The WEF Named Three Work Trends. Here's What They Missed.
I read the World Economic Forum's latest 3 Work Trends newsletter this week, and I found myself doing what I always do with these kinds of reports: nodding at the diagnosis while questioning the prescription.
The three trends they covered are real. "Stress intelligence" in leadership. Women's sports as a talent pipeline for future leaders. And the growing AI literacy divide. Each one touches something I see playing out in my coaching work and across the industries I've spent two decades navigating.
But each one also has a blind spot. And I think the blind spot is the same across all three.
"Stress Intelligence" Is the New Leadership Buzzword.
Women Have Been Doing It for Years.
Brunswick Group just released their Leadership Stress Index, developed with Harvard Business School. The data is clear: more than half of C-suite leaders describe themselves as "very stressed," and the pressure is expected to keep climbing. Jon Miller and Drew Keller's recent piece in Harvard Business Review outlines six strategies for harnessing stress rather than being consumed by it.
Here's my question. While this is important data...
Who taught women in conference rooms to manage pressure before anyone thought to call it "intelligence"?
The women I coach have been doing this for 15, 20 years.
They held teams together through restructures. They absorbed the emotional weight of entire departments while making decisions under conditions that would crack most people. Nobody handed them a stress index or a six-step framework. They just did it. And instead of calling it intelligence, people called them "emotional" or "difficult" or "too much."
My forecast: stress intelligence isn't emerging. It's being recognized.
The women who've already been practicing it, without the credit or the language, are going to be the most valuable leaders in the room over the next decade. That is, if organizations are smart enough to actually see them instead of hiring someone younger to teach a workshop about it.
Women's Sports Is Building a Leadership Pipeline. But What's Waiting on the Other End?
Deloitte projects the women's elite global sports market will hit $3 billion this year. That's a 340% increase since 2022. Lara Abrash, Chair of Deloitte US, put it in a way I can't stop thinking about:
"Girls who play become women who lead."
Deloitte's own data backs it up. 85% of women in executive positions credit lessons from sports as major drivers of their success.
I believe that completely.
But I need us to zoom out a little bit, because the conversation keeps stopping at the pipeline and nobody wants to look at what's on the other side of it. More than three-quarters of professional women athletes earn less than $50,000 a year. We're investing in building these women into leaders and then handing them a system that doesn't match what they bring.
This pattern isn't just in sports. I see it in corporate America constantly. You develop women, give them training, hand them a leadership moment or two. Then the systems on the other end isn't built for them. The conference rooms weren't designed for how they lead. The compensation doesn't reflect their contribution. And then everyone acts confused when they walk away and build something of their own.
Here's where I think this is heading: the organizations and leagues that match their investment in developing women with the systems waiting on the other side are going to win the next era of talent.
The rest are going to keep losing people and calling it "the market."
The AI Literacy Divide Is Real. But the Framework Doesn't
Reach the People Who Need It Most.
The European Commission and OECD just released an AI Literacy Framework that maps out what learners need to thrive in an AI-driven world. Critical thinking, ethical reasoning, understanding how AI actually works. The WEF notes that the new digital divide isn't about access anymore. It's between people who understand AI and people who just consume its outputs.
I agree with every word of that and I still think it falls short.
That framework is designed for K-12 classrooms. It's built for the next generation. What about the current one?
What about the woman who's 47, managing a team, and her company just dropped three AI platforms into her workflow without explaining a single one?
What about the entrepreneur who knows she needs to be using AI but can't tell if it's actually helping her business or just making everything faster and less human? These aren't hypothetical people. I talk to them every single week.
The leaders and organizations that prioritize emotional intelligence alongside AI literacy are going to define the next era of work.
Because knowing how AI works isn't enough if you've lost the ability to think critically on your own, connect with the humans around you, and make decisions rooted in actual judgment instead of whatever the algorithm suggested.
Teaching people how to use AI without teaching them how to stay human while doing it? I wouldn't call that literacy. It looks a lot more like conformity with better tools.
What All Three Trends Are Really Pointing To
Step back and look at these together, and they're saying one thing: the future of work belongs to people who can hold complexity. People who've learned to manage their own stress while leading others through theirs. People who built leadership capacity in environments that never handed them anything. People who understand the technology well enough to use it without letting it erase their voice in the process.
I've been in rooms with these people my whole career. I've been coaching them. My honest read on where this is all going? The world is finally catching up to what experienced women have been bringing to the table all along.
The World Economic Forum is naming the trends. I'm watching the women who've already been living them.
A R T I C L E R E F E R E N C E S & S O U R C E S
1. World Economic Forum, "3 Work Trends - Issue 126," LinkedIn Pulse, July 8, 2026.
linkedin.com/pulse/3-work-trends-issue-126-world-economic-forum-4oa5e
2. Brunswick Group, "The Brunswick Leadership Stress Index," Brunswick Review, April 13, 2026.
review.brunswickgroup.com/article/brunswick-leadership-stress-index
3. Jon Miller & Drew Keller, "6 Ways Leaders Harness Stress," Harvard Business Review, July-August 2026.
hbr.org/2026/07/6-ways-leaders-harness-stress
4. Deloitte, "Game Changers: Unlocking the Potential of Women's Sports," 2026.
deloitte.com/global/en/industries/tmt/perspectives/game-changers
5. World Economic Forum, "What Women's Sports Reveals About Building Future Leaders" (Lara Abrash, Meet the Leader
podcast), 2026.
weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/womens-sports-leadership
6. World Economic Forum, "Beyond Access: Why AI Literacy Will Define the Future," July 1, 2026.
weforum.org/stories/2026/07/beyond-access-why-ai-literacy
7. OECD / European Commission, "Empowering Learners for the Age of AI: An AI Literacy Framework," June 2026.
