Insights from Professor David Day’s 2025 Public Oration + Podcast
At the 2025 Leadership Development Summit, the Menzies Leadership Foundation, ANU and the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation hosted a landmark Public Oration delivered by Professor David Day, a globally recognised scholar of leadership development. The oration, paired with the companion episode of the Future of Leadership Development podcast, set out one of the clearest and most future-focused explorations of what leadership must become in a world defined by complexity and rapid technological change.
Together, these two platforms offer a unified message: our leadership models must evolve as fast as the world around us.
A Leadership Landscape Reshaped by Complexity
Across industries, communities and systems, leaders are facing conditions that outpace traditional approaches: geopolitical instability, climate disruption, declining institutional trust, social fragmentation, and the transformative force of AI.
Both the podcast and oration emphasise that these challenges can no longer be met by individual capability alone. Leadership is shifting from a personal trait to a collective capacity — something exercised across teams, networks and communities, rather than concentrated at the top.
This reframing positions leadership as a public good: an ability we must cultivate widely, not selectively.
AI as an Accelerant — Not a Replacement
One of the strongest themes emerging from Professor Day’s work is the recognition that AI will profoundly reshape leadership development. Not by replacing leaders, but by transforming how leadership capability is built.
AI enables:
- personalised diagnostics and assessment,
- instant behavioural insights,
- ongoing coaching and learning support,
- real-time simulations and scenario testing,
- and development embedded directly into day-to-day work.
This marks a shift away from episodic, program-based learning toward continuous, adaptive developmental systems.
Yet the human dimensions of leadership remain irreplaceable: judgment, ethics, discomfort, lived experience, creativity and moral reasoning — all essential for navigating uncertainty and building trust.
Leadership 3.0: A New Model for a New Era
A central contribution of the oration is a renewed framing of leadership as the capacity to:
create direction, generate alignment and build commitment — regardless of role, hierarchy or function.
This model opens the door to:
- distributed and shared leadership,
- cross-boundary collaboration,
- team- and network-based leadership,
- and AI-supported sensemaking in complex systems.
It also reinforces a core idea: everyone can contribute to leadership, and developing this shared capability is critical for societal resilience.
From Courses to Systems: Rethinking Development
A consistent insight across the oration and podcast is the need to shift away from stand-alone courses and programs. Research and practice increasingly show that development dissipates when people return to unchanged environments.
The future lies in developmental systems — leadership embedded in real work through:
- small, repeated experiments,
- ongoing reflection,
- collaborative problem-solving,
- relational practice,
- and technology-enabled feedback loops.
This approach equips leaders and teams not just to perform, but to adapt, learn and respond to complex challenges over time.
A Shared Invitation to Shape What Comes Next
The combined message of the oration and podcast is clear:
Leadership must evolve — and we all play a role in shaping its next chapter.
We stand at a moment where human creativity, ethical judgment and collective capability matter more than ever, even as AI accelerates what is possible. Building leadership for the
greater good requires developing not only individuals, but the systems and conditions that enable people to learn, collaborate and act with purpose.
WATCH & LISTEN
🎥 Watch the 2025 Public Oration by Professor David Day
🎧 Listen to the companion podcast:
“Leadership, Complexity & the Future of Development”
At the Menzies Leadership Foundation, we see leadership entering uncharted territory. The challenges we face demand more than individual capability—they require collective capacity and a fundamental reimagining of how we develop leaders.
Drawing on Professor David Day’s landmark 2025 Public Oration, Leadership 3.0 reframes leadership as a public good: the capacity to create direction, generate alignment and build commitment—across teams, networks and communities, not concentrated at the top.
As AI accelerates what’s possible, the human dimensions of leadership matter more than ever: judgment, ethics, creativity and moral reasoning. The future belongs to those willing to lead collectively, learn continuously and build leadership as shared capability.
We stand at a threshold. Join us in shaping what comes next.
Explore the oration. Engage with the Menzies Leadership Foundation. Help us reimagine leadership for the world we’re entering.
