Our Leadership Insights

By 2035, leadership will be transformed by AI. Discover how augmented leadership blends technology and human skills — and how leaders can prepare now. 1. Standing on the Brink of a New Leadership Age In the early 1900s, leaders who mastered electricity and mass production didn’t just run businesses — they reshaped entire industries. Fast […]

We don’t set out to make our teams feel isolated. Yet in many organisations, the drumbeat of back-to-back meetings, blinking notifications and relentless delivery quietly pushes leaders toward a transactional style. At Mantle, we hear versions of the same story from senior leaders across New Zealand and Australia: ” Presence is the first casualty of overload. And when presence goes, belonging follows.

Busy ≠ Effective (especially for humans)

The research is pretty blunt: high “busyness” cultures dampen connection, weaken engagement and increase the risk of turnover.

But too often, programs are disconnected from reality—motivational in the moment, but quickly forgotten. There’s no structure for follow-through, no feedback loop, no visible change.

At Mantle, we believe leadership development should be:
– purposeful,
– embedded in real work,
– aligned with business priorities,
– and—most importantly—measurable.

And we don’t just believe it—we back it with research.

I always believed leadership is fundamentally about constructive change. Purposeful leaders strive to make things better, moving forward with others. Get the inputs right, and you start to see the right outputs and impact.

If that’s true, we need to ask: are we really empowering leaders to guide positive change?

The Reality of Change Fatigue

44% of HR leaders cite change fatigue as the top organisational barrier this year. Leaders aren’t just managing change — they’re running marathons of it

It’s hard to ignore the disconnect.
On one hand, there’s a rising clamour for greater leadership and organisational agility.
On the other, it remains surprisingly rare in practice.
Over the past decade, neuroscience has revealed a lot—about neuroplasticity, growth
mindsets, and how learning and change are possible, even later in life. And yet, one big
question remains:
I find myself wondering has all this insight actually made us better at leading change?

AI can deliver perfect answers (sometimes), but leadership is about how we think, judge, and make meaning with others. That is what makes us distinctly human