Kestria Global Leadership Barometer 2025

As the world’s leading executive search alliance, the Barometer reinforces Kestria’s commitment to thought leadership and our role in supporting executive leadership globally.

The survey addressed 16 critical questions with over 600 respondents, exploring leadership challenges and priorities, including how leaders are navigating geopolitical instability, digital transformation, inflationary pressures and the rise of emerging technologies. It also delved into responses to the global talent shortage, sustainability requirements, regulatory challenges, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies, and the ways organisations are building resilience and agility.

The results offer unique, real-time insights into the thinking of today’s leaders - highlighting both their challenges and the strategies they are employing to lead through uncertainty. From this analysis, key themes have emerged that provide valuable guidance for leaders everywhere, shedding light on current trends and practical responses.

Major organisational challenges

According to the survey responses, global leaders nominated the key challenges currently faced by organisations as being: 

• Talent acquisition and retention (#1),
• Competitive market pressures (#2), and 
• Digital transformation (#3). 

Notwithstanding the ranking, there was little (less than 4 percentage points) separating these top 3 challenges.

Challenges facing organisations by region

Analysing the results on a regional basis, the results vary somewhat (as illustrated below).  In Europe respondents considered each of the 3 similarly important (less than 5% difference between one and three). However, the issue of talent attraction and retention is almost 10% more important to respondents in the Americas, while in Asia geopolitical instability is ranked more highly.  In the Middle East and Africa, the top organisational challenge was considered to be economic uncertainly and inflation - a factor also seen as important in the Americas.

Leadership priorities

Enhancing the agility and responsiveness of their organisations is considered by executives across all regions to be the number one leadership priority. Addressing technological disruption is followed in second place in all regions excepting the Americas, where navigating global economic volatility is the number two.

The other factor that differed significantly is driving sustainability initiatives, which in most regions ranks as the number 4 leadership priority excepting in the Americas, where it ranks lower down the list, with only one in 4 executives seeing it as a leadership priority in their organisation.

Looking ahead

Over the medium term (3 to 5 years), the most significant challenge facing organisations is economic instability in key markets, according to almost 60% of respondent executives. This is followed closed by trade policies and tariffs and then changes in supply chain dynamics due to geopolitical factors. 

Interestingly, the Americas and Asia respondents ranked trade policies and tariffs as the number one factor (at 66% and 60% respectively) while in the Middle East and Africa, it ranked in fourth place, nominated by only 40% of respondents.

Less than 5% of respondents do not foresee any significant geopolitical challenges impacting the organisation over the medium term.

Key leadership themes

In analysing the survey results, a number of interesting themes emerged, providing insights into the thinking of leaders and organisations around the world.

1. Upskilling and reskilling

As noted earlier, this survey suggests that talent acquisition and retention is the number one global challenge currently facing organisations.  Respondents consider that a focus on upskilling and reskilling internally is the number one way this challenge is being met. This response was double the next ranked strategy of offering competitive compensation packages and incentives and almost 3 times the response of recruiting talent from a global pool.

Looking across regions, the Asia Pacific ranked upskilling and reskilling internally the highest at over 70% while it only came in at 56% in the Americas.  It is also interesting to note that almost a quarter of the Americas respondents nominated that their organisation does not have a specific talent strategy in place, despite the fact that the Americas perceived that talent attraction and retention was a greater challenge for their region in comparison to others.

2. Inflationary pressures

Within an environment of economic uncertainty and historically high inflation, three quarters of respondents see their organisations addressing this by focusing on cost while maintaining growth initiations – and the response is consistently high across all regions.  Strengthening financial risk management and scenario planning come in as the second most favoured response across all regions excepting Africa and the Middle East, where the adjustment of pricing strategies to counter inflation is the second most favoured response. 

Interestingly, more than one in 10 executives in the Middle East and Africa do not see a clear strategy for managing economic uncertainty in their organisations, compared with 8% in European organisations. Conversely, in Asia and the Americas, organisations lacking this strategy is evident to less than 4% of respondents. 

3. Trends in diversity, equity and inclusion

Overall, one-third of respondents to the survey consider DEI to be a core pillar of leadership strategy for their organisation, increasing to over 40% for responses in the Asia Pacific region.

However, perhaps even more interesting is that globally over 25% of respondents consider that in their organisation, there is either no specific DEI strategy in place or if there is, it is mostly compliance-driven rather than strategic.

More than 20% of responses from the Middle East and Africa indicated that there is no DEI strategy in their organisation, compared to half that rate in European organisations. And in the Americas, almost a quarter of responses suggested that DEI is considered but not a leadership priority.

4. Leadership and digital transformation

Responses to questions of digital disruption and emerging technologies demonstrate a prioritisation by leadership teams. Over 80% of survey respondents indicated that in their organisation leaders are either directly driving digital transformation initiatives or are directly supporting digital initiatives. In Asia Pacific, organisational leadership involvement in digital transformation is at its highest based on survey results.

At the other end of the spectrum, while globally less than 4% of responses indicated there was no digital strategy driven at leadership level, this figure rose to almost 10% for organisations in the Middle East and Africa.

5. Critical leadership traits

The 3 leadership skills seen as critical for future-focused organisations were (in priority order): challenging ideas and driving innovation; empathy and emotional intelligence; and adaptability to uncertainty and change. Globally, these rank clearly ahead of other factors such as building and maintaining high-performing teams, communication and influencing skills, managing competing priorities and navigating burnout and stress.

It is interesting to note the differences at a regional level. Asia Pacific respondents were very clear that challenging ideas and innovation was more than 12 percentage points ahead of the next most important. Middle East and African respondents also ranked this trait first, but nowhere near as strongly. Adaption to uncertainty and change was the highest ranked by Americas respondents and leading with empathy and emotional intelligence for European respondents (in both cases by relatively small margins).

Observations

A standout finding from Kestria’s Global Leadership Barometer is the universal concern around talent acquisition and retention, with upskilling and reskilling seen as the key solution. However, despite the Americas identifying talent as a top issue, almost a quarter of leaders there say their organisations lack a clear talent strategy—highlighting a disconnect between recognition and action. While agility is the top leadership priority globally, regional differences—like the Americas’ focus on economic volatility and the Middle East’s emphasis on inflation—show how leadership responses are shaped by local pressures.

The survey also highlights contrasting progress on DEI and digital transformation. While over 80% of leaders globally are actively driving digital strategies, gaps remain in regions like the Middle East and Africa. DEI presents a more mixed picture: a third of leaders globally view it as core to leadership strategy, yet many organisations treat it as compliance or lack a strategy entirely. These variations reflect a broader trend—leaders face common challenges, but responses remain uneven across regions.

Summary

Kestria’s inaugural Global Leadership Barometer provides a timely and valuable snapshot of leadership thinking in a disrupted world. The insights gathered underline both the common challenges faced by organisations globally and the differentiated strategies required to address them across regions. As disruption accelerates, leaders must continue to build organisational resilience, foster adaptability, and commit to leadership practices that balance innovation, empathy, and decisive action. This Barometer reinforces Kestria’s commitment to identifying, attracting and supporting global leaders, offering not only analysis but a foundation for further dialogue and insight.