A Technology Leadership Review of 2025

Leadership performance in 2025 is being judged on evidence, not assertion. Boards, people leaders, and investors now have clearer data on where executive hiring is failing and which traits genuinely correlate with success. We can also see how inclusive hiring is evolving and how UK plc is progressing on representation.

This review curates reputable external research alongside Adastrum’s own Meta Team maturity data. It is designed so boards, CEOs, and HR leaders can use 2025 as a reference point for succession planning, executive onboarding, and external positioning on leadership in 2026.

Executive Hire Failure Rates: The 40–60% Band Holds

Multiple long-running studies point in the same direction. Leadership IQ’s research found that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months, with coachability and emotional intelligence as the primary causes. A Forbes analysis described this failure rate as “surprisingly high” and largely unchanged over time.

Together, these sources make the 40–60% executive failure band a defensible planning assumption. The risk sits in integration and clarity of mandate, not in a lack of experience on the CV. In practical terms, onboarding and mandate definition belong inside the search process, not after it.

For boards reviewing their hiring plans, it is useful to check if recent executive hires were set up for success by asking:

• Did each hire have a written, agreed 90-day integration plan?

• Was a clear mandate documented and aligned between the chair, CEO, and the executive?

• Did expectations cover behavioural fit and decision rights as well as KPIs?

Where these foundations are missing, the primary risk lies in integration design rather than selection quality.

The 2025 Leadership Profile: Human Skills at the Core

By late 2025, the major leadership research houses were converging. Korn Ferry highlights adaptability and authentic leadership as defining capabilities. DDI emphasises trust-building as the context for performance. McKinsey continues to push self-awareness and inclusive leadership as core to effectiveness.

Across these benchmarks, the traits that appear most consistently are:

• Self-awareness and humility

• Respect and inclusion as everyday practice

• Learning agility

• Vision and communication

• Collaboration and influence across the organisation

Technical excellence is now assumed. The differentiator is how leaders adapt, relate, and include others. For organisations updating senior assessment processes next year, useful adjustments include replacing broad questions about “leadership style” with behavioural prompts linked to adaptability and learning agility.

Culture Add Over Culture Fit

Guidance from credible bodies is now clear. Using culture fit as the primary hiring lens can entrench bias and stifle innovation. Harvard Business Review sets out how unexamined “fit” can narrow the profile of those who progress. SHRM explicitly advises leaders to hire for culture add, while Forbes makes the business case that it helps prevent stagnation.

As organisations revisit senior role profiles, it is helpful to review:

• Do criteria describe how a candidate will extend the culture, not simply mirror it?

• Do competencies include constructive challenges and change leadership?

• Do interview panels include diverse voices who can evaluate culture contribution?

Instead of writing “must fit our entrepreneurial culture,” profiles can specify culture add in observable terms, such as “a track record of challenging established ways of working constructively.”

Agility You Can Measure

Agility has begun to move from a slogan to a measurable capability. McKinsey’s work remains a key reference, highlighting rapid learning and fast decision cycles. Deloitte’s 2025 research links agility to skills-based design, reporting that such organisations are 57% more likely to be agile.

Useful agility KPIs emerging from this work include:

• Time to adoption of new tools or processes

• Workforce redeployability and skills mobility

• Turnaround time for strategic initiatives from decision to first live pilot

If these metrics are largely unknown in your organisation, agility remains an aspiration rather than an operating capability.

What Meta Team Maturity Data Shows

Adastrum’s Meta Team Maturity Index, based on more than 20,000 diagnostic responses, measures 32 micro-behaviours behind high performance.

Top-quartile teams in this dataset show:

• 22.8% higher economic impact

• 37% improvement in decision speed

• 36% higher trust and accountability within six months

The central insight is that maturity is about sequence, not seniority. Teams that stabilise trust and purpose first, then build focus and decision speed, see faster and more sustainable gains. For leadership teams planning their 2026 development agenda, it is helpful to consider which foundational habits are reliably present and which are fragile.

Gender Representation and Leadership Composition

On gender representation, the UK continues to move in the right direction. The FTSE Women Leaders Review 2025 reports that women now hold 43.1% of all board positions across the FTSE 350. Within the FTSE 100, women account for 35.3% of executive leadership roles.

These figures show real progress, but they do not yet equate to parity in decision-making or P&L control. Two implications for 2026 stand out. The first is focusing on influence, not just seats, by tracking the proportion of women in P&L and operational roles. The second is ensuring pipeline visibility by monitoring diversity through the entire succession process.

Private Equity: Leadership as a Source of Alpha

In 2025, leading private equity funds have started to treat leadership capability as a distinct value lever. Deloitte’s 2025 research shows investors increasingly viewing human capital as an asset class. Key themes emerging include leadership sequencing over immediate replacement and the greater use of fractional executives to inject specialist capability. 

For management teams, this means leadership expectations are more likely to be written directly into value-creation plans, alongside financial and operational milestones.

Turning 2025 Evidence into 2026 Action

Across these domains, the evidence from 2025 points in a consistent direction. Executive success is defined less by credentials and more by self-awareness, inclusion, and the maturity of the leadership system.

For boards and executive teams, four practical moves stand out for 2026:

• Build integration into every executive hire. Make a written 90-day integration plan and a clear mandate part of the standard appointment process.

• Align assessment with the real 2025 leadership profile. Update hiring processes to explicitly test for self-awareness, inclusive behaviour, and learning agility.

• Treat the executive team as a meta-system. Use diagnostics to identify which habits your top team needs next, then design development around building them in sequence.

• Move from statements to metrics. Define a small set of KPIs for agility, psychological safety, and representation in influential roles, and review them with the same seriousness as financial metrics.

For Adastrum’s network, these benchmarks are prompts to use data as a mirror and leadership maturity as a metric, so that strategy has a credible chance of working in the real world.