GFC White Paper on New Leadership Models for Future Generations 2026

SPOTLIGHT 6 20% of respondents to the 2025 YGL Leadership Survey have ranked the erosion of fact-based public discourse and decision-making as a key factor that has made the exercise of political, corporate, academic and nonprofit leadership particularly difficult over the last decade. Evidence-informed decision-making is key to sound leadership choices. It combines the best available research with contextual factors, public opinion, and feasibility. Evidence does not eliminate uncertainty, but it grounds decisions in rigour and data, which is essential for navigating complex and rapidly changing environments. In the age of generative AI and the diffusion of power through social media, this process must be rethought. Machine learning and AI, particularly generative AI, have fundamentally changed how we perceive reality and distinguish fact from fiction. This task becomes more difficult as artificial content, such as deepfakes, improves in ease of creation and quality. Moreover, generative AI transforms how evidence is produced, disseminated, and utilized. In theory, it speeds up access to knowledge and makes complex insights more digestible for leaders and the public. However, it also presents challenges about data quality, model transparency, and reproducibility, requiring leaders to navigate new layers of what is considered credible evidence – and the public to hone its receptivity for these challenges and opportunities, too. To lead effectively in this environment, leaders need new tools and mindsets, including digital and data literacy to evaluate AI outputs, ethical awareness to apply evidence responsibly, grit to question even highly persuasive results, and the ability to engage in dialogue to embed findings in context and needs. As the guardrails for human decision-making fundamentally shift, as Urs Gasser and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argue in their book Leadership with AI, leaders must adopt adaptive governance – ensuring decisions remain agile, flexible, and, if necessary, reversible as new, better evidence becomes available.19Evidence-informed decision-making in the age of generative AI When evaluating decisions and actions, leadership success is often measured by quick wins or service to a specific group, rather than what creates meaningful and lasting benefits for people and the planet. A new assessment paradigm is needed – something that is elaborated on in the next section when looking at leadership legacy. Finally, one often-overlooked element that enables success in transitioning from decision-making to action and achieving tangible results, is effective communication. While narratives and storytelling may make actions compelling – and have also been ranked as one of the top leadership skills in the 2025 YGL Leadership Survey – they also fuel divisiveness. What is meant here, is leadership communication that goes both ways: One side involves clarity and consistency in transmission – saying what is and why, while the other involves leaders listening and holding space – a cycle of taking a moment to explain and then listen again. Ultimately, this allows to test a leader’s position and reveals whether it holds up to scrutiny, changing the power dynamics of how leadership is perceived. Leadership thereby undergoes a strategic shift in distributing agency and mobilizing collective intelligence – an innovation in leadership that the global leadership lab is prepared to explore further. 13 Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation: Driving Dialogue and Action