Leadership Capabilities for the 21st Century: Thriving in an age of disruption
11 December 2025 – In an age of turbulence, effective leadership uses the energy and opportunity of disruption to create more thriving economies, societies and futures. This report updates the Leadership Capabilities for the 21st Century framework, published in 2023. It both incorporates feedback on its application in practice since publishing and explores the challenges and opportunities of leadership in the current context defined by disruption. It summarises the updates required and provides a revised relevant and practical framework and capabilities to influence leadership development and impact.
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About
Effective leadership for the 21st century is the ability to thrive in disruption to accelerate positive progress for citizens and economies.
This report advocates for building leadership capacity that:
- accepts responsibility for creating the conditions for collective movement towards a shared meaningful goal
- drives strategic transformation and performance to realise the purpose of a better future
- puts place and context at the heart of sense-making and decision-taking
- prioritises interconnection and interdependence in every way, from navigating complex systems to inter-personal dynamics
- enables a purposeful and healthy interplay between collaboration and competition, and bridges strategically to bring about action and impact
- generates the conditions for ideas and solutions to emerge, advance and fundamentally disrupt systems, building better futures
- knows what it stands for and does the hard things, rooted in active hope.
Citing this report
University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). (2025). Leadership capabilities for the 21st century. Thriving in an age of disruption. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.