We are delighted to announce that we’ll start the 2026 new year with an exceptional event set for Thursday, January 22, featuring Mr. Steven J. Manning, a globally renowned business leader, strategist, author, and broadcaster with a distinguished career that includes founding, managing, and advising several highly influential enterprises across the United States and Europe.
NOTE: This presentation will be held via Zoom. Registration is required, and the meeting link will be sent to you once your registration is complete.
Impact and Implications of Global Leaders on Current Geo-Political Realities and the Fate of the Fractured World
There are likely 20,000 books in print on leadership. By all manner of experts and talking heads spewing glorious word salads. Many who write and speak on leadership have long grown weary of the endless taxonomies – the visionaries versus the managers, leadership by fear, affection, authority, autocracy, benevolence, charisma, or checkbook. By definition, some leadership styles are entirely destructive
The “trend du jour” favors the emergence of transformative vs transactional leadership. Manning notes, with characteristic candor, that many of the world’s most consequential leaders stand alarmingly bereft of the soft skills that enable genuine transformation. It is a deficit not of power, but of humanity. The rare few who possess them tend to wield those skills with cold, utilitarian precision – never as instruments of uplift, but as levers of advantage.
Manning asserts that most leaders operating on the world stage serve national imperatives, not global ideals. Their authority spans overt military force – he fully kinetic actions that move armies and ignite conflicts – and the more insidious levers of financial, social, and political coercion, each capable of reshaping the global order.
The world is not drifting; it is accelerating toward a sharper, more polarized shape. Leaders who treat these dynamics as imperatives, are in fact those not poised to become short-termed obsolete.
The Most Dangerous, The Most Stabilizing, The Most Influential, The Most Dangerous Terrorists, The Top Technology & Science Leaders and The Most Despicable.
In his presentation, Manning offers headline judgments on some global notables – delivered with his trademark clarity, bluntness, seasoned cynicism, hard-edged pragmatism, and a measured dose of wit.
OUR EVENT SPEAKER
A pioneer of empirical marketing, predictive decision-making, and digital-era engagement long before they became industry vernacular, Mr. Steven J. Manning has shaped how major global brands think, act, and grow- driving tens of billions of dollars in revenue flows across consumer, digital, and advisory domains.
He has been a trusted counselor to many of the world’s most consequential corporations, including CBS, Disney, DirecTV, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, NBC, Netflix, Toyota, Sony, WebMD, UMG, and other Fortune-level enterprises that prefer their advisors remain discreet. His professional orbit spans the globe, extending to industry titans, renowned academics, policymakers, authors, and cultural figures. A prolific voice writing, speaking and broadcasting on leadership, economics, strategy, politics, conflict resolution, corporate governance, marketing & advertising, technology, history, and the architecture of success, Manning is co-founder, publisher, and editor of MONDAY INFLUENCER®.
His books, “The Business of Life – Taking a wrecking ball to conventions and norms, in search of independent thought”, and the internationally acclaimed “Pimps, Whores and Patrons of Virtue”, are followed by forthcoming works including “Explaining Bitcoin to Buddhist Monks” and “Thanks Oscar (Wilde)”.
Always at the forefront on his inner force-multiplier – his imaginary teleprompter – are the convictions that power his life:
- Life is not a dress rehearsal
- A life without passion is not a life worth living
- Seek knowledge and wisdom all the time and everywhere
- You diminish your own life if you withhold what you truly think – and fail to voice it forcefully, with honesty and clarity
Author, speaker, and analyst Jeremy Hurewitz is a former freelance journalist with more than a decade experience based in Prague and Shanghai. He built and ran Project Syndicate, an international newspaper association.
The atmosphere was both intellectually charged and very engaging, embodying the very spirit of the Council’s mission to foster thoughtful discussion on pressing international issues. The combination of seasoned perspectives from members and the fresh curiosity of university students made for a particularly dynamic exchange, one that many described as both enlightening and energizing.