The past year saw unprecedented change and turmoil in the labor market, from pandemic-era layoffs to AI fundamentally and tangibly turning the workforce on its head. But it’s in these times of uncertainty and transition that leadership becomes of paramount importance. In 2025, the very nature of leadership itself morphed along with the times, and specific themes resonated with readers in specific ways. And they’re bound to remain very much in the game heading into 2026.
Here are some of Fast Company’s most popular leadership stories from the last year.
Managing underperformers
We live in a world of quiet quitting and more workers rejecting hustle culture and the rise-and-grind that defined the last couple of decades. While there are valid reasons fuelling some of this behavior—workers holding steadfast in their desire for work-life balance, for example, or resisting corporate control when they can be brazenly let go at the drop of a hat—other team members may simply be phoning it in or slacking. “Underperformance doesn’t just materialize,” writes Roxanne Calder. “Unfortunately, far too many companies prioritize optics over results, turn to placating instead of coaching, and compensate instead of addressing.”
Multi-hyphenate leadership
Entrepreneur. Author. Executive. Board member. Founder. Teacher. Storyteller. These are just a few labels business leaders may gravitate toward when describing their careers, or even current roles. Nowadays, multi-hyphenated monikers not only better describe the full dimensionality of a leader’s skills, but also how success involves lots of paths, not a straightforward ladder to a single title. Awareness of this multifaceted quality gained more attention in 2025—especially for women, write Alison Moore and Nada Usina. “Mother and manager, founder and caregiver, mentor and innovator,” they write. “What looked ‘nonlinear’ was simply a different kind of training ground, one that creates resilience, adaptability, and perspective.”
Not everyone wants to be a leader at all
There’s a truism in work: if you want the fancy title, the extra respect and responsibility and most important, the big bucks . . . you have to become a manager. “You can only go so far unless you manage people,” writes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. We live in a culture that glorifies leadership—but not everyone wants to have direct reports. And that’s okay. Especially because, in truth, a lot of people are just bad at it. “Data from organizational psychology is sobering: Most people are not competent leaders,” Chamorro-Premuzic continues. “Studies suggest that 50% to 60% of leaders are seen as ineffective by their employees, and engagement surveys regularly show that ‘my manager’ is the single biggest factor driving dissatisfaction at work.”
The rise of ‘fractional’ leaders
2025 saw more of a spotlight on what’s known as “fractional” leaders: senior leaders moving away from high-power, high-profile roles at a single company and instead providing strategic consulting and C-suite-level experience on a part-time basis to many different companies. Typically they’re people with executive experience who are looking for better work-life balance. From fractional CEOs to CFOs, it’s an employment setup for leaders who’ve long sat atop the summit of the org chart desiring a change of pace, and it was on the ascent this year: Sara Daw writes that “[fractional leaders] feel like they can have a greater impact on a small organization than within the constraints of a large corporation.”
The ‘interim’ CEO
And with CEOs specifically, 2025 saw more turnover in the head boss position at many companies, leading to a trend dubbed “interim CEOs.” “Nearly a quarter of new CEOs named in the first two months of 2025 were hired on an interim basis, versus 8% in the same period last year,” Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta writes. It often occurs when there’s a sudden vacancy in the position, and someone needs to quickly step in to buy the board more time in a search for a successor. And currently, the talent pool for CEOs is uniquely robust: “Many of the CEOs exiting business right now are baby boomer and Gen X retirees who are eager to remain active by taking on interim roles.”