2026: Year of unbridled competence

I love mathematics and my initial choice was a career in data analysis and the mastery of numbers, but I chose insurance, the flagship of hands-on people support, development, and growth.

My ambition in life is to glow the light bulb by honing leadership with unbridled competence. Let me emphasise that recalibrating for peak performance and growth is not drama, braggadocio or grandstanding.

This process of illuminating excellence can be likened to the final product of a skilled work of art. Organisations must strive to produce shining gold from dross after passing it through the refining furnace of a competent leader: a leader of great intelligence who draws clarity from creative thinking, pattern recognition and psychologically enabled discipline.

Leadership in 2026 will require innovation that overcomes limitations and constraints. There must be a determined and relentless pursuit of strategic objectives and organizational goals. The leader will need to demonstrate operational audacity and meticulous planning. He will take bigger risks and align strategic wisdom with result-oriented excellence. He must regularly showcase brilliance as the bridge that connects stakeholders from inside and outside the organization.

The incompetent leader speaks with grandiloquent but “empty” words. He reacts all the time and always searching for validation and social status. He is a “burden” to colleagues. He is always busy, overwhelmed with problems and challenges. He does things with drama and noise. He is addicted to activity, reactive, weak and ineffective. His goals-destination is never clear, and he cannot decisively take down walls.

Today’s economic climate is very complex and business therefore needs a competent leader to uncover, unpack and unblock narratives that are constraining peak performance.

The competent leader does not put the cart before the horse. His confidence never overshadows competence. It is absolutely crucial that the one leading the business must occupy a tenable position in the hierarchy. That position cannot be by confidence but competence. This excellent skill-packed leader is incomparably better. Please note that the relationship between competence and performance is non-linear. This non-linear differential contains the powers and dynamics of the dependent variables with its derivatives.

Competence is fundamental to honed leadership. It is a fundamental principle of honed leadership. It is dignifying and worthy of esteem and respect.

It is the competent leader that leads an accountable team. His organisation, with his precision, jettisons and avoids anti-productivity survival habits that are rooted in fear, blame, denial and excuses.

He progressively builds and promotes a culture of ownership with frameworks and great initiatives that go (in a committed manner) after lofty and meaningful goals.

His game plan for the organisation’s journey of continuous improvement recognises (and pays attention) to the fact that behaviour is culture.

Culture must underpin decision-making and execution. There must be focused emphasis on promotion of customer loyalty, respect for customers and colleagues as well as a learning mindset. This intentional shift to the learning mindset must progressively achieve and sustain process improvement.

Accountability, the new reality, must speak to integrity, honesty and transparency. In the workplace, it must be self-diagnosing and self correcting. The language of the leader must open-up his colleagues and not shut them down. Vulnerability should therefore be managed with empathy.

Coaching and mentoring must be encouraged. As we all know, coaches create winners. Mentoring guides employees with expertise to enable them fully step into their roles.

Let me note here that “satisfied” employees (the rational capital), are more productive and profitable. A robust way to promote workplace happiness and wellbeing is “honest” friendship and relationship.

Employees must also be regularly empowered and listened to.

Let me stress here that unbridled competence must “emplace” a “brand new” leadership in 2026. The business organisation must become an intellectual powerhouse. A workplace of “collective genius” where the leader builds a culture of collaboration of capabilities by co-creating with his team members.

The leader must, with exceptional skill, play multiple roles of the bridge builder, catalyst and architect. Innovation is about collaboration of individuals with their diverse expertise, perspectives and experience. The leader must leverage on these endowments and harness them for the collective good. Work is not what the people should be doing but what they could be doing.

I can give the example of how my organisation encouraged and trained retired senior leaders in the Nigerian armed forces to create a unique and valuable window for selling insurance services to their colleagues and family members. We even made a courageous attempt to turn vendors of one of the national newspapers into very active Insurance salesmen.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will definitely make deeper inroads into business activities in 2026, but it cannot replace human ability. The competent leader must therefore regularly hone his skills to always learn fast, adapt, take proactive actions and “positively” utilise opportunities and problems.

He must be more nimble, more adaptive and less controlling. His communication must create ideas and convey meaningful feelings. He must listen to understand, be curious and as I mentioned earlier have a learning mindset.

Let me conclude with the critical traits and characteristics of the competent and by implication, courageous leader. He must operate constantly with the 4C formula: Competence, Confidence, Curiosity and Community. In addition, his very important traits should include emotional intelligence, resilience, self-discipline, integrity and unshakable commitment.

Emotional intelligence is a fundamental asset in the toolbox of the competent and courageous leader. Its distinguishing features are: agility, brilliant human behaviour analysis, mental strength and emotional mastery, clarity and deep insights, as well as an intelligently flexible mindset.