GFC White Paper on New Leadership Models for Future Generations 2026

Thinking next generation: Leverage points for new leadership futures2 The leadership pipeline and the selection of leaders – how leaders are cultivated and chosen – form a powerful systemic leverage point to open new leadership futures. At the intersection of individual capability and institutional design, it determines what kind of values, competencies, and visions guide collective action. While, of course, the exact selection mechanisms vary across sectors and political systems, they do shape legitimacy, authority and strategic direction. Furthermore, poor selection of leaders tends to lead to poor leadership outcomes, hence eroding legitimacy and trust. Current leadership selection too often values mere visibility over competence and integrity. It tends to reproduce existing power structures and succession pipelines, favouring similar profiles based on past success rather than on emerging needs. The result is a pattern of temporal myopia, structural gatekeeping and replication, all of which stifle innovation. The challenge is not only who leads, but how leadership readiness is cultivated and how selection processes can develop alongside social, environmental and technological change. This is central to building institutions that are trustworthy, capable and future-proof. This leverage point thus requires a dual focus: Nourishing a diverse and future- oriented leadership pipeline and redesigning selection systems to reflect the evolving realities transitioning from static to adaptive yet principled criteria.2.1 The leadership pipeline and the selection of leaders SPOTLIGHT 1 Leadership has never been more complex and exposed to such a high-speed environment across all sectors, be it business, government, academia, or civil society. The challenge is no longer just navigating uncertainty, but preparing leaders who can thrive within it. Traditional executive programmes are often focused too narrowly and evolve slowly. What is needed now is something faster, broader, and deeper: Leadership factories that operate at industrial speed and scale. This model, designed to keep pace with emerging leadership challenges, builds a continuous pipeline of leaders ready for today’s volatility and tomorrow’s possibilities. While “factory” may sound mechanistic, the idea is about scaling people-preparedness, not position-preparedness: Equipping leaders to act with calm, clarity, and confidence in the era of generative AI and socio- geo-economic complexity, where decisions must not only keep up with the acceleration of technology and multifaceted challenges, but also find ways to get ahead of them. Every organization should ask: What kind of leaders do we want and do we need to build? How can we do so on time? The answer defines not just institutional success, but societal resilience in the decades ahead. In the global leadership lab, we may explore the design of leadership factories for various sectors and regions. We may also explore how leadership selection is not a one-off moment in time, but builds on a fit-for-purpose pipeline.Enhancing preparedness: Leadership factories to make people fit-for-purpose, not position 8 Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation: Driving Dialogue and Action