Such moral reasoning is also critical as breakthrough technologies, including AI, reshape every sector and what it means to be human. Leaders must ensure that technology amplifies human dignity rather than replaces it. What is more, drawing on the 2025 YGL Leadership Survey, generative AI is expected to make leading as such more difficult (45% of survey respondents believe that generative AI will not make the exercise of leadership easier). Training, therefore, needs to build in AI and deep tech literacy, anticipatory capacity, ethical awareness and moral agency, helping leaders harness innovation whilst mitigating adverse effects.11 To unfold its full potential, learning must occur both within and extend beyond the classroom; it is about the conditions for learning. Since, as research shows, humans learn best from experimentation and example,12 experiential formats – such as shadowing, field visits, and purposeful immersions, paired with moments of reflection – allow leaders to connect theory with lived reality, fostering systemic understanding and long-term vision. Practically, this also entails designing adaptive training pathways that cater to lifelong learning across all ages and seniority levels. Cultivating consciousness, character and courage, leadership can flourish in many spaces, across society and organizational levels. In such an environment, dialogue can help to build trust and cohesion, transforming diversity and potential tension into creative energy and collective problem-solving. Strengthening deep, mindful listening and storytelling will be crucial for fostering a sense of belonging and shared goals. Ironically, in this context, what is often considered a soft skill – hence, implicitly, a second-order skill – such as listening needs to move to the forefront as a fundamental leadership competency. With that, leadership does not need to rely on the brilliance of one person, but rather on the distributed intelligence of many. No longer perceived as a solo act, but a collective practice that prioritizes convening over commanding, leadership pursues a strategic shift from control to co-creation. The global leadership lab stands ready to explore how training can become transformative and support that strategic shift: A platform that gathers people from diverse backgrounds to reimagine, co-design and test leadership development that is ready to evolve at the speed of the world we live in, grounded in dialogue, opening up pathways for co- creation across generations and points of view. SPOTLIGHT 4 Mindful listening is essential for genuine dialogue, for hearing out different opinions and beliefs, and for understanding the reasons behind them. It is not a technique to influence an outcome, but a foundational attitude of deep receptivity and a means to create a shared future based on trust and social cohesion. Overcoming duality, leaders who listen can create spaces for solutions that are greater than any single viewpoint. To avoid abstraction and selectivity, mindful listening is rooted in the surrounding people and environment – one’s immediate habitat. Listening consciously and with the readiness to postpone judgement, this grounded attitude creates psychological safety and opens a two-way street for connection and action. At a deeper level, mindful listening extends to the voiceless across two axes: Temporally, by heeding the voices of ancestors and future generations. Spatially, by moving beyond human- centrism, recognizing the voice of nature, which is critical to managing planetary boundaries. This practice does not eliminate a leader’s individuality, but expands it from an isolated self to being embedded in a larger living system of “interbeing”,13 also echoing the Ubuntu philosophy: “I am because we are”, seeing community as a building block of society and leadership action.14 Cultivating mindful listening requires practice and collective effort. It is a skill that can be trained and there are practical guides readily available, such as a Guide to Deeper Listening for Better Understanding by the nonprofit Millions of Conversations.15 It is a cultivation that enables leaders and societies to make decisions informed by a wider, yet deeply grounded, social, ecological, and temporal awareness.Mindful listening as a door-opener to genuine dialogue 11 Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation: Driving Dialogue and Action

GFC White Paper on New Leadership Models for Future Generations 2026