There are years that move quietly through our lives — and then there are years that work on us.
2025 was one of those years.
Not because of a single defining moment or headline event, but because of what it quietly demanded — presence without pause, responsibility without relief, and decisions made while carrying more weight than usual.
For many leaders, it wasn’t just a demanding year — it was a confronting one.
As I step into 2026, I do so with clarity — not the kind that comes from certainty, but the kind that comes from integration. I share these reflections with a deep awareness that I am not alone in this experience.
Over the past year, in conversations often held behind closed doors, I’ve spoken with leaders who continued to perform, deliver, and show up — while quietly questioning how much longer they could keep carrying the load the way they had been.
What follows isn’t a personal story offered for sympathy.
It is leadership wisdom earned through experience — offered with care, in recognition of the weight so many leaders have been carrying quietly.
Leadership Isn’t About Powering Through
One of the most persistent myths in leadership is that strength looks like endurance — pushing forward regardless of cost.
What 2025 reinforced for me is this:
Sustainable leadership is not built on suppression.
It’s built on awareness.
When leaders ignore signals — emotional, physical, cultural — those signals don’t disappear. They surface elsewhere. In behaviour. In disengagement. In incidents. In health. In risk.
Leadership maturity is the ability to pause, notice, and respond with intention — not after damage occurs, but before it compounds.
The Courage to Feel — Without Being Consumed
There is a difference between being overwhelmed by emotion and being fluent in it.
This past year reminded me that we don’t need to harden ourselves to lead effectively. In fact, the opposite is often true. When we allow ourselves to feel — without spiralling or turning it into a performance — we develop clarity, steadiness, and discernment.
This isn’t vulnerability for display.
It’s emotional intelligence in practice.
For leaders, this matters deeply. Teams don’t need perfection. They need presence. And presence comes from leaders who are regulated, grounded, and self-aware.
Foundations That Are Alive, Not Rigid
We often talk about “strong foundations” as if they must be fixed and immovable.
My experience has been different.
The strongest foundations are alive — responsive, grounded, and flexible. They hold under pressure not because they resist change, but because they can adapt to it.
For leaders and organisations, this distinction matters deeply.
Rigid systems break.
Living systems evolve.
This is the heart of people-centred risk management: resilience built with people, not imposed on them.
Health, Identity, and the Quiet Risks We Don’t Talk About
One of the least discussed leadership risks is what happens when people — especially senior leaders — become disconnected from their own bodies, limits, and wellbeing.
Health is often treated as a personal issue rather than a leadership one. Yet when health deteriorates, confidence shrinks, decision-making narrows, and visibility becomes harder.
Leaders don’t need to disclose their private lives — but they do need permission to acknowledge that they are human. When this is denied, risk compounds quietly.
Strong leadership cultures don’t reward self-neglect.
They recognise stewardship — of people, systems, and self.
Returning, Not Reinventing
As 2026 begins, I don’t see this as a reinvention.
I see it as a return.
A return to living fully, not just recovering.
A return to showing up visibly — but with discernment.
A return to leading from values rather than pressure.
For us, at Unearth, this means stepping forward with renewed focus on execution, clarity, and impact — particularly through the Risk Rebel Leadership Pathway and the work that continues to evolve around it.
Our purpose hasn’t changed.
What has changed is the depth of lived understanding behind it.
So I’ll ask you this:
How does this show up in your organisation?
Are purpose and values actively lived — or merely stated?
Is there alignment between what’s said and how the business actually operates?
Because misalignment doesn’t stay theoretical. It shows up as conflict, fatigue, disengagement, and risk.
Why This Matters Now
Across organisations, leaders are carrying enormous weight — operating in environments where there is misalignment between values and operations, responsibility without space, accountability without support, and performance without recovery.
Beneath this strain sits a deeper issue:
a widespread misunderstanding of what leadership actually is.
Too often, we confuse role, title, or technical expertise with leadership capability.
They are not the same.
Function is about role and expertise.
Leadership is about responsibility — responsibility for power, influence, decisions, and their downstream impact on people and culture.
Leadership requires:
- self-awareness and emotional regulation
- situational awareness
- accountability without deflection
- courage under pressure
When organisations blur the line between technical competence and leadership capability, they can be filled with highly skilled professionals — and still experience fear, disengagement, deflection, and escalating risk.
At the same time, many leaders operate in systems where agenda quietly overrides values — where optics matter more than integrity, and survival within the system is rewarded over alignment.
Over time, this misalignment erodes purpose, normalises deflection, and shifts risk from something leaders manage… to something leaders inadvertently create.
The risk isn’t that leaders care too much.
The risk is that misalignment becomes normalised.
2026 calls for a different kind of leadership.
Not louder.
Not harder.
But more conscious.
Stepping Forward With Intention
As I step into 2026, my commitment is simple:
To lead with presence.
To execute with integrity.
To create space for courage — in myself and in others.
Not everything needs to be shared to be real.
Not everything needs to be rushed to be impactful.
What matters is alignment — between who we are, how we lead, and what we protect.
Because when leadership is grounded, people feel safer.
And when people feel safer, organisations become stronger, more resilient, and more creative.
That is where true innovation and performance flourish.
And for me — as it has for decades — it begins the same way it always has:
With the courage to start conversations that matter.
I do.
Risk Rebels do.
And if you’re ready to walk a leadership pathway grounded in courage, alignment, and the understanding that risk — when approached with clarity and humanity — can become a leadership superpower, then know this:
We are here.
And this is a safe place to begin.
