Through our ongoing partnership with the International Leadership Association (ILA), CCL has been engaging deeply with these questions — bringing together C-suite leaders, senior government officials, and scholars from around the world. One thing is clear: Leadership as we’ve known it is being stretched. Traditional models are proving insufficient in the face of cascading crises, and organizations are searching for more adaptive, collaborative, and purpose-driven ways forward.

At the heart of this global dialogue is a new imperative — to move beyond static capabilities and develop the kinds of mindsets and methods that help leaders not only survive disruption but adapt and transform through it. As we heard in our Future of Global Leadership Summit in Singapore, today’s most effective leaders are those willing to reframe disruption as opportunity, challenge legacy assumptions, and lean into complexity with humility, confidence, and curiosity.

The future of leadership isn’t about knowing all the answers; it’s about asking better questions, fostering shared understanding, and creating space for others to contribute. Here, we explore 4 vital knowledge terrains that can help leaders build resilience, enable foresight, and shape meaningful change in an age of complexity and polycrisis.

Navigating With Agility, Not Control

Leaders today are grappling with unprecedented levels of complexity. They ask the pressing question: Why? Why are we experiencing so much disruption? Why are global developments increasingly unpredictable? Why are business conditions changing so rapidly?

In response, many leaders find themselves falling into analysis paralysis or wait-and-see mode. Others default into assigning blame and retreating to protect themselves and their team from the unknowns. But in a time of polycrisis, these reactions are insufficient. Passivity just doesn’t work. Leadership in disruption today requires more than controlling — it requires active navigation through a volatile landscape.

This is a time when interacting relationships on the ground and globally are generating challenging and unstable behaviors and, sometimes, self-regulating and unpredictable systems. Navigating such systems demands both resilience and new capacities for sensemaking, foresight, and collective action. The future of leadership will not be defined by how much we know, but by how we invest in knowing differently.

Investing in Knowledge: Defining 4 Leadership Terrains 

How can leaders become stronger in uncertainty, better at mitigating risk, and more capable of adapting? A starting point is shifting how and where we invest in knowledge. Four key domains can help leaders focus their energy and develop the agility required to thrive in complexity.

1. Knowing Your Challenges

We may not be able to forecast every crisis, but we must be clear about the challenges we face. Leaders who can distinguish between critical and less-critical challenges make better decisions and allocate resources more effectively.

“When we became involved in distributing COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, we helped our leaders manage the downsides while looking for opportunities in the upsides,” John Graham, CEO, Zuellig Pharma, said at our global summit. “The key is finding those opportunities and using them to benefit our people and our organization.”

A practical way to sharpen this clarity is to conduct “challenge mapping” exercises within leadership teams — prioritizing issues not by urgency alone, but by their potential impact and complexity. Scenario planning is another powerful tool that helps teams consider a range of possibilities without being paralyzed by uncertainty. Getting the right balance of positive and negative scenarios is increasingly important.

2. Knowing What Is Possible

Rather than focusing only on what is desirable, leaders need to invest in understanding what is possible. This realism can ground strategy and build credibility with stakeholders. At the same time, leaders need to continuously inspire teams to move beyond limiting beliefs and stretch outside their comfort zone. Really understanding what’s possible, and inspiring others to reach beyond that, requires energy and resilience.

“Leadership is about what’s possible? I thought it was about what’s impossible. Leaders should lead people into what’s impossible,” said Aris Roumpos, Managing Director, Maran Ship Supplies.

Leaders who excel in disruption tend to reframe crises as springboards rather than setbacks. Possibility thinking means using constraints creatively — seeing roadblocks as redirections and adapting strategy accordingly. Possibility thinking creates a bridge between crisis response and meaningful transformation.

In practice, this means experimenting with pilot programs or innovation labs that allow ideas to be tested and refined quickly. Reframing risk as strategic learning — making small bets, measuring results, and scaling only when value and feasibility are proven.

3. Knowing Your Networks

Leadership in a polycrisis context isn’t a solo endeavor. It requires strong teams, diverse partnerships, and including and inclusive engagement.

“Leadership has become more of a team sport,” one executive shared at our Singapore summit. “Finding those opportunities to make a difference.”

Others echoed the need for openness: How many leadership teams are truly open and not closed? How many are curious and not overconfident?

Amidst chaos and uncertainty, many leaders tend to withdraw and concentrate on their teams and themselves. Paradoxically, these are the times when having the right connections in the network is most crucial. Leaders with more of the right connections are proving to be more influential and effective.

Reverse mentoring, multigenerational teams, and cross-cultural coalitions are more than organizational trends — they are necessities for navigating complexity. Building ecosystems of trust — inside and outside of organizations — enables faster, coordinated action.

4. Knowing Your Competence

Finally, leaders need clarity about their own competence and that of their organizations. What skills and capabilities exist? What needs to be developed? Matching strengths to challenges is key to agility.

“As leaders, we need to balance when to make fast decisions and stay true to ourselves. Most importantly, how to keep relationships and trust,” said Dimitris Raptis, former VP of Harley Davidson APAC.

Kevin McDonald, CEO APAC of Credera, added: “Effective leaders are authentic, humble, great coordinators.”

Competency and capabilities in this age are less about technical mastery and more about adaptive capacity and mindsets. Practical strategies include conducting regular leadership capability reviews that look at mindsets in addition to skillsets, and offering heat experiences, which are stretch assignments that encourage learning in unfamiliar and challenging conditions.

Moving Beyond the Unknown

Over centuries, an often-cited obstacle to change is the unknown. Acknowledging the unknown and restating its impact on the effectiveness of leaders has become draining. Instead, leaders should focus on framing uncertainty in actionable ways: asking better questions, investing in systems thinking, and prioritizing clarity of goals and learning.

“Times of crisis are like a game of Mahjong — how do you find order in chaos? We need to peel back what’s truly important, share a common purpose, and focus on promoting unity,” one leader shared. “The key is to bring people together around shared goals and hope.”

In the age of polycrisis, the what and how of leadership are changing. The most effective leaders will be those who embrace adaptation, practice humility, and lead with purpose. In such times leaders feel it appropriate to set clear targets and destinations, but the most effective leaders acknowledge that destinations are rarely stable enough to be achieved — and focus more on being adaptive within a direction of travel towards a destination.

Be Part of What’s Next

As CCL and ILA continue to explore the Future of Global Leadership, you can look forward to an upcoming podcast and regional report series. Add your perspective, share your voice on our upcoming podcast, take part in a research interview, and connect with a global community of leadership thinkers and changemakers. Register now to be part of what’s next and get early access to new roundtable publications.

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For 25 years, the UN Global Compact has redefined corporate responsibility by ensuring sustainability is a cornerstone of business strategies, facilitating collaboration across sectors, and influencing global policy and practice.

The Sustainable Supplier Certificate requires organizations to complete an intensive, multi-month programme focused on critical topics in corporate sustainability such as human rights, environmental stewardship, governance, and sustainable development goals.

“Completing the Sustainable Suppliers Training Programme was a meaningful step that is just one part of a much larger journey towards embedding sustainability into everything we do. The expectations from our clients, and from the world, are evolving rapidly and as a leadership organization, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to lead by example,” said Mustafa Ćurčić, programme participant and CCL Business Support Manager.

Completion of the programme reinforces our commitment to operating as a responsible global organization, aligned with the values we uphold in pursuit of our mission and vision. It also further strengthens our position as a global pioneer in leadership development and research.

Learn more about our global impact.

The post CCL Certified as Sustainable Supplier by the UN Global Compact appeared first on CCL.

A little respect goes a long way.

In fact, when it comes to addressing conflict or tensions, our researchers have found that treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most helpful things an individual leader can do. And organizations must intentionally build a culture of respect if they want to attract, retain, and leverage the contributions of all their talent.

“Yet at work and in our communities, we are often faced with uncertainty or tension around our differences,” says researcher Kelly Hannum, co-author of our casebook on Leading Across Differences.

It can be a challenge for leaders to establish and nurture respectful relationships among many different groups, but effectively collaborating across boundaries is a key leadership skill. It’s important that leaders work to build an organizational culture of respect and create a climate of psychological safety at work.

3 Indicators of Respect

Our research survey of over 3,000 individuals across 10 countries revealed that being respectful is not just helpful when addressing conflicts between groups; it’s also viewed as a critical leadership responsibility.

“Treating people with respect seems obvious, but it may not be as intuitive as you think,” Hannum explains. She notes 3 key factors from the research that indicate what a culture of respect really means to people.

1. Respect is about listening.

People feel respected when they’ve been heard and understood. Being genuinely interested in and open to others strengthens relationships and builds trust. You don’t need to agree with or like the other person’s viewpoint; just listen to it closely.

Taking the time to actively listen to understand someone’s experiences, ideas, and perspectives is respectful — even if you ultimately choose another path.

2. Respect isn’t just the absence of disrespect.

Eliminating active disrespect — such as rude, insulting, or devaluing words or behaviors — doesn’t create respect.

Respect is an action: We show respect; we act respectfully; we speak with respect.

“Leaders need to know that the absence of disrespect doesn’t have the same positive impact in resolving disagreement, conflict, or tension as does the presence of respect,” says Hannum.

3. Respect is shown in many ways.

The perception of respect is influenced by culture and family, peers, and social relationships. Status, power, and role all create the context in which respect is interpreted. Leaders need to take the time to understand how their identities affect they way they lead, and how respect is given and received in cultures and groups other than the ones they think of as “normal.” Cultural intelligence is especially critical when leading a multicultural team.

“You may not need to make huge changes in your behavior to be more effective,” Hannum says. “Just understanding and acknowledging as valid what others expect from you will make a difference.”

How to Cultivate a Culture of Respect in Your Organization

You can help cultivate a culture of respect at your organization in the following ways:

• Exhibit an interest in, and appreciation for, others’ perspectives, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Express recognition and show sincere gratitude for the efforts and contributions of others.
• Openly communicate information about policies and procedures so everyone has access to and is operating with similar information.
• Clarify decision-making processes, and when appropriate, seek input into those processes, erring on the side of inclusive leadership.
• Consider whether you are in a position to serve as an ally on behalf of others. Make sure you understand allyship and focus on advocating with, not just for others — because advocacy should be done in close partnership with those we intend to serve.
• Take concerns seriously; if someone or a group shares that they feel wronged, show sincere empathy as you seek to better understand that perspective and offer a genuine apology.

At its core, creating a culture of respect is a continuous process of paying attention to people. Leaders must avoid making assumptions that, if unchecked, can lead to misunderstandings and ineffective behaviors. Cultivating a culture of respect requires intentional actions from every leader and the organization itself.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Partner with us to build a strong culture of respect at your organization. We can work with you to create a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-backed modules. Available leadership topics include Boundary Spanning Leadership, Collaboration & Teamwork, Conflict Resolution, Emotional Intelligence, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety & Trust, and more.

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