GFC White Paper on New Leadership Models for Future Generations 2026

Training and development equip leaders with the knowledge, skills, mindsets, values, and tools necessary to create a vision, make informed decisions, facilitate collaboration, and take effective action. They also influence what goals they are pursuing, thus profoundly yet implicitly shaping leadership outcomes for companies, organizations, and societies. The way leaders are trained and undergo lifelong learning, therefore, is a critical systemic leverage point to shape new leadership futures. In an era of rapid transformation and global uncertainty, leadership training can no longer rely on static competencies or traditional instruction. The challenge today lies not only in what leaders know, but in how they act when faced with ambiguity, ethical dilemmas, and technological disruption. Many programmes are still too theoretical, narrowly focused on technical expertise and detached from lived experience, also neglecting individual resilience and self-reflection. As a result, leaders often lack the moral compass, empathy and adaptability needed to guide teams and societies through complexity; something that thought leader and YGL alumna Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, argues for in her book A different kind of Power.6 Future-proof leaders can mobilize collective intelligence and act with courage and humility at once. The future of leadership development depends on transforming as much on what we learn, as on how we learn. It must evolve into holistic, lifelong learning that shapes both character and capacity,7 connecting moral ambition with strategic foresight.8 While modern leadership education must integrate moral grounding, it must do so with care: A moral compass can unite or divide, especially when shaped by rigid, exclusionary worldviews rather than profoundly human values. Training is to enable the capacity to foster dialogue among diverse perspectives, helping to identify the shared values that propel societies forward. Among them are fairness, empathy, and a sense of common purpose – a purpose that leaders hold for themselves and may also give to their stakeholders. Exploring such moral grounding requires a broader mindset shift: What is often considered divisive rather than shared, especially across cultural, institutional, or historical boundaries, actually needs to move more to the forefront in order to look beyond the surface. Jacinda Ardern put this beautifully when reflecting: “If you ask a room of parents, ‘What are the values that you think are really important for your kids?’ you’ll hear the same things: People want their kids to share, they want them to be generous, they want them to be kind and empathetic, they want them to be brave, courageous. Those values that we teach our kids, we then see somehow as weaknesses in leaders?”92.2 The training and development of leaders SPOTLIGHT 3 In the 2025 YGL Leadership survey, 64% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that faith and spirituality can be guiding principles for leadership. This suggests that most respondents view faith and spirituality not as private or irrelevant domains, but as legitimate moral and ethical foundations that can inform leadership practice. Spiritual intelligence moves the focus from belief or ritual to capability and refers to the inner ability to process life’s challenges, develop constructive interpretations of events, and align action with transcendent values.10 It emphasizes forgiveness, humility, mercy, patience, and the cultivation of our innate human potential for good. The fundamental shift is to treat spirituality as a measurable, developmental, and practical capacity, rather than a fixed trait or an inherited belief system.Spiritual intelligence entails assessing and strengthening discernment, meaning-making, and reflective practices that connect purpose, ethics, and inner awareness. It builds on values that have unifying, rather than divisive power. Its impact can be transformative for leadership, well-being, and community renewal, helping individuals and organizations navigate complexity grounded in integrity and hope. Avenues for uptake include embedding a “Spiritual Intelligence Index” into leadership and organizational assessments, connecting it with emotional intelligence and resilience frameworks, and applying it across corporate, faith-based, nonprofit, and educational settings to cultivate leaders and communities rooted in moral clarity and compassion. This also opens a practical way to counter the use of faith and spirituality as a divisive force.Spiritual intelligence as a leadership capability 10 Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation: Driving Dialogue and Action