Riding the Fire Horse: what this year is asking of leaders

Why 2026 feels different – and what to do about it.

Something has shifted this year. You can feel it in meetings – a sharper edge to conversations, a restlessness that wasn’t there before. Decisions that used to queue politely are arriving all at once. People who are usually measured seem more reactive. The pace of change, already fast, has accelerated again.

You’re not imagining it. And it’s not just your organisation.

In Chinese zodiac tradition, 2026 is a Fire Horse year. The Horse brings movement, momentum and a strong pull toward action. Add Fire, and the whole thing intensifies – more energy, more urgency, a genuine impulse to get things moving. It’s a compelling metaphor. But… Fire doesn’t just accelerate actions. It intensifies emotion.

That’s the part leaders often miss. And it’s exactly where the real leadership work sits this year. 

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What’s actually happening beneath the surface

When pace increases and pressure builds, the nervous system responds. David Rock’s SCARF model – one framework we return to in our work – is clear on this: threat responses activate faster under conditions of uncertainty and high demand. And once activated, they narrow thinking, reduce the capacity for collaboration and make people far more likely to react than respond.

In organisational terms, this shows up as exactly what you’re probably seeing: sharper conversations, shorter fuses, people simultaneously energised and exhausted. The organisational thermostat, to borrow a phrase, is simply turned up.

None of this is a crisis. It’s a predictable human response to a particular kind of environment. But it does require leaders to adjust how they’re showing up – not dramatically, but deliberately. 

For you, personally: channel it – don’t just absorb it

Fire Horse energy can be genuinely invigorating. Many leaders find themselves more creative right now, more willing to take initiative, more energised by possibility. That’s worth leaning into. 

The challenge is that personal pace can become unsustainable without a clear anchor. We see this regularly in our coaching work – leaders who are moving fast, achieving a great deal and quietly running on empty. The work they’re doing matters. But the pace at which they’re doing it isn’t sustainable, and somewhere they know it.

One question we come back to, both in our own work and with the leaders we coach, is deceptively simple: what difference am I trying to make this week? Not this quarter, not this year. This week. It sounds small. But when everything is moving quickly, it’s remarkably grounding. Leaders who keep returning to it tend to stay focused even when the environment gets hectic. 

There’s something else worth naming: the people around you – your team, your colleagues – are taking emotional cues from you, often without realising it. Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional contagion is illuminating here: your regulated state creates the conditions for theirs. A slightly slower speaking pace, a willingness to pause before responding, an ability to acknowledge uncertainty without catastrophising it – these small behaviours make an enormous difference to the people watching you lead. 

For your team: turn the heat into honest conversation

Teams feel this kind of pressure most directly. Workloads pile up. Expectations shift mid-stream. And people often hesitate to say anything because they assume everyone else is coping better than they are. 

They’re probably not. In our experience, most people are carrying exactly the same pressure and simply haven’t said so yet. 

One of the most valuable things a leader can do right now is create structured space to surface tensions early. Not to complain, but to adjust. Questions like ‘what’s feeling most stretched right now?’ or ‘where are we taking on too much?’ open conversations that would otherwise stay closed until something quietly breaks.

There’s one specific move we encourage leaders to make during periods of rapid change: explicitly name what’s changing and what isn’t. ‘We’re changing how we deliver this work – but our standards of quality aren’t moving.’ That kind of clarity acts as an anchor. When people know what’s stable, they’re significantly more willing to adapt what isn’t. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety is consistent on this point: ambiguity about what’s in flux is more destabilising than the change itself – and the antidote is honest, specific communication, not reassurance. 

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For your organisation: watch the change load

At the bigger picture level, years like this one can be extraordinarily productive. Bold decisions get made. Innovation accelerates. Things that would have taken years to change begin to move. 

The danger is what we’d call initiative inflation. When energy is high, it’s tempting to launch multiple new things at once. Each one makes sense individually. Together, they can overwhelm the system entirely – not because the initiatives are wrong, but because the organisation doesn’t have the capacity to absorb them all simultaneously. 

The wisest organisations we’ve worked with this year are asking not just ‘is this important?’ but ‘do we have the actual capacity to absorb this right now?’ That second question is doing a lot of quiet work. It requires leaders to be honest about what’s already on the plate before adding more – and to protect the human beings responsible for delivering it.

Visible leadership matters enormously too. People want to hear from those guiding the ship – not elaborate communications strategies, just honest updates. What we’re seeing, what decisions are being made, what we don’t yet know. Transparency is calming. Silence fills with speculation, and speculation in a high-pressure environment tends to fill with the worst-case version of events. 

The real opportunity in all of this

Here’s what we keep coming back to: Despite the intensity, this kind of energy offers something genuinely rare. Ideas that might take years to progress can move forward rapidly. Bureaucratic obstacles can dissolve under the pressure of urgency. People are more willing to experiment, to take risks, to try things that wouldn’t have got off the ground in a quieter period. 

The organisations – and the leaders – who benefit most are those who combine bold movement with human awareness. Who move quickly but listen carefully. Who pursue progress but watch for signs that someone is burning out. Who embrace the energy but steer it with care. 

Change is rarely comfortable. But it is so often where growth happens. And periods like this one remind us that organisations are living systems – pulsing with energy, emotion and ambition. When leaders pay attention to that and channel it with purpose, remarkable things become possible. 

The trick isn’t to slow the Fire Horse down. That would defeat the point. The trick is learning how to ride it well.

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Where in your leadership right now are you absorbing the energy – rather than channelling it?

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References

David Rock — SCARF Model Rock, D. (2008). SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. NeuroLeadership Journal, 1, 1–9. https://www.neuroleadership.com/research/scarf-model

Daniel Goleman — Emotional Contagion / Primal Leadership Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press. https://hbr.org/2001/12/primal-leadership-the-hidden-driver-of-great-performance

Amy Edmondson — Psychological Safety Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley. https://amycedmondson.com/fearless-organization