Leaders, Bring Your Best Self into the New Year

by Ron Carucci and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

January 2, 2026

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Summary.

Leadership is the ability to coordinate collective human activity. When it functions well, it can turn a group of people into a high-performing team. This requires significant expertise, intelligence, and self-awareness, not to mention the right combination of personality traits.

Ron Carucci is cofounder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change. He is the best-selling author of 10 books, including To Be Honest: Lead with the Power of Trust, Justice and Purpose (Kogan Page, 2021).

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the chief science officer at Russell Reynolds Associates, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, a cofounder of deepersignals.com, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. He is the author of Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (and How to Fix It) (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019), upon which his TEDx talk was based, and I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023). His latest book is Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead) (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025).

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Read more on Personal strategy and style or related topics Managing yourself, Leadership and Leadership development

Leaders, Bring Your Best Self into the New Year

Summary.

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