Everything about 2025 is shaping up to be another year of uncertainty and fast-paced change in the credit union industry. As a leader you need to ask yourself: Are you ready? Have you built the skills that you need to lead a team in a world that is moving faster and changing more rapidly? And are you ready to equip your team with the confidence and tools they need to succeed in a world like that?
Your leadership challenge
According to a recent report published by Accenture, the pace of change has increased 183% in the last four years. That’s right, our world is moving 183% faster than it used to, and today’s employees are feeling the impact. More than 80% of today’s employees report feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and stressed because of the amount of change that is coming at them, and most do not feel their leaders are supporting or preparing them to keep up.
As a leader, you not only need to be preparing yourself for change, but you need to be getting your team ready. You need to understand the changing leadership landscape and then roll up your sleeves and support your team in their efforts to not only keep up but embrace this new world of uncertainty.
5 biggest leadership trends for 2025
So how is the leadership landscape changing? It is changing in a way that calls on you as leaders to be more focused, more engaged, and more committed to the development and the growth of your team.
Here are five leadership trends you need to be paying attention to:
- Succession at every level: You need to be more committed than ever to developing talent at every level. It is about so much more than succession planning, it is about being fit for growth. With more than 4 million baby boomers reaching the retirement age of 65 in 2025, the wave of experience, talent, and wisdom walking out the doors of your companies will be unprecedented. Thinking about succession planning at the C-Suite level will not be enough to get you through the silver tsunami.
- Build talent bottom up: You need to focus less on leading your people, and more on teaching them how to lead themselves. In other words, lead in a way that builds talent from the bottom up—engaging your team at a higher level, inspiring innovation, and resulting in a stronger leadership pipeline.
- Mental health drives productivity: One in six employees today report experiencing burnout and overwhelm at work, and more than 80% of employees are looking for employers that prioritize mental health and decreased stress in the workplace. Leaders who understand, not how to alleviate stress, but help their team members manage it and prepare for it, will be the leaders that see increased engagement, reduced turnover, and better bottom line results.
- Blend of AI/human capital: While artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting the workplace, more and more reports are showing that AI is far more successful if it is well-blended with human strategy. Leaders today need to be well-versed on where AI is best suited to increase efficiency and productivity in their companies, help their teams see AI as an asset, and then lead their teams to acquire new skills and strategies that require the human touch.
- Conditioning future focused: And last but not least, the pace of change shows no signs of slowing down, and as a leader you need to focus less on getting your team ready for the challenges today and more on getting them ready for the challenges that will be coming. In other words, you need to get your team in shape for change—get them comfortable, ready for, and mentally fit to handle what is coming their way.
While this year is shaping up to be fast-paced and full of disruption, it is also shaping up to the best year on record for leaders who embrace the shift and invest in getting their team fit for growth.