5 Key Leadership Themes from 2025 Worth Reflecting on Over the Break
As we wrap up another year, we wanted to share with you five key learnings from working with leaders in various walks of life.
REFLECTION TIME
Leaders report having little time to think. Overwhelmed by urgency, always being ON, and the need to respond to endless communication channels leaves little time for reflection. Social media distractions, fleeting attention spans and multi-tasking have made considered leadership difficult.
THE SOLUTION
Spend at least 15 minutes at the start AND the end of each day to think – away from all distractions. Pen and paper.
MORNING
• Revisit your and your team/organisation’s Purpose – its response to an ever-changing world.
• Consider if you have the right people in the right positions on the boat. Who is redundant? What’s the opportunity cost of keeping them? Who do you now need to solve today and tomorrow’s needs?
• Are they rowing in sync? Are they headed in the right direction?
EVENING
What did we accomplish? What should we accomplish?
What were the failures/feedback/lessons?
How could we learn and evolve?
How did we behave? Character and Culture?
HONESTY VS NARRATIVES
Many leaders have shared their difficulty in truth-seeking in their own lives, in the teams they lead, their customers and non-customers.
Differentiating what is real from what is narrative and spin. Pushing back on an increasingly complex values set where truth is comparative, to finding what is intrinsically true. To call themselves out on making excuses, softening conscience, laying blame, turning a blind eye to bad behaviour, compromising values, etc. Staying true to what is right, good and important separates excellent leaders from the rest.
THE SOLUTION
Spend time on the front line. The critical test of a leader is how much of their time is spent with their stakeholders – on the factory floor, the checkout, the reception, with customers and non-customers. As a rule, no less than one hour per week!
Skip meetings – Drop down a level of people and management so you have a clearer picture, hear a different narrative, get a better feel.
Seek insights from external sources. Good coaches often ask other coaches and experts, “What do you see?” “What am I missing?”
For Board members, don’t get all your data from your chief executive – seek other sources.
Plausible deniability is not an aspiration. It’s the job to know.
HUMILITY VS HUBRIS
We call it Podium Hubris, where above-average achievement in one area can lead people to believe they are experts in all areas. Achieving a senior leadership position, high net worth, extraordinary salary, success in an area of specialisation can come with high levels of hubris, sometimes unknowingly.
We see signs where self-images and self-promotion are disproportionately high on social media. Over-talking in meetings. Use of “I” rather than “we”.
As humans, it’s easy to fall into this trap where we stop listening, learning or paying attention to cues. Instead we interpret warning signals as aberrations. We can’t be wrong! Until it’s too late.
THE SOLUTION
Ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?” “What if I’ve read the play incorrectly?” Are my fundamental assumptions still valid?
Listen to understand and learn. Seek the wisdom in others.
A pulse-check question we often ask leaders is: When last did you change your behaviours or decisions based on confronting feedback?
How big is your ecosystem? Is it approaching the universe or just a microcosm? When we start to believe that the ecosystem we lead is larger than it truly is, calibration is required.
Set up regular feedback loops that challenge your thinking.
PERFORMANCE DELUSION
A close second to the plague of attention deficit is the performance delusion. Our nationwide productivity is at historic lows.
We are doing less with more – even with AI.
Leaders consistently share with us that their teams are in a state of flux, spinning their wheels, overworked yet underachieving, signal overwhelmed by noise.
THE SOLUTION
Set a cadence for baseline work and overlay 13-week sprints to accomplish key objectives.
Have the team focus on one or two goals in those sprints.
Use the Scoresheet for Individual Effort Goals and the Scoreboard for Team Results.
As a leader, ensure you’re connecting each individual’s contribution to the team’s purpose.
Pay attention to the qualitative and quantitative – not just what is done but how!
Continually provide personalised reward and recognition.
HUMANISE
What does it profit anyone to gain the world but lose their soul…from a human standpoint? In other words, no championship is worth winning if you don’t have anyone to celebrate it with. Achieving individual and even team goals at the cost of the human being is worthless.
Seek to have balance.
Strong physical and mental health is a prerequisite for leaders. To achieve this they must move physically and stay connected to others. The greatest source of human wellbeing is from movement and interactions. Leaders need this in spades.
Luck or success is the direct result of hard work and human connections. Move and circulate.
THE SOLUTION
Leaders must make time for movement each day, preferably in sunlight and outdoors.
Scheduling at least one face-to-face meeting each week with someone outside your work ecosystem is critical.
Similarly ensure you have at least one personal phone call each day with a friend, family member or acquaintance.
These are the five key learnings this year from our work. We hope they are of value to you. Try to include some of these in your plans for 2026.
READY TO TAKE YOUR LEADERSHIP TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
If these themes resonate with you and you’re serious about becoming a more effective, grounded leader in 2026, our monthly 1-on-1 Executive Coaching Program ($12,000 per annum) provides the structure, accountability and external perspective to turn these insights into lasting change. We work with a select number of leaders who are committed to doing the deep work required for genuine growth. Reach out to Nick Marvin to discuss whether this program is right for you.
