How The Best Leaders Win Over A Skeptical Organization In 2026

Out of everything executives could be doing to help their organizations navigate 2026, what’s missing is a deliberate focus on inspiration and energy. It’s easy to understand why. In the midst of political change, industry pressure, or growth challenges, a call for inspiration sounds naive, at best. At worst, it risks appearing tone deaf and missing the point in an environment where your organization may be under big pressure meet commitments and close gaps. After all, when was the last time you heard an analyst ask an executive about inspiration or energy on an earnings call?

Answer: Never, but perhaps they should. That’s because inspiration plays critical and distinct role when it comes to accelerating execution and overcoming skepticism, fatigue, and resistance. As companies consider the headwinds they are facing, inspiration can be a powerful (and underutilized) lever for executives to pull when it comes to company performance and getting others ready to go in 2026. Here’s why:

Spend More Money On Inspiration, Not Engagement.

Despite billions spent by companies on engagement initiatives over the past decade, the benefits remain elusive. We continue to see declining engagement results with Gallup reporting only about a third of working Americans engaged in the workplace. Add to the mix reports of low employee optimism, and it’s clear that engagement efforts alone do little to inspire and fuel a belief in the future. Instead of sinking money in engagement efforts, companies would be far better served spending a fraction of that on helping their leaders get better at inspiring others.

Engagement Is Feelings, Inspiration Is Action.

To appreciate what’s missing from engagement efforts, start with a definition. While descriptions vary, engagement is the connection employees feel toward their places of work. Compare that to inspiration, defined as the ability to prompt, to produce, to bring about and (my favorite) to breathe life into others. The difference matters. Engagement can create powerful feelings, but it is inspiration that translates those emotions into purposeful action. To appreciate the truth of this, look no further than your own life for evidence. It isn’t enough to feel connected to the gym. At some point, we’ve actually got to get up off the couch and go.

Executives Can Learn How To Be Better At Inspiring And Energizing Others.

Being an inspiring leader, who can inspire and energize others, is a technical capability that can be developed at every level of an organization, which is why CEOs point to Inspirational Leadership as the top leadership behavior they must personally exhibit and critical to their organization’s growth and success, in this IBM study. Put differently: Learning how to be inspiring and energizing is the opposite of abstract or theory. Rather, think of inspiration as a set of concrete actions and behaviors that can be learned, practiced, and applied to day-to-day interactions in simple ways.

To Inspire, Executives Can Start With Three Simple Actions.

Start by recognizing what is inspiring and energizing to you. If you’ve never taken the time to consider what actually inspires you to act, start there. Over the past year, I’ve continually asked this question to teams and leaders. Here’s what happens first: A long pause, because most of us really haven’t taken the time to consider what truly inspires us. Don’t skip this first step, because identifying true sources of inspiration becomes the individual, team, and organizational list of ingredients that create movement and drive action.

Look carefully at your own experience. What inspires leaders to take action might surprise you. When I ask leaders to identify their sources of inspiration, you might expect responses focused on purpose or passion. But when leaders consider their real experiences and scenarios, more often than not, we hear straightforward comments like:

• Winning, growth, achievement
• Being underestimated
• Results and big goals
• Knowing I’m capable of more
• When someone I respect believes in me

Notice that what inspires comes with a harder edge than you might imagine, so consider what it really takes to be willing to climb up the big hill or take on the daunting task and tap into these sources of inspiration to drive action in others.

Consider how often you point out what is tough and challenging. It’s easy to talk about what is challenging, but the problem is, done too often, it’s uninspiring. Having “it’s so difficult” on repeat motivates absolutely nobody, and it keeps us stuck at a time when we need inspiration to drive purposeful action. What’s crazy is how often we do this, and it’s incredibly counterproductive, because the conversation doesn’t usually evolve beyond how tough things are. Start to pay attention to whether this a pattern you fall into, and shift the balance, so that you’re also talking about the types of things that inspire people to act.

Inspiration isn’t just a magic ingredient or a nice idea that makes employees feel good. It’s a differentiated capability that the best executives embody and a quality that high-performing organizations model. Done right, executives can use this powerful lever that can produce results at a time when organizations need them most.