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IF YOU DRIFTED through the last year with a diary full of vague goals, half-formed intentions and a few familiar excuses, don’t worry.
January has arrived with its usual optimism, but it’s February that brings the real opportunity: motivation returns, the fog lifts and careers can get back on track.
You don’t need a complete reinvention in 2026. You just need fewer habits that dilute your impact and more that sharpen it. Stop letting perception happen by accident. Stop dodging learning curves. Communicate clearly. Listen properly. Seek feedback.
Careers don’t change through dramatic gestures. They change through consistent, deliberate choices. This year, make those choices count.
If you want 2026 to be the year you work with clarity and purpose, drop these five habits.
Remember the “great reflection”? That post-pandemic introspection where people re-evaluated their priorities and decided that balance and autonomy mattered more than climbing a ladder for the sake of it.
Five years on, some quietly admit they allowed their careers to slip into neutral. One client described their current situation as “career no man’s land”. Another said she’d “lost control without even noticing”.
Make 2026 the year you take the wheel again. Purpose and flexibility matter. But so does perception. And whether you think it’s fair or not, your professional brand is being formed in real time. Every email you send, every Teams meeting you attend (with your camera off), every conversation in which you hedge or apologise, it all shapes the impression others carry of you.
You don’t get to opt out. People will form a view anyway and those views stick.
So ask yourself: Who are you in their eyes? Are you the person who delivers or the one who delays? Are you reliable? Clear? Insightful? Or are you the colleague who disappears for long stretches, never quite commits to a point, or treats meetings like an opportunity to get some “real work” done?
A simple exercise: choose one influential person at work. Write down the three words you believe they’d use to describe you. Then write the three you wish they would use. Your development plan for the year is the gap between those lists.
You don’t need to become a machine-learning engineer to stay relevant, but you do need to accept that AI is now a layer across all work, not a separate specialist category. It’s reshaping roles in finance, HR, operations, marketing, research, customer service – everything.
Skillnet reports that nearly 80% of Irish businesses already need digital upskilling right now to keep pace with the changing world of work.
And there’s a significant gender gap. The 2024 World Economic Forum (WEF) report showed that only 22% of AI experts – and just 13% of senior AI leaders – are women.
The people who will thrive in 2026 aren’t those who try to become AI gurus overnight. They’re the ones who learn to use tools confidently, intelligently and ethically. AI literacy will become as fundamental as email literacy once felt. And resistance is a major risk.
Start small. The aim isn’t perfection; it’s competence.
If you want to increase your influence quickly, sharpen your communication. It’s a no brainer. It’s not about auditioning for next year’s panto – it’s just about becoming clear.
Foggy communication is career-limiting. Messages that ramble, updates that meander, presentations that take four minutes to reach their point – these quietly erode your authority. When you make people work too hard to understand you, they stop trying.
Leaders consistently rate communication skills above technical expertise. Technical skills can be taught. But the ability to understand your audience, structure your thinking and convey it cleanly is the winner every time.
And with generative AI levelling the playing field – anyone can now produce a competent, if bland, email – the only way to stand out is to be interesting, memorable, understandable (i.e, human).
Some guardrails for 2026:
Clarity is a habit. So is fog. Choose the one that builds your influence rather than dulls it.
Few habits damage relationships faster than bad listening. And few behaviours elevate your presence more quickly than listening well.
Most people don’t actually listen. They wait for their turn, interrupt mid-sentence, nod mechanically while thinking about their next meeting or dive into solutions before understanding the problem.
If you want stronger relationships and greater authority, talk less. Ask open questions. Make space. People reveal more when they feel they don’t have to compete for attention.
A partner in a law firm once put it neatly: “The best change I ever made was realising I don’t have to know or say it all. If I listen properly – and combine what they know with what I know- we get to a better solution faster. And you learn things about people you wouldn’t discover if you’re always speaking.”
Good listeners stand out because people trust them. And people trust those who make them feel heard.
A client preparing to negotiate a pay rise recently told me he’d never received meaningful feedback in his current role. The only comment he could recall? “You’re doing a great job, keep it up.” The result? “I feel like I’ve been winging it for ten years.”
Fear of feedback keeps careers stuck. Many people – givers and receivers- avoid it to dodge discomfort. But the cost is clarity, growth and better performance.
Zenger Folkman’s research shows that while nearly half of leaders find giving feedback stressful, 94% of employees say that well-delivered feedback improves their performance and future prospects.
Feedback should always be:
Feedback isn’t criticism. It’s direction. And careers without direction drift.
In 2026, get good at it.
Sarah Geraghty is the Head of Careers at The Communications Clinic.
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