Global skills report: Over half of training investments now target human-centered leadership

 Amsterdam, 29 January 2026 

Global organizations made a decisive strategic shift in 2025, concentrating training investment on distinctly human capabilities as AI adoption accelerated across enterprises, according to Lepaya's State of Skills 2026 report released today. The report, analyzing upskilling data from more than 190 global companies, reveals that businesses responded to technological disruption by investing in the human skills AI cannot replicate.

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Human-centered leadership dominates as organizations transform how they lead

Empowering leadership dominated training priorities, surging 126% year-over-year to capture 51.6% of all training investment in 2025. Lepaya’s data shows three consecutive years of growth and a 511% increase since 2023, signaling a transformation in how global organizations like KPMG, Just Eat Takeaway.com, Samsung, and more build capabilities during periods of rapid change.

When markets demand speed, autonomy, and continuous adaptation, traditional top-down leadership no longer works: CEO turnover rose from 9.8% to 12.5% in 2025, with external appointments nearly doubling and internal promotions dropping below 70%, signaling current leadership capability gaps. AI implementation success depends less on technology choices and more on whether leadership enables or blocks transformation. 

The leadership investment focused on four core capabilities that help leaders guide teams through transformation: communication that inspires action, meaningful coaching and feedback, accountability through trust, and individual adaptation for individual team members. As AI reshapes workflows, these human-centered skills enable leaders to shift from managing operations to coaching performance, building psychological safety, and inspiring commitment that survives uncertainty.

“AI is everywhere right now, and it should be (and it will be for the foreseeable future). The companies that truly thrive won’t just plug in the latest trends and tools; they’ll double down on the human infrastructure behind the tech. That means building cultures where people feel safe to experiment, ask naive questions, and challenge the status quo because that’s what fuels meaningful innovation.” - Missy Strong, Senior Lead - People Experience at Pigment

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Taking ownership and commercial sensitivity skills rise as collaboration training declines

Commercial sensitivity skills training sustained 27% growth as changing buyer behavior, and AI automation reshaped sales work. Instead of product education, sales professionals now need to deliver a consultative partnership that challenges thinking, exposes blind spots, and helps clarify complex problems.

Training in taking ownership rose 40% and entered the top five trained skills for the first time, reflecting how market volatility and structural changes have elevated self-directed accountability from a nice-to-have to a business-critical priority. As the "Great Flattening" removes management layers, employees must increasingly understand their scope and take initiative without waiting for supervisor direction. 

Meanwhile, collaboration training declined 54%, the steepest drop among all tracked skills. This reveals difficult trade-offs as constrained budgets force organizations to prioritize capabilities with immediate measurable impact over those that improve team dynamics over time.

“To lead a people-centered AI future, HR and L&D must go beyond teaching tools and focus on building talent—cultivating the uniquely human skills AI can’t replicate and creating cultures where learning is continuous, experimentation is safe, and transformation is something people shape, not endure.” - Marlene De Koning, Director of Workforce Transformation at PwC

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Industry strategies reveal distinct market challenges 

While human-centered leadership remained the dominant priority across sectors, implementation varied significantly depending on industry challenges. 

The manufacturing industry spent most of its training investment in empowering leadership to navigate critical talent shortages and guide teams through technological transformation. Professional services combined leadership with commercial skills as the industry transforms from traditional generalist models to specialized, value-based advisory.

Financial services took a different approach, distributing investment across multiple capabilities to address simultaneous disruptions: AI implementation, declining customer loyalty, and escalating economic crime. While technology companies paired leadership with collaboration skills to coordinate rapid experimentation across distributed teams. 

“At WIKA, we recognized that leadership is pivotal to shaping our future. This prompted us to prioritize leadership development through our Leadership Framework, which defines clear expectations for behaviors and competencies across all levels. Our framework emphasizes empowerment, collaboration, and accountability—qualities essential for thriving in a dynamic environment.” - Clemens Gessner, Global HR Manager at WIKA.

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Moving from AI-aware to AI-enabled

The 2025 data reveals a clear pattern: as AI raises the floor of what's technically possible, organizations are investing in human capabilities that raise the ceiling of what's achievable. In 2026, the challenge shifts from building these foundations to activation. 

As companies move from AI-aware to AI-enabled, leaders must guide teams through transformation while maintaining human connections. But this requires more than vision; it demands systematic capability-building across organizations. This positions HR and L&D as strategic architects, designing learning systems that translate leadership direction into organization-wide capability.

“Resilience in this era is about combining artificial and human intelligence to create new opportunities for people and economic growth.” - Rene Janssen, Founder of Lepaya

About Lepaya

Lepaya is Europe’s leading blended training platform that connects workforce upskilling with business impact, empowering companies to develop the right skills at the right time to drive both people and business growth.

Through its Portal, Academies, and App, Lepaya seamlessly aligns business and workforce needs, delivers blended training programs for every career level, and enables learners to learn, practice, and apply new skills effectively.

Trusted by global enterprises and fast-growing companies—including Roche, ING, Microsoft, Dell, Freudenberg, and Just Eat Takeaway—Lepaya helps organizations stay competitive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Backed by investors like Endeit, Educapital, Target Global, Mediahuis Ventures, and Tablomonto, Lepaya has raised $80 million and made four strategic acquisitions: SmartenUp (2020), vCoach (2022), SpeakFirst (2022), and Krauthammer (2023).

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