The Better Leader (TBL): H1 Recap

If you had how this year has played out on your bingo card, I’d like to borrow it.

The first half of 2026 has been defined by surprises: black swan events, sudden reversals, and news that seemed to arrive faster than anyone could plan for. What I find is that in moments like this, we don’t need new information and more theory. We need a small number of best practices that hold up under pressure.

We’re now past the halfway mark of the year, which makes this the natural checkpoint to see how things are going. The fall sprint is coming, calendars are about to reset, and whatever you want to be true by December needs to be in motion now. I went back through this year’s editions and pulled the four that resonated the most, each with a note on why it’s worth revisiting right now. For those who became premium subscribers during the year, you may have missed some, and for others this would be a great time to catch up.

There has been no shortage of bad news this year, and the leaders who navigated it best were consistently the ones who heard it first. It’s not a coincidence. People decide very early whether telling you the truth is safe, and most teams quietly learn to sit on problems until they become undeniable. This was the most-liked TBL of the year, and it gives you specific ways to incentivize your team to surface problems before they do real damage. In a year of surprises, an early warning system is often the difference between a correction and a crisis.

Executive presence used to be built in conference rooms. Now, with so much work still remote and hybrid, many leaders are trying to build trust and credibility through a screen, and most were never taught how. This edition, built on insights from retired Amazon VP Ethan Evans, unpacks what presence actually is (how others perceive you, not how you see yourself) and how to develop it deliberately. With review and promotion season approaching, it’s an important refresher.

Of everything I work on with leadership teams, this topic generates the most discussion. Nearly every team I talk with knows their calendar is bloated with far too many meetings. This TBL lays out several strategies for cutting the meetings that don’t deserve their slot, from agenda rules to opt-outs to the two-pizza test. September is when every calendar in your company resets. This is a helpful audit to run before the fall schedule fills up. Make sure your recurring meetings re-earn their place on your calendar.