Leaders are the difference-makers within your organisation. They influence everything from employee engagement and productivity to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Yet with 75% of HR leaders (Gartner) reporting that managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their responsibilities, it’s clear that the demands of leadership are evolving faster than many organisations can keep up. Too often, a default “command and control” style still prevails—despite people skills accounting for roughly 80% of a leader’s success. Today’s organisations need leaders who can build trust, inspire a shared vision, and adapt with resilience. Effective leadership demands both character and competence, emotional agility, and a clear connection between personal purpose and organisational goals. When leaders develop these principle-based skills, they create high-trust teams united by a common mission—and unlock the self-management, innovation, and engagement needed to thrive at every level of the business.

Change is a constant challenge; knowing how to effectively prepare for and respond to it will make all the difference for your organisation. In an era of advanced AI and rapidly evolving technology, human skills—how we work both alone and together—remain more important than ever. In fact, according to Deloitte, 95% of people agree human skills are timeless and always relevant.

Yet, 60% also say their organisations prioritise immediate business needs over developing these long-term capabilities. It’s not enough to possess technical prowess; for today’s workers to be truly successful, they need a comprehensive framework of personal and interpersonal skills to drive proactive problem solving, innovation, resilience, and self-leadership. When team members possess individual effectiveness, strength of character, and a desire for creative collaboration, they can unlock potential and unleash performance at every level.

At FranklinCovey, we define culture as the collective behaviour of your people. In other words, it’s what the majority of your people do the majority of the time. It’s seen in the nature of the language and the relationships within your organisation, which includes both spoken and unspoken values, norms, and systems at work. By instilling habits of self-effectiveness and trust in your leaders and teams, you have the power to directly impact their engagement, productivity, and performance—all because you’ve empowered your people to do their best work. Building trust in the workplace allows for all unique perspectives to be welcomed and leveraged for faster, better results. And when your team members feel safe taking risks and sharing their ideas, they’ll develop more innovative solutions to achieve stronger outcomes. By building a culture where everyone is valued and creativity thrives, great ideas can rise to the surface—unlocking the creative potential of your diverse workforce.

It’s a stark reality that over 80% of strategies fail to be executed successfully. The majority of these strategic executions fall flat because they require collective behaviour change to be truly successful. They also require complete alignment around the organisation’s goals, execution of the most impactful activities, the establishment of a scoreboard, and a regular cadence of accountability. Because most organisations get caught up in the daily “whirlwind,” it may seem nearly impossible to make any headway on those major initiatives. The secret to strategic execution is to establish and maintain a framework that ensures you’re focusing on the most impactful goals that need special attention, focus on the most important activities to help teams achieve those aims, create a compelling scoreboard to track progress, and report on that progress frequently and consistently. It’s a simple formula, but it takes considerable effort to execute. The good news? When implemented correctly, it has the power to completely transform your organisation.