At last week’s Great Place To Work® For All Summit™ 2026, three big themes dominated the stage: AI as a leadership test, the mechanics of personal agency, and the organizational power of hope.
Three days. 1,600 leaders. Several enormous ballrooms at the Las Vegas Hilton at Resorts World, where the air conditioning was working so hard it deserved a standing ovation.
If there was a single thread running through this year’s keynotes, focus sessions and experiences for executives and ERGs, it was the understanding that the organisations that will win the next decade will be the ones brave enough to redesign themselves, even (especially) things are moving faster than anyone can comfortably process.
#1 AI Is No Longer Optional.
Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, made global headlines earlier this year announcing Accenture’s resolute AI requirements for all staff, including mandatory usage to be eligible for any further promotions and that the company tracks their staff’s use of AI tools.
At the For All Summit she gave an exclusive explanation around that contention. “Today, AI is how we do work. You have to work in the way we work, to be successful here. These are the new tools that it takes to operate the company,” she said.
The CEO’s rationale was clear and reasonable. Sweet explained that this has been a three year process, and before Accenture rolled out AI across the organization, they started with the top 50 leaders. “They got the most training in the first few months because if you don’t have the leaders understanding it, they can’t explain it to our people.”
Sweet also noted that Accenture has committed billions to re-skilling employees, and that the goal is not to replace humans but prepare them for a future that is already here. “The biggest issue about being a re-inventor is letting go of how you’ve always done things. We have a leadership essential that we want everyone to be an innovator and respectfully challenge how we do things.”
Jennifer Morgan, CEO of HR technology company UKG, matched that urgency. “We don’t have 18 months for incremental change,” she said. “As CEO, I’m blessed with the overarching perspective that no one else can see, so it’s my responsibility to explain the why of our decisions.You have to treat people like adults, you have to move with speed and focus, with radical transparency. You have to over-communicate.”
Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, addressed the anxiety head on. “We gotta put that fear down,” he said. “We have to realize that it’s people that are going to make the decisions around technology, and community and society, and we’re not going to give that governance away. Frontline people look to their leaders more than ever. We have an obligation to create trust, and create hope, that it’s going to be okay, we’re going to get through this together.”
Lesley Wilkinson, CTO of Experian, put a finer point on it. “Humans in the lead, not humans in the loop.” She continued, “AI is beyond incremental change. It’s truly disruptive change. That means leaders won’t always have all the answers in real time so they need to be trusted to have really smart decision making.”
Salesforce’s Alexandra Legend Siegel spoke about the company’s investment in responsible AI leadership roles and fluency metrics for all employees. “You can’t automate discernment or judgment. As humans we have an incredible capacity to evolve,” she said. “It’s normal to feel anxiety about change. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But we try to help our people create agency so they can weather that change. Pressure makes diamonds.”
In an incredibly thoughtful session on AI and frontline workers, Director of Strategic Workplace Insights at Great Place To Work® US, Karina Monesson, brought the data.
“We’re not getting ready for AI anymore. AI is already here. Frontline workers make up about 80% of the global workforce and many have been told, implicitly or explicitly, that their work is less valuable. They have a right to be worried. If you care about trust, you have to recognize and respect that fear.”
“The leaders in every industry are looking at AI to reduce costs. The best leaders are also asking how to grow revenue. If you’re not using AI to grow impact, scale, and revenue you’re missing something. Your frontline employees’ willingness to adopt AI will determine your actual success.”
#2 How to Build a Culture That Performs Under Pressure
Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit, MacArthur Genius Fellow, and professor at Wharton, has spent over two decades studying why some people achieve extraordinary things and others, equally talented, do not. At the Summit, she went beyond effort and into environment.
“Situational agency is the power to change your situation,” she said. “You can change your situation. You have control over many aspects of your situation. When you wake up in the morning and you read about things in your situation that you cannot control, the next thing you must do is direct your attention to the things in your situation that you can change.”
Duckworth described the internal monologue of high performers not as grim determination but as curiosity and confidence: “There are these positive, optimistic thoughts that run through the mind of a champion. They don’t think ‘oh my god I hate this but I’m going to force myself anyway’ … absolutely not. Instead you say to yourself, about your own work, this is interesting. This is important. I can do this. I know what to try next.”
She also explained what two decades of research has shown her about how companies can create that mindset in their people. “Challenge plus support. Yes we are demanding, but absolutely we are caring. There is an unconditional level of caring.”
Ed Bastian also elaborated on Delta’s similar culture philosophy. “The most important time I have is spent with our own people,” he said. “When our founder started Delta 100 years ago he said, take care of your people first. And they will take care of your customers. We live in a customer centric world built around getting your customer to fall in love with your brand. How is a customer ever going to fall in love with a service brand if the person providing that service doesn’t love the brand first?”
To prove that they walk the talk, Ed shared that Delta has invested US$70 million to date into the communities where its people live and work, on top of profit sharing.
“I can’t fly the planes, I can’t fix the planes, I have enough trouble getting through airports at times. The thing I know how to do is take care of people. I know how to listen. I know how to get them the tools, tech and support they need. I know how to problem solve, together, and make certain they feel heard.”
#3 Hope Is A Thing To Be Shared
Michael C. Bush’s keynote was the Summit’s emotional anchor. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work® and the person who has spent decades arguing (always with data!) that trust is a business strategy, opened with something disarmingly simple: he read a list of synonyms for the word “growth.”
“Advancement. Expansion. Development. Progress. Improvement. Just reading those words makes me feel good, it gives me a certain energy. My body chemistry changes based on how those things could happen for me. It’s a really good feeling and that feeling is hope.”
“Hope is the feeling that growth can generate. Without growth, there is no hope. Without hope, there is no growth.” He continued: “If we want growth we have an imperative to spread it. If we want the Great Place To Work world that we believe in, we have to spread hope for all.”
Bush connected hope to the machinery that has underpinned GPTW’s work for over 30 years. “To have hope that growth is possible, we have to believe in the actions and intentions of the people we believe in. We have to believe in the actions and intentions of others. That’s trust. That’s the game we’ve been in for over 30 years. Trust is required to have hope.Trust comes first. Then an acceptance of where things are, and belief that things can get better.”
No one at the Summit embodied that belief more powerfully than Larry Miller. Miller is the chairman of Nike’s Jordan Brand Advisory Board, the man who helped grow the brand from a $200 million basketball shoe company to a $4 billion global powerhouse, and the former president of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.
He is also a man who, at the age of 16, growing up in West Philadelphia, was involved in the killing of another teenager.
Miller served time. He earned his degree inside prison through a rehabilitation program, then a second degree from Temple University and then an MBA from La Salle. He built a 40-year corporate career at Campbell Soup, Kraft Foods, and Nike – and for all of those decades, he told no one about his past.
In 2022, with the help of his daughter Laila Lacy, Miller published JUMP: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom and broke that silence. He apologized to the family of the young man he killed, Edward David White, and created a foundation in White’s honor for his descendants to attend university or trade school. He launched JUMP (Justice and Upward Mobility Project), an initiative working with sports, entertainment, and business leaders to open hiring pipelines for the formerly incarcerated.
Miller’s message to the Summit was that we all have the power and capacity to change our own stories. His story of redemption underscores the power of second chances and resilience, and challenged leaders in the room to rethink how they create opportunity inside their organizations, where people can rise beyond their circumstances and where trust and dignity can drive lasting impact.
Hope, these two men argued, is not passive optimism. It is what happens when trust, acceptance, and belief meet action – inside an organization, inside a community, inside a person.
