The leadership trends that will shape 2025

Little in 2024 could be considered static. Is inflation speeding up or slowing down? Is support for remote work ending? How fast will AI transform the workplace? What will be the fallout of local, national, and global conflicts? How can employees and organizations become better equipped to successfully navigate what portends to be continued upheaval?

The questions, hopes, and concerns of 2024 give no indication of subsiding in 2025. In fact, they are most likely to intensify, with their impact manifesting from top-level decision-making to individual relationships.

In strategizing how to best support learning leaders as the year unfolds, the product team at Big Think+ analyzed the topic and engagement data of our 115,000 learners and learning managers. The analysis offered insights that centered on three dominant themes:

1. Preparing for artificial intelligence (AI).
2. Dealing with uncertainty and anxiety.
3. Building emotional intelligence.

One of the first steps in helping employees approach these challenges is recognizing their interrelationships. While the topics are specific, they are indicative of a much broader set of underlying concerns. For example, AI has the potential to be a major disruptive force; however, it also represents just one workplace element with the potential to disrupt how, where, and when work is performed.

Not surprisingly, anxiety can be a frequent companion when change, expected or not, can be right around the corner. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, humans are central to whatever is on the horizon. How individuals choose to respond to situations and each other will determine the extent that organizations survive and thrive as the future unfolds.

1. Preparing for artificial intelligence 

The march of AI can herald promise or pitfall, which depends largely on someone’s general knowledge of AI and more specifically, how they perceive AI will affect them. At one end of the continuum are innovators and early adopters who are eager to pursue AI’s full potential. At the other end are those who prefer a much slower approach with ample deliberation about parameters.

Another factor is the extent to which someone feels in control of their AI use. Numerous professions are discovering myriad ways in which AI can streamline or enhance their work. AI can make quick work of accounting spreadsheets or product inventory, for example. However, what are the implications for a manufacturing worker whose job is no longer just supported by AI, but replaced by it? Or the customer service representative who is supplanted by a chatbot? 

Few, if any, organizations seem untouchable by AI, which means leaders across the board must be prepared to question their status quo, find ways to take ethical advantage of the best AI has to offer, and seek to build resilience and adaptability within their workforces and themselves.

Given this, it came as no surprise that one of the fastest-growing classes on the Big Think+ platform in 2024 was taught by Ethan Mollick, professor of management at the Wharton School, who explores ways to tap the AI advantage safely and effectively. For example, Mollick suggests thinking about the likelihood and implications of four future scenarios:

1. The world is static and current AI is the best it’s going to be.
2. AI growth will continue in a linear fashion.
3. AI growth will be exponential.
4. AGI, artificial general intelligence, becomes a reality, with machines smarter than  humans in almost all tasks.

Leaders and employees alike will be forced to grapple with AI’s dynamic, yet indeterminate evolution. Uncertainty and changing expectations can easily generate apprehension and risk-avoidance, rather than creative collaboration. However, timely information and dialogue can help leaders build the mutual trust essential for tackling AI’s challenges and opportunities.

2. Dealing with uncertainty and anxiety 

Factors contributing to anxiety in 2024 were not in short supply. External events encompassing global conflicts, climate-related calamities, campus protests, and political strife could not help but have an impact on people’s sense of well-being. That unease can easily carry over to workplace dynamics, where employees may already be feeling apprehensive about how their jobs might be affected by changes in responsibilities or reporting structures, productivity pressures, and increasingly, return-to-office expectations. 

It’s no surprise that people would seek out advice and ideas for confronting those challenges. BigThink+ learners were drawn to actor, writer, and director Jesse Eisenberg’s class focused on how to embrace anxiety and use it to your advantage. One method Eisenberg suggests based on his own experience consists of four parts: 

1. Accept fear and anxiety as normal emotions.
2. Reframe and redirect negative feelings into energy for something positive.
3. Strive to create an environment which allows you to do your best work.
4. Create the conditions for effective collaboration.

It’s important to remember that employees experience anxiety because they care about something, whether it’s performing well, achieving an objective, or being perceived positively by others. As organizations continue to be roiled by internal and external forces throughout 2025, the most effective leaders can take Eisenberg’s advice by understanding the impact of those emotions and work with their employees to recognize and channel them toward positive outcomes.

3. Building emotional intelligence

Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman is credited with propelling popular awareness of emotional intelligence (EI) with his 1995 best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence — Why it can matter more than IQ. Interest in EI has evolved over time but, in recent years, has accrued greater urgency as disruptors ranging from social media to COVID-19 have fomented changes in how people interact with each other.

While AI and other technology innovations may generate more buzz, the most critical element for the success of every organization is its workforce. That’s because people can’t help but bring their whole selves to work. Their skills, ideas, anxieties, biases, fears, hopes, expectations, and perspectives must be recognized and channeled if they and the organization are to reach their full potential. 

Leaders increasingly consider emotional intelligence a critical competency for themselves and their employees. In one of the top trending classes on Big Think+, Goleman posits that EI is the quintessential leadership skill and may be the number one indicator of organization success. Linking back to the AI challenge, he also contends that EI is the best defense against GenAI threats.

Building emotional intelligence capacity is clearly not a short-term endeavor and requires multiple approaches that include conceptual awareness, practice, coaching and reinforcement. Ideally, that foundation seeds broader emotional intelligence strategies targeting the full range of skill development opportunities. 

Final thoughts

These top three themes will dominate the learner narrative for 2025 and share two foundational premises: 

First, regardless of the transformational opportunities offered by new technologies and ways of working, the one thing that cannot be replicated is being human. Human-centered skills, abilities, choices, and perspectives, strategically deployed, will ultimately determine an organization’s long-term sustainability and success; 

And second, one of the most powerful forces that support employees through times of change and uncertainty is a sense of agency. When people feel respected and able to exert control over their actions, their willingness to collaborate, contribute, and commit to the organization increases dramatically. 

As learning leaders develop strategies to equip their workforces with future-focused capabilities, they would be well-served to ensure that a human-centered focus resides at the core.