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Shaping Section
McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2026
By Michael Chui et al., | McKinsey & Company | September 15, 2026
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The technology story of 2026 has moved off the screen and into the physical world. Innovation is accelerating in the power grids and chips that underpin the data center boom; in the intelligent robots that embody AI; in the agentic systems discovering new chemical compounds; and in the launch pads sending thousands of satellites into orbit.
AI needs energy to scale. That’s one reason energy technologies alone drew nearly $200 billion in investment in 2025, among the highest capital influx in any technology domain. And spending on AI infrastructure doubled in a single year. These developments show that the defining questions today are not only about what technology can do. They are also about who can build the hardware and assemble the skilled workforce to deploy AI in the real world. At the same time, huge leaps were made in cybersecurity and software development—illustrating that AI is accelerating the digital frontier, too.
McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2026 examines 14 technology trends that define 2026, expanding its coverage from last year to include two new fast-emerging domains: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering. For easier navigation, the authors group the trends into three broader categories: AI revolution, compute and connectivity frontiers, and cutting-edge engineering. The lines between these domains are blurring, and much of the innovation is happening in the gaps.
Four of this year’s trends are AI specific, but AI also underpins and amplifies the other ten. AI has become an accelerant in robotics, creating a new class of autonomous bots capable of interacting with the world around them. AI is reshaping software development, making coders many magnitudes more productive. AI is advancing scientific discovery, helping life sciences companies discover new drugs many times faster than before. And AI is optimizing the foundations of technology infrastructure itself, changing cybersecurity operations, and catalyzing new innovations in semiconductors. These are just a few of the ways AI is shifting the sands beneath our feet.
Beyond the AI ecosystem, many of this year’s trends are being shaped by large-scale economic, geopolitical, and workforce transitions. Scientists and engineers are discovering new possibilities in therapeutics, diagnostics, genomics, and brain science. Robotics, mobility, and immersive-reality technologies are converging to reshape how humans interact with digital and physical systems. Sustainability technologies are transforming how energy is produced, managed, and used—providing potential solutions to meet surging power demand from data centers. And quantum computing continues to advance, giving a glimpse into how it could soon solve problems that would otherwise be infeasible.
This breakneck pace of change comes with challenges. Organizations are racing to deploy AI at scale without any proven road maps. They have workforces that need upskilling, legacy systems that need updating, and networks exposed to ever-evolving security risks. They face shortages in energy, talent, and capital. Overcoming these roadblocks requires far more than just deploying technology. It requires rewiring operational models from the inside out.
Five themes kept surfacing covering 14 trends—ones the authors think all leaders need to understand to steer their organizations into the future: Machines are being given more autonomy, AI is generating breakthroughs faster than we can absorb them, The cyber defense window has compressed, Hardware and software are being codesigned for differentiated AI workloads, and AI is hungry, and the grid is not ready.
The 14 technology trends shaping 2026 show how quickly new innovations can shift business objectives, global markets, and ways of working. Not even the most talented technologists can predict every breakthrough. But business leaders who understand the patterns behind technological change will be equipped to shape the future rather than react to it.
3 key takeaways from the article
- The technology story of 2026 has moved off the screen and into the physical world. Innovation is accelerating in the power grids and chips that underpin the data center boom; in the intelligent robots that embody AI; in the agentic systems discovering new chemical compounds; and in the launch pads sending thousands of satellites into orbit.
- McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2026 examines 14 technology trends that define 2026, expanding its coverage from last year to include two new fast-emerging domains: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering. For easier navigation, the authors group the trends into three broader categories: Machines are being given more autonomy, AI is generating breakthroughs faster than we can absorb them, The cyber defense window has compressed, Hardware and software are being codesigned for differentiated AI workloads, and AI is hungry, and the grid is not ready.
- This breakneck pace of change comes with challenges. Organizations are racing to deploy AI at scale without any proven road maps. They have workforces that need upskilling, legacy systems that need updating, and networks exposed to ever-evolving security risks. They face shortages in energy, talent, and capital. Overcoming these roadblocks requires far more than just deploying technology. It requires rewiring operational models from the inside out.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: AI Trends
Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
By Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender | MIT Technology Review | September 22, 2026
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It’s been a busy few months for AI hype. At the end of April, Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts. Then we had the OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident, after which Anthropic (proudly) and Meta (reluctantly) disclosed similar incidents involving their models.
This was followed by Anthropic’s claim that one of its models had made a mathematical breakthrough; soon OpenAI claimed a mathematical breakthrough of its own. Most recently, Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon went viral announcing his departure from the company, claiming that it and OpenAI are “racing straight towards self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Each of these events was mostly covered breathlessly by the press, often repeating the companies’ anthropomorphizing framings—which are designed to portray their software is not only powerful but incipient “artificial general intelligence.” So what is really going on? Are we witnessing a massive, civilization-changing set of technological breakthroughs, or is this marketing?
In all these incidents, massive fanfare from the companies (presented as mea culpas in illicit hacking cases) is accompanied by intense press coverage. Once there is time for experts in the relevant fields to examine what happened, a very different story emerges, but one that gets less media attention.
Regarding the “hacking” incidents, cybersecurity experts say the story is more about OpenAI’s negligence and failure to adopt basic, established security practices than about “models gone rogue” or “AI agents creating civilizations.”
As for the mathematical results, mathematicians who were initially “stunned” by OpenAI’s press release saying that its latest chatbot, Astra, solved problems that “have been open and seen no progress on the main result for at least a decade”—but they later realized that the results weren’t as “novel as first appeared.” Since then, mathematicians have accused the company of research misconduct and plagiarism, and they’ve reiterated that Astra didn’t make a “profound intellectual leap.”
Claims of incipient, dangerous superintelligence are not based in good scientific or engineering practice. Rather, they are narratives based in ideologies of transhumanism, eugenics, and wishful thinking about imagined future digital humans.
We know better than to make decisions based on marketing and better than to capitulate to corporate pressure to make those decisions quickly. Wise decision-making, by policymakers and communities, demands time to hear from independent experts and contextualize corporate claims. The best possible outcome from this summer of hype is that policymakers and the public at large learn to take a breath, hold onto our skepticism, and recognize this kind of hype for what it is the next time it comes around.
3 key takeaways from the article
- It’s been a busy few months for AI hype. From Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts another of its claim that one of its models had made a mathematical breakthrough. Soon OpenAI claimed a mathematical breakthrough of its own. Most recently, Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon went viral announcing his departure from the company, claiming that it and OpenAI are “racing straight towards self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
- Each of these events was mostly covered breathlessly by the press, often repeating the companies’ anthropomorphizing framings—which are designed to portray their software is not only powerful but incipient “artificial general intelligence.” So what is really going on? Are we witnessing a massive, civilization-changing set of technological breakthroughs, or is this marketing?
- In all these incidents, massive fanfare from the companies (presented as mea culpas in illicit hacking cases) is accompanied by intense press coverage. Once there is time for experts in the relevant fields to examine what happened, a very different story emerges, but one that gets less media attention. The best possible outcome from this summer of hype is that policymakers and the public at large learn to take a breath, hold onto our skepticism, and recognize this kind of hype for what it is the next time it comes around.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: AI Hype, Technology & Society
Strategy & Business Model Section
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Customer Referrals
By Fred Reichheld et al., | Harvard Business Review Magazine | Sept-Oct 2026 Issue
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Companies spend an enormous amount of marketing money and management time on social media, digital advertising, sponsored search, promotional schemes, paid influencers, search engine optimization, and curated online reviews. Yet for most companies, the best customers still come through referrals—as one of the authors has confirmed in an analysis of data on more than 10 million individuals who participated in referral programs implemented by Mention Me, a customer advocacy platform. Across a range of industries from fashion to food, health and beauty, financial services, travel, and telecommunications, the authors found that on average, while only 20% of new customers were referred, they generated more than 70% of all new-customer profits.
The authors’ study revealed that only 15% of all customers are true promoters, meaning they generate at least one new customer by making a referral. These true promoters generated almost three times more lifetime revenues (combining their own purchases with purchases by their direct and downstream referrals) than passives did. And the subset of true promoters who referred multiple new customers (referred as superpromoters) generated five times more revenues than passives did.
If companies examine only the impact of direct referrals, they will substantially undervalue the compounding growth produced by true promoters—and especially superpromoters. The cascade of customers referring friends, who in turn refer their friends and so on, explains why modest changes in referral rates drive exponential increases in growth.
If referrals are so powerful, why have so many executives overlooked them for so long? Part of the problem is visibility. Most companies don’t track referrals in a systematic way, so referred customers get lumped together with customers acquired through other means. As a result, accounting systems and marketing attribution models give credit to campaigns that merely captured customers who had already decided to buy because of a friend’s recommendation. That distortion makes paid acquisition appear more effective than it really is while masking the true economics of referral-driven growth.
Many leaders also focus on what’s easiest to measure and manage, such as advertising spending and its correlation to new-customer volumes, rather than which experiences evoke delight or the social dynamics that trigger recommendations. And because traditional metrics often don’t distinguish between short-term (ephemeral) revenue boosts from new-customer acquisition and sustainable revenue growth from long-term advocacy, executives may not see how well referrals drive sustainable growth and profitability.
Kick-Start Your Referral Engine. Companies that take referrals seriously build systems to identify which customers are recommending their brand and why. Doing this well requires more than surveys or marketing intuition. It requires operational processes that track referral flows and hold teams accountable for turning satisfied customers into active promoters. Some of the key actions your company must take to benefit from the referral effect.
Identify new referred customers. You need to find a way to systematically pinpoint these people. One way could be to ask all new customer leads how they heard about the company and records their answers in its customer relationship management system. Identifying all referred customers on first contact allows you to determine your referral ratio (the portion of new customers who are referred), which you can then use as a baseline for improvement.
Quantify your referral economics. To understand how much you can afford to invest in earning referrals and in systems to measure and optimize them, you must be able to determine their value and impact on profits and growth.
Learn how to delight core customers. Creating true promoters and activating their referrals results not from clever marketing but from repeatedly delivering fresh experiences that are so remarkable that customers naturally recommend a product or service to their friends and family. To achieve this, companies need to develop a granular understanding of exactly what will spark a referral.
Incentivize referrals strategically. To manage and reap the full suite of economic advantages, most companies should implement an incentivized referral program. But they should be sure to avoid the mistakes firms commonly make with them. Many programs never get integrated with financial systems that track the economics of referred customers. They fail to identify the true promoters who made the referrals—and never probe for root causes. Indeed, referral incentives are treated as a cheap marketing tactic to acquire new customers instead of a sophisticated way to drive profitable growth.
Develop more-sophisticated referral-tracking capabilities over time. Even when companies offer incentives for referrals, most referrals still happen organically. Among Mention Me clients, incentive programs account for only about 7% of referrals, on average, with a range from 2% to 21%. The more deeply companies understand what’s driving organic referrals, the better equipped they’ll be to increase them. One key to doing that: Don’t stop analyzing referrals after the first purchase.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Companies spend an enormous amount of marketing money and management time on social media, digital advertising, sponsored search, promotional schemes, paid influencers, search engine optimization, and curated online reviews. Yet for most companies, the best customers still come through referrals—as one of the authors has confirmed in an analysis of data on more than 10 million individuals who participated in referral programs implemented by Mention Me, a customer advocacy platform.
- Across a range of industries from fashion to food, health and beauty, financial services, travel, and telecommunications, the authors found that on average, while only 20% of new customers were referred, they generated more than 70% of all new-customer profits.
- If referrals are so powerful, why have so many executives overlooked them for so long? Part of the problem is visibility. Most companies don’t track referrals in a systematic way, so referred customers get lumped together with customers acquired through other means. Some of the key actions your company must take to benefit from the referral effect. Identify new referred customers. Learn how to delight core customers. Incentivize referrals strategically. And develop more-sophisticated referral-tracking capabilities over time.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Referrals Marketing, Relationship Marketing
Five Urgent Priorities for CMOs in 2027
By Kimberly A. Whitler | MIT Sloan Management Review | September 22, 2026
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In an unpredictable economy and fractured media landscape, marketing leaders are navigating a period of profound transformation and disruption — and as AI technologies evolve, the pace of change will only increase. In response, the highest priorities of chief marketing officers today are shifting, and understanding their concerns is essential to addressing the most pressing growth challenges companies face.
Marketing is at an inflection point. The structures, talent models, measurement frameworks, and influence mechanisms that will define the function for the next decade are being established right now. CMOs who move with intention — building the function, proving its value, leading effectively through disruption — will define what marketing becomes. Those who wait may find that it has already been defined for them.
Recently, the author conducted 15 in-depth interviews with global CMOs from a range of industries to identify their most urgent priorities and challenges. He heard five main concerns: embedding marketing as an executive-level growth function, transforming with and for artificial intelligence, hiring to defuse the talent time bomb, reaching consumers across a fragmented media system, and developing new metrics for zero-click AI platforms.
In some ways, its very task has changed. Zero-click platforms have upended the meaning of what was, until recently, the web’s most basic metric: clicks. Meanwhile, the media landscape is growing ever more fractionalized, rewriting the rules of attention as consumers encounter individualized feeds algorithmically tailored to them. Function leaders face the challenge of developing talent for a future where the skills that mattered yesterday are being rapidly displaced. An additional challenge is to elevate the role and importance of marketing as a company’s growth engine, which will require tomorrow’s CMOs to develop new skills, lead an effective organization, transform the work, and create more pronounced value. This isn’t about learning new tools; it’s about designing more effective work in a more effective organization.
Together, these five priorities describe a function at a critical point — where marketing leaders are clear-eyed about the challenges ahead and increasingly convinced that marketing’s moment to shape enterprise strategy has arrived.
Today’s CMOs are building organizations in a dramatically changing business environment and developing talent for a future moving faster than the hiring process. As Greg Stuart, CEO of the Marketing + Media Alliance, said, “They are navigating a world being reshaped by AI, political polarization, and media fragmentation at a speed that makes last year’s playbook obsolete.”
But these CMOs are not waiting for clarity before acting. They can’t afford to. They are experimenting, iterating, and embracing change as an operating condition rather than an obstacle. The ones moving fastest are those who have accepted that speed itself is a competitive advantage — and moving forward imperfectly is better than planning perfectly.
3 key takeaways from the article
- In an unpredictable economy and fractured media landscape, marketing leaders are navigating a period of profound transformation and disruption — and as AI technologies evolve, the pace of change will only increase. In response, the highest priorities of chief marketing officers today are shifting, and understanding their concerns is essential to addressing the most pressing growth challenges companies face.
- Marketing is at an inflection point. The structures, talent models, measurement frameworks, and influence mechanisms that will define the function for the next decade are being established right now. CMOs who move with intention — building the function, proving its value, leading effectively through disruption — will define what marketing becomes. Those who wait may find that it has already been defined for them.
- Recently, the author conducted 15 in-depth interviews with global CMOs from a range of industries to identify their most urgent priorities and challenges. He heard five main concerns: embedding marketing as an executive-level growth function, transforming with and for artificial intelligence, hiring to defuse the talent time bomb, reaching consumers across a fragmented media system, and developing new metrics for zero-click AI platforms.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer
Peter Thiel says Germany has a ‘fear of success’ problem—and it explains why entrepreneurs don’t scale like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg
By Preston Fore | Fortune | September 25, 2026
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Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, warns that Germany’s entrepreneurs too often shy away from scaling companies into global giants.
For the first time in the four-year history of the Fortune 500 Europe, the U.K. overtook Germany as the country with the most companies on the list: 76 compared with 73. But to billionaire investor Peter Thiel, the shift is part of a broader problem facing his birth country: Germany has struggled to create—and, perhaps more importantly, scale—the next generation of global companies.
“There’s a fear of failure,” Thiel said on the MDMEETS podcast, speaking about German entrepreneurship. “People are risk-averse and things like that, and maybe that’s true, but the dimension I want to also push back on is perhaps there’s also a fear of success.”
“If you have something that works—you’re not going to scale it to this extreme degree like an Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg,” he told fellow German billionaire and media mogul Mathias Döpfner. Instead, Thiel argued, German entrepreneurs are more likely to sell or exit their companies before they become truly global businesses. “What’s very striking is how few great new companies have been built in Germany in the last number of decades,” Thiel added.
Germany has largely fallen behind some of its peers in innovation. The country has a fraction of the unicorns found in the U.S. and China, and its performance has begun to lag behind several European neighbors. In the European Union’s 2026 Innovation Scoreboard, Germany ranked No. 10, behind countries including Austria, Luxembourg and Ireland.
Thiel warns that too many rich Germans are inheriting their wealth—not building companies and creating jobs.
Thiel was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1967, but his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was a year old, briefly settling in Cleveland before eventually moving to California. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a law degree from Stanford University. He later turned to business and investing, cofounding PayPal and Palantir and becoming one of the earliest outside investors in Facebook. Today, his net worth is estimated at $37.2 billion. An influential, though often controversial, Silicon Valley investor, Thiel pointed to differences in how wealth is accumulated among the richest people in the U.S. and Germany as another example of the gap he sees between the two countries’ entrepreneurial cultures.
Thiel estimated that among the 50 wealthiest people in the U.S., about a dozen are Gen X or younger. In Germany, he counted roughly 20 people in that age group. While most of those people in the U.S. built their fortunes themselves, in Germany, all inherited their wealth.
“Not a single person did something new, made some new money, built a large new scalable company,” Thiel said. “Of course I’m just looking at this very extreme—but for each of those people [in the U.S.], they created thousands of millionaires in their companies, tens of thousands of other jobs, they added to the economy in lots of different ways.”
Germany’s auto giants helped fuel its economic rise. Now they’re struggling to keep pace
For decades, the automobile industry has been a cornerstone of Germany’s economic success, with Berlin-based Volkswagen long ranking as Europe’s largest company by revenue.
The 89-year-old automaker reached its highest position on the Fortune Global 500 in 2017, ranking No. 6. But the company’s stock is down more than 35% year to date. Volkswagen isn’t alone. Fellow German auto giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz, No. 50 and No. 51 on the Global 500, respectively, have also seen their shares fall more than 20% over the past year, adding to concerns about the country’s economic competitiveness.
3 key takeaways from the article
- For the first time in the four-year history of the Fortune 500 Europe, the U.K. overtook Germany as the country with the most companies on the list: 76 compared with 73. But to billionaire investor Peter Thiel, the shift is part of a broader problem facing his birth country: Germany has struggled to create—and, perhaps more importantly, scale—the next generation of global companies.
- “There’s a fear of failure,” Thiel said on the MDMEETS podcast, speaking about German entrepreneurship. “People are risk-averse and things like that, and maybe that’s true, but the dimension I want to also push back on is perhaps there’s also a fear of success.” “If you have something that works—you’re not going to scale it to this extreme degree like an Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg,” he told fellow German billionaire and media mogul Mathias Döpfner. Instead, Thiel argued, German entrepreneurs are more likely to sell or exit their companies before they become truly global businesses. “What’s very striking is how few great new companies have been built in Germany in the last number of decades,” Thiel added.
- Germany has largely fallen behind some of its peers in innovation. The country has a fraction of the unicorns found in the U.S. and China, and its performance has begun to lag behind several European neighbors. In the European Union’s 2026 Innovation Scoreboard, Germany ranked No. 10, behind countries including Austria, Luxembourg and Ireland.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Innovation, Germany, Fear of Success, Fear of Failure, Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Personal Development, Leading & Managing Section
Avoiding Overemployment: How To Assess A Potential Side Business
By Forbes Expert Panel | Forbes | September 24, 2026
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As both AI-enabled side businesses and overemployment become more common, younger workers are increasingly considering the opportunities and challenges of pursuing income beyond their primary jobs. Taking on a side gig can offer new skills, financial flexibility and entrepreneurial experience, but it can also create competing demands on one’s time, energy and attention.
The key is to understand how a second stream of work will fit with current priorities, professional responsibilities and long-term goals. Here, Forbes Coaches Council members share their expert advice for evaluating a potential side gig while protecting performance at a day job and balancing personal commitments.
- Weigh The Tradeoffs Of Dividing Your Energy. Having a side gig and even launching a small business can be a great way to expand one’s skill set and create a safety net in an increasingly volatile market, but it is rare that one can succeed on the job while diverting energy to a business, and just as rare to successfully scale a business on a part-time basis. If you’re engaged in overemployment, the question is why? Is it financial or is it due to the fact that you’re working in the wrong lane and need to make a shift?
- Balance Career Agility With Employer Expectations. In an unpredictable and ambiguous economy, side gigs can provide needed security and career agility in addition to sharper skills and motivation. The benefits for the main employer are real too; they profit from the new skills and more motivated staff! Address the concerns of your employer directly, highlight the benefits for them and propose a system to assess progress and performance.
- Treat Your Main Job As An Investor In The Side Business. Side gigs are becoming more feasible and, in some cases, a way to provide more financial security as costs continue to rise. The “side hustle” can turn into a thriving business that you’ll want to pivot toward or simply continue as a source of enjoyment and modest income. It is, however, important to prioritize your main job as you test the waters with the alternative business. Think of it as the investor in your side gig; your current company is continuing to fund your business.
- Clarify Your Motivation And Standing Commitments. First, be conscious of why you’re doing this. Then ask these questions: Do I have to disclose this side work to my employer, or am I running into any conflict of interest? Can I do them both without jeopardizing my quality of contractual commitment and life? Am I building transferable skills, or just trading hours for cash? Finally: Do these answers serve the “why”?
- Prioritize Your Main Job While Building For The Future. Be clear about your priorities as they balance a day job with a side gig. What are the primary employer expectations for work hours and outcomes? Fill those first and use the additional time—like lunch hours, evenings and weekends—to fuel your side gig. Make sure your side gig is something that either fuels your soul or lays the groundwork for your future. If it does, it will increase your chances of successfully balancing it with your current day job.
The others are:
Use AI To Build Scalable Assets, Not Another Job.
Treat The Side Gig As A Strategic Career Experiment
Don’t Let A Side Gig Become Your Main Job’s Competitor
Evaluate Whether A Side Gig Is Worth The Investment
Honor Commitments And Build Wealth Simultaneously
Future-Proof Yourself With ‘Career Insurance (AI-enabled side business)
Protect Your Reputation And Be Honest About Capacity
Build A Career Portfolio That Expands Your Options
And Test Whether The Side Business Can Stand On Its Own
2 key takeaways from the article
- As both AI-enabled side businesses and overemployment become more common, younger workers are increasingly considering the opportunities and challenges of pursuing income beyond their primary jobs. Taking on a side gig can offer new skills, financial flexibility and entrepreneurial experience, but it can also create competing demands on one’s time, energy and attention.
- The key is to understand how a second stream of work will fit with current priorities, professional responsibilities and long-term goals. Here, Forbes Coaches Council members share their expert advice for evaluating a potential side gig while protecting performance at a day job and balancing personal commitments. These are: Weigh The Tradeoffs Of Dividing Your Energy. Balance Career Agility With Employer Expectations. Treat Your Main Job As An Investor In The Side Business. Clarify Your Motivation And Standing Commitments. Prioritize Your Main Job While Building For The Future. Use AI To Build Scalable Assets, Not Another Job. Treat The Side Gig As A Strategic Career Experiment. Don’t Let A Side Gig Become Your Main Job’s Competitor. Evaluate Whether A Side Gig Is Worth The Investment. Honor Commitments And Build Wealth Simultaneously. Future-Proof Yourself With ‘Career Insurance (AI-enabled side business). Protect Your Reputation And Be Honest About Capacity. Build A Career Portfolio That Expands Your Options. And Test Whether The Side Business Can Stand On Its Own.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Side Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership
Entrepreneurship Section
4 Rare Leadership Habits That Make People Want to Follow You
By Marcel Schwantes | Inc | September 25, 2026
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There’s a lot that’s been said about leadership, but the concept is ultimately defined by action. In all my years studying leadership and coaching executives, according to the author he has found that leadership isn’t about what people say they believe. It’s revealed by what they consistently do.
That gives us a much better barometer for measuring leadership: behavior. And here’s what he has found. True leaders serve others. They use their influence not primarily for themselves, but to help other people succeed. You’ll often see four characteristics in leaders who operate this way.
They care more about others than themselves. You won’t find much ego-driven leadership in healthy, high-performing cultures. The focus isn’t personal glory or protecting someone’s turf. It’s the team and the mission. Selfless leaders continually ask a different question: What do my people need from me to do their best work? That mindset changes how people work together. Instead of protecting information, competing for credit, or building silos, people are more likely to collaborate and solve problems across boundaries. That’s because the leader has modeled something important: We succeed together.
They know the difference between right and wrong. Some call this moral intelligence. I think of it more simply as character in action. Great leaders have a clear understanding of the values that guide them. Those values become especially important when circumstances get difficult and the right decision isn’t necessarily the easiest, fastest, or most profitable one. Character gives leaders an internal compass. When something begins moving away from the organization’s purpose or values, they notice. More importantly, they act! They tell the truth; they make the difficult call. They take responsibility for their actions, even if admitting fault comes at a cost.
They believe in their people. Conventional thinking says people must earn a leader’s trust. Great leaders are often willing to start somewhere different. They extend trust and give capable people the opportunity to prove what they can do. That’s because they believe in their people’s strengths, abilities, potential, and commitment to the work. This doesn’t mean blind trust or abandoning accountability. It means resisting the urge to control every decision simply because you’re the boss, large-and-in-charge. Give people clear expectations. Give them the resources they need. Give them room to make decisions and solve problems. Then get the heck out of the way. When people know their leader believes in them, something powerful happens: They begin taking greater ownership of the work.
They lead with love. It means creating psychological safety so people can speak honestly. It means caring about employees as human beings, not merely as units of productivity. It means listening, supporting people’s growth, removing obstacles, recognizing contributions, and treating people with dignity.
The leadership test. If you want to know what kind of leader you are, don’t start with your title, your strategy, or even your intentions. Look at your actions and ask yourself some pointed “raise the mirror” questions. Do people experience you as someone who serves or someone who controls? Do your decisions reflect your stated values when those values become inconvenient? Do your people feel trusted to do the work you hired them to do? And after interacting with you, do they feel more valued, capable, and supported—or less? Leadership ultimately comes down to what others experience in your presence—your daily actions. That’s what makes you a leader worth following.
3 key takeaways from the article
- There’s a lot that’s been said about leadership, but the concept is ultimately defined by action. In all his years studying leadership and coaching executives, the author he has found that leadership isn’t about what people say they believe. It’s revealed by what they consistently do.
- That gives us a much better barometer for measuring leadership: behavior. True leaders serve others. They use their influence not primarily for themselves, but to help other people succeed. You’ll often see four characteristics in leaders who operate this way. They care more about others than themselves. They are morally intelligent – know the difference between right and wrong. They believe in their people. And they lead with love i.e., create sychological safety for their people.
- If you want to know what kind of leader you are, don’t start with your title, your strategy, or even your intentions. Look at your actions and ask yourself some pointed “raise the mirror” questions. Do people experience you as someone who serves or someone who controls? Do your decisions reflect your stated values when those values become inconvenient? Do your people feel trusted to do the work you hired them to do? And after interacting with you, do they feel more valued, capable, and supported—or less? Leadership ultimately comes down to what others experience in your presence—your daily actions. That’s what makes you a leader worth following.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Leadership, Entrepreneurship
The Part of Productivity Most Avoid (and Why It’s Costing You Tomorrow)
By Wilson Luna | Entrepreneur | September 25, 2026
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You finished the hard thing. You sat through the discomfort, you got it done, and now you’re on the couch. Netflix. Phone. Scrolling. You think this is rest — but it isn’t. And tomorrow’s results will prove it.
Your results decrease because you don’t know how to complete the flow cycle. In a nutshell, flow is the most productive state humans can utilize to do work. The flow cycle has four stages. In phase one, the struggle is when you want to quit. Release is when you stop fighting the discomfort and wait for the flow. Flow is when work stops feeling like work, and the momentum begins. But then there’s the fourth stage: recovery. It determines your capacity for each new task. Most people never complete the full cycle — not because they can’t get into flow, but because they don’t know what comes after it. Learning what you’re doing wrong helps you finish the flow cycle properly. Then, you’re able to complete the end goal. Make a full flow cycle your lifestyle, not an individual event.
Netflix isn’t a recovery. Scrolling isn’t a recovery. They are survival modes with a screen in front of it. As Daniel Kahneman’s research confirms, passive consumption keeps the reactive mind running. It never fully closes the loop. Relaxation is light and passive. It only reduces arousal slightly, but keeps you on your toes for engagement. Leaders who reward themselves with Netflix after a productive day or spend hours doomscrolling at bedtime feel numb the next day. They are never fully recovered. Recovery is intentional deep activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. Full reset. Natural restoration of chemicals your brain releases during the flow.
Most practice owners are in a stress state 80-95% of their day. Relaxation only pauses the flow cycle, but doesn’t end it. You can’t step into the new flow as long as the last one is still on, working in the background. To shut it down, you need to recover properly. As one of the most studied recovery mechanisms, sleep helps the brain clear flow neurochemicals and restore the capacity to replicate high performance. But any intentional recovery that helps your brain reset, including sauna, deliberate cold exposure and yoga, will do it for you. Always consult your healthcare professional before starting any new recovery, wellness or health-related practice.
Once you train your brain to complete the cycle every time, working on a full tank becomes your lifestyle. You don’t get out of the cycle. You keep cycling over and over again and go into the most productive human state (flow) more consistently. Each completed cycle lowers the resistance for the next one. It is similar to what happens in the gym with weight lifting. The first time you lifted 20 pounds in the gym was hard, but the feeling was good. Next time you come, it is still hard, but you have more capacity. After a few cycles, that 20 pounds feels like half the weight, and you’re ready to keep cycling. Once you experience one cycle after another as part of your lifestyle, the passive distraction loses its appeal. You stop loving the convenience. You start prioritizing the flow.
3 key takeaways from the article
- You finished the hard thing. You sat through the discomfort, you got it done, and now you’re on the couch. Netflix. Phone. Scrolling. You think this is rest — but it isn’t. And tomorrow’s results will prove it. Your results decrease because you don’t know how to complete the flow cycle.
- Flow is the most productive state humans can utilize to do work. Four stages. Phase one, ‘struggle’, when you want to quit. ‘Release’, is when you stop fighting the discomfort and wait for the flow. ‘Flow’ is when work stops feeling like work, and the momentum begins. But then there’s the fourth stage: recovery. It determines your capacity for each new task. Most people never complete the full cycle — not because they can’t get into flow, but because they don’t know what comes after it.
- Netflix isn’t a recovery. Scrolling isn’t a recovery. They are survival modes with a screen in front of it. As Daniel Kahneman’s research confirms, passive consumption keeps the reactive mind running. It never fully closes the loop. Relaxation is light and passive. It only reduces arousal slightly, but keeps you on your toes for engagement. Leaders who reward themselves with Netflix after a productive day or spend hours doomscrolling at bedtime feel numb the next day. They are never fully recovered. Recovery is intentional deep activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. Full reset. Natural restoration of chemicals your brain releases during the flow.
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Topics: Productivity, Performance, Flow
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