 presents both challenges and opportunities.  By focusing on fostering genuine connections, addressing burnout, combating imposter syndrome, and adopting a holistic approach to leadership development, organizations can equip their leaders to navigate the complexities of the modern workplace.

As you reflect on these trends, consider how your organization is preparing its leaders for the future.  Investing in comprehensive development programs today will pave the way for a resilient and innovative leadership team tomorrow.

I invite you to share your thoughts on these trends.

• What challenges have you observed in your recent leadership journey?
• What trends for 2025 are you and your team anticipating?
  
• How are you addressing these?

Let's continue the conversation and learn from each other's experiences.

Happy New Year!

Leaders and organizations are facing challenging volatility and uncertainty—some might even say outright crises—from every direction today. 

• Geopolitical disruptions
• Inflation, cost of living, revenue, and economic uncertainties for themselves, their employees, consumers, and the business
• Balancing and managing remote and in-person work
• Recruitment and the labor shortage
• A changing and aging labor market and what some have called the "Great Reshuffle" and the "Great Detachment"
  
• Motivating, engaging, and retaining talent
• Performance management, productivity, and innovation
• Change management/leadership and process improvement
• Training and development
• Mental health and wellbeing

These exigencies threaten multiple aspects of life, business, and leadership effectiveness.  Management and leadership approaches, strategies, and philosophies that may have worked in the past may no longer be warranted today. 

However, these issues can also be opportunities, depending on how  leaders and organizations view, approach, and deal with them.  It's time to question past leadership approaches and rethink the way we lead—and there is ample opportunity.

Consider McKinsey's The State of Organizations 2023 in which they reported that only 25% of survey respondents said that they "consider their leadership culture to be one that inspires employees to the best extent possible."  That report and other research highlights just how critical purpose-driven leadership is to stakeholders and employees; including financial value and revenue.

McKinsey found that respondents viewed three top leadership elements as most important for their organizations:

• Role modeling— Focusing on building respect and considering the ethical consequences of decisions
• Inspiring others—Presenting a compelling vision of the future and inspiring optimism about its implementation
• Developing people—Spending time teaching, mentoring, and listening to individual needs and concerns

One of the problems is that many organizations lack the incentive due to a crisis-like mentality that puts a focus on short-term thinking and strategies and therefore, they don't invest in the training and leadership development that would actually create the culture, results, and financial returns they so desperately seek. 

Less than 40% of the organizations in the survey have made development a core part of leaders' daily work and less than 30% have made leadership training more accessible.  On a positive note, more than half (55%) have invested in some form of leadership development and in changing leadership selection requirements.

KEY STRATEGIC ANSWERS
Three key strategic answers squarely meet these challenges.

1)  Leading Self—Leaders today need the courage to champion self-awareness, purpose-driven leadership, and authenticity.  They give the leader inspiration, focus, consistency, and a solid bedrock for purpose/value-driven decision-making.  And that fosters leader engagement and organizational commitment. 

When leveraged effectively, the leader becomes a model of this key driver of success inspiring others and fostering trust through demonstrated integrity.  They not only 'talk the talk,' they 'walk the walk.'  Leaders with a clear leadership philosophy when compared to those without a clear leadership philosophy are rated 140% higher on leadership effectiveness by those they lead.

Another part of leading self is seeking answers to the question, "How do others see me as a leader?"  A proven way to gain actionable feedback to that question is through an empirically-based 360-degree leadership assessment, such as the LPI360.  It gives the leader clear insights into their leadership strengths and opportunities for growth.

Learning to harness your leadership philosophy effectively builds your own unique leadership style in new and powerful ways.  It magnifies your leadership effectiveness, models authenticity and integrity, drives growth and productivity, and is a key driver of fulfillment and success. 

2)  Leading Teams—Further along the purpose-driven leadership path, leaders also need to be the catalyst that empowers purpose and collaboration at a team level. 

Harnessing the collaborative process of creating, implementing, and leveraging a Shared Team Mission & Values Statement and a Shared Team Vision Statement aligns individual purpose and values with the collective mission, vision, and values.  Research has shown that by fostering a culture of shared purpose, the leader elevates job satisfaction, engagement, productivity, and retention.  And, purpose-driven leadership has been shown to enhance health, wellbeing, and even longevity.

3)  Leading Change—Once these two strategies are in place, it's time to put them into action through aligned change initiatives and process improvement projects with clear goals and expectations.  When mission and vision are created from both the top-down and the bottom-up approaches, buy-in and inspiration to be and do one's best are galvanized. This is how value is created. 

When leading change effectively, the leader fosters an environment in which teams work on these initiatives with autonomy, discovery, and the freedom to innovate; further building engagement and boosting retention. 

Rather than being the boss/controller, the leader who leverages this strategy well, leans into being more of a coach who keeps people and projects aligned with mission, vision, and goals and only steps in when necessary for crucial feedback and decision-making. 

The leader, with organizational and/or change agent support, can then build networks both laterally and horizontally in order to bring about lasting change that brings both impact and value.

SYNOPSIS
While upheavals and volatility are coming at leaders and organizations from every direction today, there are clear, empirical, best-practice solutions that meet them head-on.  Leaders and organizations that fail to recognize and act on them, risk falling behind their peers and losing their competitive positioning and growth potential. 

Championing purpose-driven leadership not only meets  today's challenges and growth opportunities, it sets a foundation for current leaders to build a collaborative culture of positive change and meaning.  Further, it sets the stage for emerging leaders to inherit that culture along with the tools and strategies passed onto them for a stronger and brighter future.