Bobola Adeoye | Leadership insights

Apple dominated April. A succession announcement, a new CEO finding his feet, and a leader managing sustained pressure. Here are the April rankings.

John Ternus — Apple 25 years on the engineering floor. Now he has to lead the world's most valuable company. Here's what John Ternus's appointment tells us about leadership.

The Leadership Leaderboard · April 2026 Day One Decisions Josh D’Amaro: What Your First Move as CEO Says About Everything “I know this is hard. These decisions are not a reflection of their contributions.” — Josh D’Amaro, CEO, The Walt Disney Company, 14 April 2026 Real Moves. Real Lessons. One Leader at a Time. 4 min read Josh D’Amaro, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, at the 2026 Annual Shareholders Meeting, Burbank, California, 18 March 2026. Image: © Getty Images — used for editorial reference. Josh D’Amaro became CEO of The Walt Disney Company on 18 March 2026, succeeding Bob Iger after a carefully managed succession process. A 28-year Disney veteran, he ran the parks, built Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Avengers Campus, and led the Experiences division to $36 billion in annual revenue. Twenty-seven days into the job, he sent a memo to all...

The Leadership Leaderboard · April 2026 Tim Cook: Leading Apple Through Its Most Pressured Year in a Decade and Knowing When To Handover Real Moves. Real Lessons. One Leader at a Time. 5 min read Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2026. Image: © AFP / Getty Images — used for editorial reference. Update — 21 April 2026 Shortly after this post was published, Apple confirmed that Tim Cook will step down as CEO on 1 September 2026, with John Ternus — Apple's Head of Hardware Engineering taking over as the company's eighth CEO. Cook will remain as Executive Chairman. The succession question this post raised has now been answered. The analysis below covers Cook's leadership through April 2026 and stands as written. Watch this space — John Ternus will feature in a future edition of The Leadership Leaderboard. Apple turned 5...

The Leadership Leaderboard · March 2026 · Monthly Rankings The Results Are In The March Leadership Leaderboard: Who Led, Who Stumbled Three leaders. Three very different stories. One month of real moves. Real Moves. Real Lessons. One Leader at a Time. 5 min read March 2026 gave us three leaders at three completely different points in their journeys. One was building at a scale most companies never reach. One was making the kind of calculated long-term bet that defines careers. And one was doing something rarer than either — publicly admitting he got it wrong and choosing to reset rather than spin. The thread connecting all three? Accountability. How you structure it, how you communicate it, and what it costs you when it's missing. That was the real story of March. The March Rankings 1 ...

The Leadership Leaderboard · March 2026 A Leadership Reckoning Toshihiro Mibe: When the Right Decision Is the Hardest One You’ll Ever Make “The situation changed far more rapidly than we expected.” — Toshihiro Mibe, CEO, Honda Motor Co., press conference, 12 March 2026 Real Moves. Real Lessons. One Leader at a Time. 5 min read Toshihiro Mibe, President and CEO of Honda Motor Co., at the EV strategy press conference, Tokyo, Japan, 12 March 2026. Image: © Reuters — used for editorial reference. On 12 March 2026, Toshihiro Mibe stood before journalists in Tokyo and delivered one of the most consequential press conferences in Honda's 77-year history. He announced a write-down of up to 2.5 trillion yen — approximately $15.7 billion the cancellation of three EV models planned for North America, and a projected net loss of up to 570 billion yen...