ALIGNED IN MOTION • RESEARCH
Leaders AI Practice Study 2026
How leaders are learning, practising and creating value with AI.
Where is your AI practice today?
Take 7–10 minutes to explore how you are personally working with AI, how your leadership team is learning, and whether the area you know directly is creating the conditions for safe experimentation.
When you complete the study, you will receive your personal AI Practice Snapshot.
You can also choose to receive early access to the 2026 findings and, once sufficient data is available, compare your practice with the aggregated results.
What happens when you take part
- 01Take part
- 02Understand your current AI practice
- 03Receive your personal AI Practice Snapshot
- 04Receive early access to the 2026 findings
- 05Optionally compare your practice with the aggregated results later
7–10 minutesOne-time email confirmationAnswers analysed anonymously
Study open — currently collecting responses
From AI awareness to AI practice
Most organisations are investing in AI. But a different question deserves attention: how are leaders themselves learning to work with it?
The study looks beyond tools and adoption rates to understand how AI is changing executive work, leadership practice and organisational learning.
The research progression
- Awareness
- Learning
- Practice
- Safe experimentation
- Evidence
- Scale
Three levels explored
01
You
The individual leader.
02
Leadership team
The leadership team you lead or work with.
03
Organisation
The team, function, business unit or organisation you know directly.
What are we trying to understand?
- 01
How are senior executives actually using AI today?
- 02
Has AI changed how leaders lead — or mainly how they produce work?
- 03
Is AI changing senior leadership teams as much as it is changing the teams below them?
- 04
How are leaders learning and developing their AI practice?
- 05
Do organisations provide safe places to experiment with AI?
- 06
How do promising AI ideas move from experiment to evidence and scale?
Where are leaders today — and where do they want to be?
The study compares what executives do with AI today with what they would like to be able to do — within three, six and twelve months.
The purpose is to understand not only AI adoption, but the gap between current practice and future ambition.
Capabilities explored
- Search and research
- Synthesis
- Content creation
- Analysis
- Meeting preparation
- Idea generation
- Challenging assumptions
- Scenario exploration
- Decision support
- Strategic thinking
- Learning
- Leadership practice
- Automation
- AI-enabled workflows and agents
How are leaders learning?
AI capabilities are changing quickly. The study explores how senior leaders are developing their own practice:
It also asks a simple but important question: how much time do senior leaders actually dedicate to learning and practising with AI?
- Personal experimentation
- Formal training
- Executive education
- Colleagues and peers
- Learning from their teams
- External experts or mentors
- Books, podcasts and online content
Where is it safe to experiment?
New practices rarely emerge from theory alone. People need somewhere to try, fail, learn and improve.
The study explores whether leaders and employees have safe environments in which to experiment with AI before every idea has to prove its business value.
Factors explored
- Approved tools
- Clear data and confidentiality rules
- Sandbox environments
- Governance
- Management permission
- Allocated experimentation time
- Permission to fail and learn
- Expert support
- Peer communities
- AI Champions
A safe place to experiment is both a governance question and a leadership question.
Is AI making leaders faster — or sharper?
Much of the discussion around AI focuses on productivity. This study will also explore whether AI helps leaders:
- Uncover blind spots
- Challenge assumptions
- Consider new options
- Improve judgement
- Make better decisions
Participate
Confirm your email to begin
This is a research study, not a marketing survey. We confirm each email address once to keep the dataset credible: one verified participant, one response, no bots.
Stored separately from your answers. Used to confirm participation, send your Snapshot access and, only if you ask for it, the findings.
Why we ask for an email
- One verified participant, one response — no duplicates and no automated submissions.
- Your email is stored separately from your answers and is never published.
- It lets us give you your Snapshot and, if you choose, the findings.