'Tis The Season?

Setting leadership intentions for the year ahead

Jan 11, 2026

I know—‘tis the season normally signals the end of the year, not the beginning. But the beginning of the year is a good time for setting intentions for the year ahead.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: What do I want to accomplish in 2026, and perhaps more importantly, how do I want to lead?

Last year I didn’t set an intention, I picked a word for the year: Resist. Feels like that sentiment still applies.

At this time of year we are thinking about—and doing—a lot of things.

We’re tying off the year we’ve just finished: finalizing outcomes, summarizing learnings, and evaluating employees.

And we’re planning for the year ahead: setting strategy, building budgets, and organizing offsites to rally our teams around the year’s goals.

What we frequently forget to do is reflect on our own leadership and how we show up every day as leaders. We just do.

Sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn’t.

We don’t have to lead by default. We have the power to change how we lead. It simply requires inspection and intention.

The questions I’m asking myself right now are these:

What sort of leader do I want to be in 2026? How can I approach leadership this year with specific focus and intention?

Over the past several years I’ve lost some focus on leadership as its own intentional practice. I’ve continued to lead, of course, but with varying outcomes and degrees of success.

I want to feel like I’m leading by design and not by default. For me, this looks like:

Leading with empathy and compassion. The world is wild right now, y’all.
Ensuring I know how each person on my team wants to grow and helping them build a plan to get there. Even if that means losing them to another company or role.
Identifying and adopting practices to build cohesive and inclusive remote teams.
Providing clear, honest, and direct feedback—while remembering to keep it balanced. I need to praise the good more and offer guidance for improvement.

If you haven’t inspected your own leadership in a while, now’s a great time to do it. What’s working well, and where could you improve?

Set a leadership intention for 2026 and then tell me: how can I help you get there? I’d love to hear from you.

Bonus read: A lot of decisions get made this time of year—don’t overthink them.