Global Leadership Monitor: Economic Uncertainty, Talent Scarcity & Strategic Opportunity

Every year, McQueen convenes a review of the global executive talent landscape — drawing on our search mandates, board advisory relationships, and conversations with senior leaders across every sector in which we operate. What follows is our assessment of the defining forces shaping executive leadership in the current environment.

The Scarcity at the Top

Across every sector and geography in which we work, we are observing the same phenomenon: a genuine shortage of leaders capable of navigating complexity at the scale and speed that organisations now require. This is not a new trend — but its intensity is accelerating. The post-pandemic retirement of an entire cohort of experienced executives, combined with the failure of most organisations to develop leaders at scale beneath them, has produced a leadership supply gap that is structural rather than cyclical.

Economic Uncertainty as a Strategic Lens

Economic uncertainty does not affect all leadership decisions equally. Organisations in the current environment are bifurcating sharply: those that are freezing executive investment and waiting for clarity, and those that are using this period to acquire talent that would be unavailable to them in a buoyant market. The evidence from previous cycles is unambiguous. The organisations that emerge from periods of disruption in the strongest positions are almost invariably those that made decisive leadership investments during the uncertainty, not after it.

Where the Talent Is Moving

We are seeing sustained movement of exceptional executive talent towards organisations — and sectors — that offer three things that others do not: genuine decision-making authority, a credible growth story, and leadership teams they believe in. Compensation remains a threshold, not a motivator, at the most senior levels. The leaders who command a premium are those with proven track records across cycles — executives who have led through both growth and adversity and have the instincts and scar tissue that only experience produces.