These are the skills leaders need in 2026

What skills will you need to win at leadership in 2026? The University of Sydney’s 2026 Skills Horizon report outlined the qualities leaders will and won’t need.

Charisma, long seen as the essential leadership skill, is out, along with code-writing skills. Read the full list of new key skills here.

One other interesting nugget is the authors’ prediction that it’s going to be a “messy” decade, as multiple generations work together while having vastly different values.

Though maybe we’re not as different as we think. Younger workers have, in the last few years, been (unfairly) accused of laziness.

Now, senior managers at big corporations are pushing back on workloads, too. Take the case of former Perth airport employee Jessica Sertis, who’s launching a federal court claim alleging she was required to work 75-hour weeks, the equivalent of two full-time positions.

Meanwhile, Hannah Tattersall spoke to a lawyer this week about what it’s like to be interviewed for a job by an AI bot.

I had a chat with DroneShield boss Oleg Vornik about how he made it to the C-suite and the magic that this month launched the 10-year-old start-up into the S&P/ASX 200 Index and made it a retail investor darling.

And if you’d like to know how Loftus Peak chief investment officer Alex Pollak thinks about stock picks – and what led him to buy Nvidia all the way back in 2016 – I recommend this week’s 15 Minutes with the Boss.

🎧 Listen now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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