77% of Organizations Caught Off Guard by Geopolitical Risk as 55% of Leadership Teams Have Never Run a Structured Stress Test

AUSTIN, Texas, September 22, 2026 — Stanton Chase announces the release of The Rehearsal Gap: Findings from the Geopolitics and Leadership Executive Pulse Survey, new executive research on how geopolitical uncertainty is affecting board decisions, scenario planning, business continuity, and senior leadership hiring. 

The 2026 survey draws on anonymous responses from 112 senior executives across EMEA, North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, working in nine industries. It is the second report from the Stanton Chase Executive Survey Panel, following AI in the C-Suite, which gathered insights from 214 global executives. The panel is a quarterly research program in which selected C-suite executives and board members answer direct questions about their own organizations. All responses are anonymous, which allows executives to answer with complete candor. Their first-hand responses add to what Stanton Chase learns through its own executive search and assessment work. 

Geopolitical Uncertainty Is Catching Most Organizations Off Guard 

In the past year, 77% of organizations were caught off guard by a geopolitical development at least once. Nearly half of executives (48%) were caught off guard once or twice, 18% a few times, and 11% repeatedly. The remaining 23% were not caught off guard at all. 

Do Leadership Teams Run Geopolitical Stress Tests? 

A geopolitical stress test is a structured exercise in which a leadership team models how specific events, such as a strait closing or a new tariff, would affect its business. Only 16% of leadership teams have run one in the past three months. In total, 55% have never run a structured stress test, including those who have only discussed scenarios informally. Stanton Chase calls this the rehearsal gap: the distance between how often geopolitical events surprise organizations and how rarely their leaders practice responding to them. 

The teams that were never surprised are also the least prepared. Of those teams, 62% have never run a structured exercise. 

Geopolitical Risk Is Undoing Approved Decisions 

Geopolitical uncertainty led 49% of leadership teams to delay, revisit, or reverse a decision that had already been approved. For 16%, the decision was reversed or abandoned. Another 16% delayed the decision, and 17% revisited it before proceeding. Only 33% of teams that had recently run a stress test went on to change an approved decision, compared with 50% of teams that had never rehearsed. 

Pricing and Cost Pass-Through Feel Geopolitical Pressure First 

Over the past year, 31% of executives named pricing and cost pass-through as the area of their business most affected by geopolitical uncertainty. Supply chain and sourcing followed at 23%, and only 15% said no part of the business was notably affected. When asked about their greatest concern, 37% named the difficulty of predicting second-order and knock-on effects, well ahead of the instability itself at 29%. 

Cost Discipline Leads the Leadership Capabilities Executives Now Value 

Asked which leadership capabilities matter more because of geopolitical uncertainty, 51% of executives chose cost discipline and efficiency. Operational resilience and business continuity followed at 47%. Government and policy fluency (31%) and cross-border leadership (19%) ranked lower. Executives whose teams changed an approved decision are nearly twice as likely to prize speed of decision-making with incomplete information. The split is 62% of those executives against 32% of teams whose decisions held. 

Geopolitical Risk and Senior Executive Hiring 

Geopolitical risk has not changed where 68% of organizations hire or base senior leaders. 18% of all respondents now favor a local hire for a senior role, where steadier conditions would have sent them searching across borders for the best candidate available. That preference is more common in EMEA, at 23%, than across the rest of the panel, at 10%. Of the organizations now hiring locally instead of searching across borders, 55% picked regional and local market knowledge as a capability that matters more because of geopolitical uncertainty, against 35% across the whole panel. 

Read the Full Geopolitics and Leadership Report 

The report closes with a six-move action plan for leadership teams. You can download The Rehearsal Gap report on the Stanton Chase website. 

Stanton Chase is one of the world’s top executive search firms and is committed to data-driven executive search and leadership advisory, strengthened through its own internal research capabilities. With more than 70 offices in 45 countries, the firm offers executive search, executive assessment, board services, succession planning, and executive onboarding.  

Media Contacts 
 
Verjinia Tosheva 
Global Marketing Director 
Stanton Chase 
v.tosheva@stantonchase.com 

Aimee-Lee Verster 
Growth and Engagement Specialist 
Stanton Chase 
a.verster@stantonchase.com