A 2026 leadership trend: Choose your standard before someone else does
2026 has already arrived with plenty of public examples of influential leaders making decisions (and showing behaviours) that have landed badly. Whether those moments are happening in politics, business, sport, or online culture, they create the same pressure inside organisations:
“If someone important did it, can we do it too?”
Or worse: “If they got away with it, why can’t we?”
That’s the moment Publilius Syrus (1st Century BCE) was warning about:
“Bad examples spread rapidly and are difficult to cure.”
And it’s exactly where Imani Carroll’s from Forbes Human Resources Council quote becomes practical, not theoretical:
“If HR isn’t helping you make business decisions, you’re missing an opportunity.”
Because when the world gets noisy with poor examples, leaders have a choice:
borrow someone else’s standard… or hold your own.
What follows is a simple, usable guide for business leaders to start 2026 with clarity, discipline, and fewer avoidable messes.
Step 1: Assume behaviour is contagious (because it is)
Before you worry about strategy, budgets, or growth targets, lock in this truth:
Your organisation is watching what you tolerate.
Not what you say in a town hall. Not what’s written on the wall. It’s what you let slide and what you reward.
How-to prompt:
- List the top 3 behaviours you cannot afford to normalise in 2026 (e.g., bullying, cutting corners, “rules for some,” unsafe practice, public undermining).
- Then ask: Where are we currently at risk of tolerating these because it’s convenient?
If you don’t name the contagion risks early, you’ll spend the year reacting to them.
Step 2: Create a “Don’t Copy That” filter for decisions
Public figures often create a false benchmark: visibility starts to look like validity.
Leaders need a filter that stops this thinking at the door.
Use this decision filter:
- Would we be comfortable if this exact behaviour became common here?
- If a new employee copied this next week, would we correct them?
- If this was on the front page with our logo, would we defend it?
- What precedent are we setting—intentionally or accidentally?
If any answer makes you squirm, you’ve just identified a future culture problem while it’s still preventable.
Step 3: Put HR in the room before the decision, not after
HR can’t protect culture retroactively. If HR only hears about decisions once they’re made, you’re asking them to manage consequences, and be the ambulance to pick up the pieces, rather than help shape outcomes.
How-to shift in 2026:
- For any decision that affects people, structure, workload, pay, performance, or standards: HR is involved at the start, not at comms stage.
- Treat HR like you treat Finance: if Finance isn’t there, the decision is incomplete. Same logic.
Practical trigger list (HR must be in the room):
- restructures, role changes, redundancies
- “quick” performance exits
- leadership appointments or removals
- responses to misconduct (especially “high performers”)
- changes to targets, KPIs, incentive plans
- policy exceptions (“just this once”)
- recruitment decisions based on network recommendations (“My friend mentioned so and so is looking for a new job and they are great to work with”)
Step 4: Replace “speed” with “sequencing”
A lot of public leadership failures start with urgency. The pressure to move fast becomes permission to skip thinking.
In 2026, the goal isn’t to move slow. It’s to move in the right order.
How-to sequence decisions well:
- Clarify the outcome (what are we trying to achieve?)
- Assess second-order impacts (who gets affected, what gets modelled?)
- Stress test fairness (is this consistent with our standards?)
- Decide
- Communicate with credibility (what did we consider and why?)
Leaders who move fast without sequencing end up paying for it later, through churn, distrust, and reputational damage.
Step 5: Stop tolerating “exception people”
Bad examples spread fastest when people learn that some individuals are exempt.
You can’t build a healthy culture if the organisation believes:
- “Top performers get different rules”
- “Leaders can behave differently”
- “If you’re valuable enough, you’re untouchable”
- “you’re here because the manager headhunted you specifically”
How-to tackle this early in 2026:
- Identify the “exception risk” roles (the rainmakers, the technical geniuses, the loudest voices).
- Confirm in writing what “non-negotiable behaviours” apply to them too.
- Make sure leaders are aligned on what happens when those lines are crossed.
This isn’t about being harsh. It’s about being consistent.
Step 6: Build a “signal check” into your leadership rhythm
Most cultural problems aren’t created by one massive event. They’re created by 20 small signals no one addressed.
How-to install a monthly signal check (30 minutes):
Ask your exec team:
- What behaviour did we reward this month?
- What did we ignore because it was awkward?
- Where did we make an exception—and what might that teach people?
- What are we seeing repeated that we don’t like?
Then decide one action:
- reinforce something good (publicly)
- correct something risky (quickly)
Culture is maintained through small, consistent corrections.
Step 7: Lead with “we choose our standard”
This is the line that matters most in a year full of public noise.
How-to language leaders can use in 2026:
- “We don’t copy behaviour just because it’s common elsewhere.”
- “We’re not interested in what people can get away with—only what we stand for.”
- “Our standard applies even when it’s inconvenient.”
- “If it erodes trust, it’s not worth the win.”
When leaders say this and back it up with decisions, it becomes a stabilising force inside the organisation.
The point of all of this
In 2025 and the first few weeks of 2026 are showing us how quickly behaviour can be normalised when influential people model it publicly.
Your job as a business leader isn’t to comment on it.
It’s to prevent it from becoming your organisation’s standard by default.
Because Syrus was right: once bad examples spread, they’re hard to cure.
And Carroll is right too: you don’t prevent that by luck or values statements.
You prevent it by making sure the people lens is present at the point of decision.
Bring the people lens into the decisions that matter
If you’re heading into 2026 thinking, “We need to lift the standard — but we also need to move fast,” that’s exactly where Better HR Co helps.
We work alongside CEOs, leaders and boards to bring a practical people lens into the moments where culture is actually set: executive decisions, leadership behaviour, and the standards you reinforce (or unintentionally erode).
If you want support turning these ideas into action, we can help with:
- Fractional CPO support to strengthen decision-making at the top table
- ER leadership and coaching for the tricky, high-stakes conversations you can’t afford to get wrong
- Organisational design and change support so restructures and role changes don’t create avoidable fallout
If you’re ready to stop managing cultural consequences and start preventing them, let’s talk. Reach out to Better HR Co. for a confidential chat about what’s ahead in your business, and what “good” can really look like in 2026
