A sustainable leadership pipeline requires investment in people, pathways, and principles to prepare individuals for leadership in complex, interdependent systems. Leadership must be treated as a renewable societal resource, cultivated intentionally and inclusively. It is about the quality, quantity, and diversity of leadership potentials that can be identified, including low-profile or non-traditional leadership personas across all age groups. Outreach strategies and partnerships with underrepresented communities, networks, or training institutions enable inclusivity and drawing in diverse experiences. Tailored career acceleration programmes can open access to the leadership pipeline for the next generation of leaders, enabling fresh perspectives and breaking the cycle of institutional self-reproduction. To address structural barriers, organizations must critically examine the identification patterns and criteria used when selecting leaders. Openness and transparency of the selection process are essential, as are the institutional or legal predispositions that influence the choice of specific profiles. Moreover, the evaluation of candidates and setting of expectations has to be based on contextual and emerging needs and incentivize moral decision-making. Concrete avenues for action may include new ways to assess contextual readiness. For example, a scoring aligning leadership style and maturity with systemic needs, or tests to evaluate a candidate’s values-based decision-making capacity. Emphasizing these capacities in the selection process will also require institutions to implement mechanisms that protect and support ethical leaders further down the line. This allows to safeguard integrity and trust after their appointment and institutionalizes moral courage, ensuring it actually materializes in the leader’s decision-making and action. Leveraging digital tools in the selection process can provide both opportunities and challenges. For example, they may facilitate algorithmic screenings or audits of potential candidates. Yet, they can be prone to bias and manipulation. Finally, selecting the selectors (unless a clearly defined electorate exists) can also play a crucial role. Creating selection committees that include various sectors and generations ensures that a range of perspectives influences decision-making processes, while the processes themselves nevertheless need to be well governed and structured in their own right.5 Ultimately, how we select our leaders determines how we define and secure our futures. Given its strong future-oriented component, one of the leadership principles to be further explored by the global leadership lab is the transition from linear to intergenerational leadership. Integrating youth voices and the next generation of leaders – beyond the pipeline and selection also in the decision- making process itself – is essential to ensuring that emerging leadership models reflect the aspirations and realities of those who will inherit and reshape tomorrow’s systems. Their participation brings fresh perspectives, digital fluency, and moral urgency – key ingredients for reimagining trust, legitimacy, and agency in a world in transformation.SPOTLIGHT 2 Traditional leadership pipelines often reproduce privilege rather than redistributing opportunities. Building truly diverse leadership requires intentionality at every stage of the leadership development funnel, from selection to ongoing development. Underrepresented leaders often face structural barriers, mental health strain, and double workloads that limit their chances of success. Targeted acceleration mechanisms, including mentorship, fellowship, and sponsorship, aim to transform the way talent is identified, supported, and sustained. Rethinking entry points and support systems is crucial to ensure that potential is both recognized and realized. These mechanisms combine access to networks, visibility in decision-making spaces, and tailored development journeys. Beyond mentoring and support in strategic decisions, effective sponsorship offers genuine advocacy. All of this helps to highlight the positive impact of aspiring leaders from minority backgrounds and is essential to turn inclusion into actual influence. Embedding these practices helps to dismantle systemic barriers and transform diversity into a source of institutional strength as research by Herminia Ibarra has found.4 Formalizing sponsorship, i.e., the individual support for high-potential leaders from underrepresented backgrounds, can become a leadership practice of its own, just like expanding visibility initiatives and measuring progress beyond recruitment efforts. That way, inclusion may deliver tangible outcomes: Broadening perspectives, improving decisions, and strengthening collective intelligence.Career acceleration mechanisms to turn inclusion into influence 9 Next Generation Leadership for a World in Transformation: Driving Dialogue and Action

GFC White Paper on New Leadership Models for Future Generations 2026