What This Year Taught Us About Leadership – 5 Critical Lessons
- Brainz Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Gillian is the Managing Director of Emerge Development Consultancy, which she founded 28 years ago. She is a Master Executive Coach working with many CEOs and Managing Directors globally. She is also an international speaker and, in 2020, was named by f: Entrepreneur as one of the leading UK Female Entrepreneurs in the I also campaign. In 2023, she was named the Leader of the Year by the Women’s Business Club. In 2024, she was named Businesswoman of the Decade.
This time of year always brings a certain kind of reflection, squeezed somewhere between digging out the Christmas jumpers and eating our bodyweight in mince pies and Celebrations. If we’re lucky, we pause long enough to hear our own thoughts again. Sometimes that pause feels like a gentle breath, a chance to catch up. Other times it feels more like slamming on the brakes and immediately looking for a dark room to lie down in.
This year, as I coached and worked with leaders, it felt very much like the latter. The sheer number of people saying, “I don’t even know where to begin,” shows what a rollercoaster 2025 has been.
We often talk about a VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, but this year felt even more muddled. Constant organisational change, hybrid working that still isn’t settled (“Are we back in the office? When? Why?”), workplaces trying to understand neurodiversity properly rather than superficially, and the rapid pace of AI transformation all topped the complexity list. Add to that teams spread across time zones, global political tension, particularly around DEI, and a mental health crisis as more people hit burnout.
For leaders trying to support teams, there have never been so many layers to balance, productivity, psychological safety, performance, wellbeing, uncertainty, and still delivering results.
And when we reflect, it’s easy to beat ourselves up about everything we didn’t do, the projects that slipped, the decisions we wish we’d made differently, the mistakes we replay on a loop. Organisations do this too. So many end-of-year “lessons learned” exercises are actually just “lessons recorded”, dutifully captured, filed, and then promptly forgotten.
But what if lessons learned became meaningful? To do that, we need to reverse the most common question.
Not “Why did this go wrong?”
But “What went well?”
It sounds simple. Too soft, even. But it isn’t. It might be the most underused leadership strategy we have.
In a culture where we’re conditioned to scan for what’s broken, asking “what went well?” shifts everything. It widens our emotional range, builds resilience, strengthens team collaboration, and, crucially, stops us from overlooking our own progress. And I learned this in a very personal way.
Changing the lens
A few months ago, after an intense stretch of workshops, I came home feeling that familiar mix of satisfaction and exhaustion. I’d been travelling, teaching, facilitating, coaching and, as always happens when I’m busy, I immediately slipped into replay mode.
Did I miss something? Should I have explained that better? Did I misread the room? Why didn’t I…? I’m sure that is a spiral that many people can recognise. Then someone close to me simply asked, “But what went well?”
I almost dismissed it. I had a whole list of improvements ready, but not one immediate answer to that question. When I forced myself to pause, I realised how many breakthroughs had happened, how much positive feedback I’d received, and how much change I’d actually seen in the groups I worked with. And I also realised something else, I was holding myself to a level of scrutiny I would never apply to anyone else.
I see this everywhere, in teams, leaders, women navigating career transitions, high-potential talent trying to prove themselves, senior executives who’ve forgotten how good they really are. During 360-degree feedback sessions, people rush past the praise and almost get agitated when asked to absorb the positives before finding the areas to improve.
We rush through our wins so quickly that we forget to feel proud. We forget to notice what’s working. We forget how far we’ve come. That single moment shifted how I approached the rest of the year, and it shaped the five themes that kept emerging across industries and organisations.
The leadership lessons we’re taking into next year
1. Emotional range beats emotional control
For years, leaders were encouraged to stay composed, steady, neutral. But this year, more leaders allowed themselves to be genuinely human. They showed vulnerability. They said, “I don’t know.” They admitted frustration, stopped performing leadership, and started practising it.
Leaders who embraced emotional intelligence saw clear shifts:
Teams responded to honesty and opened up more themselves.
Tension softened, and collaboration improved.
Authenticity helped people navigate uncertainty better than any detailed plan ever could.
Trust increased, and so did productivity.
As one leader told me, “Once I stopped pretending I had all the answers, my team finally felt safe enough to start finding them with me.”
2. Curiosity became a resilience strategy
If there was one theme that separated thriving leaders from overwhelmed ones, it was curiosity. Hybrid working remains inconsistent. AI is outpacing organisational structures. Plus, neurodiversity is finally being taken seriously, but leaders are still learning what that genuinely means. No one has all the answers anymore.
The best leaders stopped pretending they did and instead started asking better questions. The sincere kind, not the performative kind. Curiosity improved team dynamics, expanded understanding of different working styles, created psychological safety, and sparked innovation. Teams with curious leaders didn’t shut down in uncertainty, they opened up.
3. Strengths became the secret to performance
For too long, performance conversations focused on closing gaps and fixing weaknesses. But this year, something shifted. Leaders began to realise how much easier and more effective it is when people work from their strengths.
On our RISE Empowerment Programme, participants complete a strengths exercise where they gather feedback from others. What’s most striking isn’t the results themselves, it’s how many people genuinely don’t know what their strengths are, or how many are in roles that barely use them.
When participants took their strengths back to their managers, many redesigned aspects of their roles. The impact was immediate, higher performance, greater confidence, more creativity, and better wellbeing.
4. Boundaries became a priority (Even if they weren’t always observed)
One of the biggest themes in coaching this year has been the erosion of boundaries. Not just work-life boundaries, but boundaries around attention, time, energy, and emotional load.
With global time zones, hybrid working, and the rise of internal communication channels like Teams, Slack, and WhatsApp, many people were operating in a constant state of depletion. And performance suffered.
Helping leaders and teams re-establish boundaries created rapid improvements:
People working with US time zones limited late meetings to certain days.
Others felt empowered to decline projects that didn’t fit capacity.
Many switched off notifications and discovered the sky didn’t fall in.
Leaders modelled healthier habits, giving their teams permission to do the same.
There is no badge of honour in being a leader who works 14 hours a day. Boundaries aren’t indulgent, they’re protective.
5. Coaching became a mindset, not a meeting
Old leadership models, command, instruct, direct, simply don’t work in a world shaped by hybrid teams, AI, neurodiversity, and multi-generational workforces.
Coaching has finally shifted from being a “nice to have” to becoming the backbone of effective leadership.
Not formal coaching sessions, though those matter too, but everyday coaching:
The quick corridor conversation.
The curious follow-up question.
The “tell me more about that” moment.
The chance to help someone think rather than think for them.
When leaders embedded coaching into daily interactions, everything changed. People felt more capable. Problems were solved earlier. Teams were more confident, collaborative, and resourceful. Coaching turned culture into behaviour, not just words on a slide deck.
A better year begins with better reflection
So, what lessons do we carry forward?
Reflection doesn’t require analysing everything you didn’t achieve. Sometimes the most powerful shifts come from three simple questions:
What went well, and why?
What do I want to repeat?
What am I ready to retire?
As you step into next year, don’t start by planning a completely new life. Start by noticing the parts of this year that were already working. Build on them. Repeat them. Strengthen them.
Incremental improvements create big shifts, far bigger than we realise. And perhaps the real leadership lesson of the year is this Progress grows where attention goes.
Read more from Gillian Jones-Williams
Gillian Jones-Williams, Emerge Development Consultancy
Gillian Managing Director of Emerge Development Consultancy which she founded 25 years ago. She is a Master Executive Coach working with many CEOs and managing Directors globally. She is also an international speaker and in 2020 was named by f: Entrepreneur as one of the leading UK Female Entrepreneurs in the Ialso campaign. In 2024 she was awarded Businesswoman of the Decade by the women’s Business Club.
Gillian founded the RISE Women’s Development Programme which is delivered both in the UK and the Middle East, and Saudi and is her absolute passion.
If you want to know more about our Conduct Reflection Sessions or Diversity and Inclusion solutions please get in touch. We are working with many organisations on their Diversity and Inclusion interventions, strategies, policies and programmes. For more information contact us on 01329 820580 or via info@emergeuk.com
