When I speak with forward-thinking leaders, they often ask me a powerful question:
If certain aspects of the future are inevitable, how can we still influence what happens?
The answer lies in how you approach Soft Trends.
Soft Trends are not like Hard Trends. These are far more flexible, being future possibilities shaped by human action or inaction. They are malleable. They can be changed, redirected, or even accelerated if a leader applies the right Anticipatory strategies.
And here’s the key insight: Soft Trends are where leadership influence is most potent today.
The Power of Hard and Soft Assumptions
Before you can fully leverage Soft Trends, it helps to understand their close relatives: assumptions. I have identified two types of assumptions associated with Soft Trends over the years. These include:
- Hard Assumptions. This is what we believe to be true, backed by measurable certainty. This includes demographic shifts or physical laws. Hard Assumptions often align with Hard Trends.
- Soft Assumptions are beliefs about the future that can be changed. These are shaped by current behaviors, opinions, and market sentiment. They align closely with the concept of Soft Trends.
The leadership opportunity lies in challenging Soft Assumptions. When you do, you can shift a Soft Trend in your favor.
Why Are Soft Trends Are a Leader’s Playground?
Soft Trends are powerful because they represent the part of the future you can actively control.
- They are shaped by decisions you make today.
- They offer opportunities to redirect negative trajectories before they solidify.
- They allow leaders to influence market perception, customer behavior, and even policy direction.
This is where leadership influence becomes measurable. While Hard Trends help you anticipate what will happen, Soft Trends let you design how it will happen.
Leaders Who Leveraged Soft Trends
- Unilever – Leading the Shift Toward Plant-Based Foods
The rise of plant-based eating has emerged as a powerful Soft Trend—driven by environmental concerns, health awareness, and evolving food values. While many food giants watched from the sidelines, Unilever took decisive action, challenging the Soft Assumption that meat and dairy would always dominate mainstream diets.
Through its “Future Foods” initiative, Unilever has committed to doubling the number of products delivering positive nutrition and expanding plant-based options across brands like Knorr, Hellmann’s, and The Vegetarian Butcher. Their goal is clear: make sustainable, plant-forward eating the new norm. By prioritizing affordability, accessibility, and taste, they’ve turned this Soft Trend into a scalable growth strategy that’s reshaping global consumption habits.
- Patagonia’s Sustainability Push
Environmental responsibility has long been a Soft Trend in retail. Its pace and scale depend directly on leadership action. Patagonia didn’t wait for regulations to force change. The company actively shaped consumer expectations through campaigns like “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” encouraging responsible consumption.
This move influenced not only their customer base but also competitors, accelerating the industry’s shift toward sustainability.
- DBS Bank – Embracing Digital Banking as a Strategic Advantage
In Southeast Asia, the idea that banking could go fully digital was once a Soft Trend—possible, but clouded by doubts about customer readiness and infrastructure limitations. Many banks hesitated. DBS, under CEO Piyush Gupta, challenged those Soft Assumptions head-on.
They didn’t just digitize services—they reimagined what a bank could be. DBS invested in mobile-first platforms, restructured teams to encourage innovation, and built a company-wide culture focused on customer-centric digital experiences. By doing so, they positioned themselves years ahead of industry norms, setting a new standard for what banking looks like in the digital age.
How Do You Turn Soft Trends Into Strategic Advantages?
To influence Soft Trends effectively, leaders can follow these steps:
- Identify the Soft Trends That Matter Most
Not all trends are worth your time—focus on the ones that are still forming and open to influence. Soft Trends are defined by human behavior, emerging preferences, and evolving policies, not fixed technological inevitabilities.
Ask yourself:
- Is this trend being driven by behavior or belief?
- Is it still open to influence, or has it hardened into a certainty?
Once you identify those Soft Trends, evaluate their potential impact on your business model. The most strategic opportunities often lie in the trends that others are still ignoring or misinterpreting.
- Challenge the Soft Assumptions
Behind every Soft Trend is a set of assumptions—many of which are outdated, unspoken, or inherited. These assumptions act as invisible limits on your strategy.
Start by asking:
- What are we assuming about this trend that might no longer be true?
- Who made that assumption, and when?
Once surfaced, these assumptions can be tested, reframed, or replaced, giving you the freedom to approach the trend with fresh thinking—and unlock paths your competitors won’t see.
- Use Small Wins to Redirect Momentum
Influencing a Soft Trend doesn’t require large-scale change overnight. In fact, small, well-placed wins can shift momentum faster and with less resistance.
Think of this as controlled influence testing—pilot programs, micro-campaigns, or messaging shifts that nudge the trend in your desired direction. These small wins generate internal buy-in and external signals, showing both your team and the market that you’re ahead of the curve.
Momentum compounds—and by the time others catch on, you’ve already taken the lead.
- Communicate the Vision Widely
Soft Trends gain strength through collective belief and behavior. That means your ability to influence a trend depends on how well others understand and share your vision.
This isn’t just about internal alignment. It’s about rallying partners, customers, and even regulators to participate in the direction you’re shaping.
A clear, consistent vision—communicated with confidence—has the power to accelerate Soft Trends and solidify your role as the trendsetter rather than the follower.
The Risk of Ignoring Soft Trends
Unfortunately, I’ve found that Soft Trends are frequently ignored. But this leads to missed opportunities and often, full disruption of your organization.
Failing to act on Soft Trends can lead to:
- Lost market influence as competitors shape the narrative first.
- Wasted opportunities to correct negative trajectories before they become Hard Trends.
- Reinforced Soft Assumptions that may limit innovation.
The danger is not just in inaction. It’s in letting someone else’s leadership shape the outcome for you.
What Does Leadership Look Like in a Soft Trend Environment?
Your role as a leader is not to control every factor. You have to guide the factors that are changeable toward the most favorable outcome.
This requires:
- Constant scanning of market signals to catch Soft Trends early.
- Strategic agility to adjust tactics as the trend evolves.
- Courage to act before proof is overwhelming, because by then, influence is diminished.
Soft Trends in Action Today
It’s best to take action on Soft Trends and leverage them to your advantage right away. Here are three current Soft Trends I find to be ripe for leadership influence:
- AI in Education – How AI is integrated into learning is not yet fixed. Leaders in education technology can guide its ethical use, ensuring it augments teachers rather than replaces them.
- Hybrid Work Models – The balance between remote and in-office work is still in flux. Corporate leaders can shape policies that maximize productivity and employee satisfaction.
- Digital Trust & Data Privacy – As technology outpaces regulation, public trust in how data is collected and used remains fluid. Leaders can influence this Soft Trend by building transparent, privacy-first systems that define new standards and expectations across industries.
How Can You Turn Possibility Into Your Preferred Future?
Soft Trends are the raw material of the future. They are clay waiting to be shaped by leadership vision, strategic foresight, and decisive action.
The leaders who will excel in the coming decade are those who don’t just monitor Soft Trends. They are the ones that mold them. They use them to turn uncertainty into opportunity, and possibility into the preferred future.
As Hard Trends tell you what will happen, Soft Trends let you decide how it happens. The most successful leaders master both as a way to have an edge on the competition.
Ready to Influence the Trends That Will Shape Your Industry?
The most successful leaders don’t wait for the future to happen—they anticipate it, shape it, and lead others through it.
You’ve just explored how to leverage Soft Trends to influence outcomes. Now take the next step with deeper foresight into the technologies and disruptions that will define 2026 and beyond.
Download my 2026 Top 25 Tech Trends Report to discover:
- The emerging Hard Trends that are certain to transform your industry
- The Soft Trends you can influence now—before your competitors do
- Strategic insights to help you turn disruption into opportunity