Once largely a topic of investigation and experimentation, AI implementation has permeated the mainstream. Russell Reynolds Associates’ latest Global Leadership Monitor (GLM) reveals that:
Without fundamental transformation in the next decade, 74% of leaders say their organizations will cease to exist. Our latest GLM shows that AI and tech change are major drivers behind that belief.
As AI becomes the backdrop against which modern leadership plays out, public sentiment towards AI is growing more polarized. To ensure your workforce is aligned with leadership’s AI strategy, merely adopting AI is not enough; the challenge becomes translating use cases into behavior change, decision-making, and meaningful process and performance improvements. This article explores both leaders’ on-the-ground progress with generative AI (GenAI) tools and what’s required of executives to lead through this transformative moment and into the human-AI age of work.
Leaders take generative AI seriously, with 35% now reporting that it’s fully implemented in their team’s day-to-day workflow. That’s a massive jump from a year ago, when only 19% of leaders could say the same (Figure 1). Conversely, only 9% say their teams haven’t taken any steps to implement AI, meaning leaders globally have recognized its strategic importance.
The real question: what’s the strategy behind these AI adoptions? Action without strategy is ultimately more about keeping up appearances versus true value realization.
Measuring AI activity is fairly easy: trainings conducted, active users, prompt volume. But measuring AI transformation is much harder. Meaningful adoption is grounded in specific use cases, workflow redesigns, decision-making quality, and strategic operational architecture change.
Figure 1: YoY GenAI adoption progress by leaders globally (2024-2026)
% of leaders answering “to what degree has your function or team implemented generative AI?
Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H1 2026 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 1,477 CEOs, C-level leaders, and next generation leaders; H1 2025 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 1,891 CEOs, C-level leaders, and next generation leaders; H1 2024 Global Leadership Monitor, n=1,382 CEOs, C-suite, board, and next generation leaders
Leaders should be shifting from asking “should we implement AI” to “how well is our AI transformation scaling, creating value, and being governed with our company’s context?”
This implementation momentum is matched by a continued rise in leadership expectations, with 90% now believing a strong understanding of GenAI is a non-negotiable for future C-suites. As AI literacy moves from a differentiating advantage to a baseline executive capability, executives increasingly see AI skills as a core element of enterprise leadership.
Leaders’ confidence in their own AI abilities is improving, but it’s less universal. Just over half (52%) of leaders now believe they have the right skills to help implement AI in their organization. Still, that’s a jump of 11 percentage points since last year.
This is meaningful progress, but it also shows that leaders’ belief has moved faster than their readiness. Executives increasingly understand that AI matters, but many are still building the practical fluency to lead adoption effectively.
With this established belief in the importance of AI skills, one might expect tech literacy to be the expertise that leaders view as most important for tackling the biggest impacts on their business. But that’s not the case.
Instead, leaders are most likely to name strategic thinking as the most crucial skill for addressing these factors—55% of leaders rank this skill highest, a staggering 24 percentage points more than the 31% who ranked decision-making and change management in the top three among skills leaders need (Figure 2).
Next are resilience (27%), innovation/creativity (26%), and purpose-driven leadership (21%). Interestingly, these “soft skills” beat out tech literacy and financial acumen, which only 17% and 11% of leaders name, respectively.
Figure 2: The necessary skills for facing top factors impacting organizational health
What skills do you think are most necessary for leaders at your organization to face the top factors impacting organizational health?
(% of executives who selected as a top 3 skill)
Source: Russell Reynolds Associates Global Leadership Monitor H1 2026 | Base: CEOs, C-level, next-generation, and board leaders (n=2,161)
In the face of massive tech shifts, leaders are recognizing that the leadership skills that tap into their judgment and humanity are the differentiators for future success.
This prioritization shows that even as leaders express deep enthusiasm for AI, they’re balancing it against meaningful concerns about individuals failing to develop critical thinking skills and judgment due to overreliance on AI and the potential harm that dependence could have on their long-term talent pipelines.
Our leadership experts agree: AI calls for leaders who can lead through change, display a humane leadership style, and continuously evolve and develop. In the future of work, leadership assessment will expand beyond what leaders know to how they think. As they commit to AI adoption, leaders must also recognize how it will reshape career pathways, learning, and judgment—even (especially) their own.
AI is changing the kind of potential that leaders must demonstrate to succeed in an AI-enabled world
Leaders’ confidence in their organizational capabilities slightly increased over the last year but remains mixed. We saw the largest gains in forward-thinking leadership (the only category to crack 50% confidence), employees’ technical skills (42%, the biggest year-over-year increase), and AI processes and safeguards (both of which made nominal gains) (Figure 3).
Data quality remains an issue. In H1 2026, confidence that the organization has accurate, high-quality data on which to build AI solutions remained around 40%, where it’s been for the past year, confirming that AI won’t change data quality issues. If anything, it highlights them.
Board capabilities remain the area in which leaders feel least confident, with only 29% saying they have the right expertise on the board to advise on their AI implementation.
Figure 3: Organizational AI readiness (H1 2025 vs H1 2026)
% of leaders strongly agreeing/agreeing that their organization has...
Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H1 2026 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 1,477 CEOs, C-level leaders, and next generation leaders; H1 2025 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 2,294 CEOs, C-suite, board, and next generation leaders
Our AI governance data from H2 2025 shines additional light on this board confidence gap. Only 35% of leaders think their organization had a clearly defined AI policy—less than the 38% who say they do not.
More concerning: only 27% of leaders believe that stakeholders understand and reference their organization’s AI policy when leveraging new AI technologies in their work. This implies that even where governance structures exist, they may not yet be embedded in day-to-day workflows.
With over half of leaders believing that boards will be found negligent if they fail to facilitate AI implementations in their organizations, boards should note these gaps as opportunities to further train their workforce on how to get the most out of AI, create corresponding usage policies, and establish ownership models.
While AI enthusiasm remains high, actual impacts are mixed.
AI clearly demonstrates early operational value. When respondents were asked what impact GenAI had in the prior 12 months, 67% reported that team productivity had increased, and 57% reported an increase in team skills and capabilities (Figure 4). These findings suggest that Gen AI’s early returns are appearing first in how teams work, further reinforcing that upskilling efforts are beginning to take hold.
By contrast, direct financial and business-model impacts appear more muted. Only 25% of leaders reported an increase in their organization’s profitability due to AI, and only 22% reported an increase in revenue streams.
Figure 4: GenAI’s organizational impact over the last 12 months
% of leaders answering “What impact did generative AI have on the following areas in the last 12 months?”
Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H2 2025 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 1080 leaders
This complicates simplistic narratives about AI as either an immediate revenue transformation engine or a straightforward headcount-reduction tool. GenAI produces visible gains, but they’re concentrated around productivity and capability, rather than in broad financial transformation.
The organizations that succeed will be those that move beyond experimentation and tool deployment toward a more disciplined and systematic AI transformation: stronger data and technical foundations, reimagined talent strategies and long-term succession planning, better governance, and leadership with the judgment and potential to know what’s worth doing.
From a talent perspective, this requires CEOs and their C-suites to:
1 Technological change was the most ranked factor that leaders believe will impact their organization’s health in the next 12-18 months in our H1 2026 Global Leadership Monitor. Sixty-three percent of all leaders named tech change as a top factor, making it the most selected external impact for the first time in the GLM’s history. Other top factors (in order of rank) are uncertain economic growth, geopolitical uncertainty, availability of key talent/skills, and workforce transformation.
Pam Attinger co-leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Technology practice. She is based in San Francisco.
Fawad Bajwa leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ AI, Analytics & Data Practice globally. He is based in Toronto and New York.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is Russell Reynolds Associates’ Chief Science Officer. He is based between London and New York.
Leah Christianson is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. She is based in San Francisco.
George Head leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Technology & Tech Officers Commercial Strategy & Insights teams. He is based in London.
Tuck Rickards is a senior member and former leader of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Technology practice. He is based in San Francisco.
The authors wish to thank the 2,700+ leaders from RRA’s global network who completed the H1 2026 Global Leadership Monitor. Their responses to the survey have contributed greatly to our understanding of leadership in 2026 and beyond.
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