Professional Services: Top 10 Leadership Trends to Watch in 2026
Welcome to Searchlight—A newsletter featuring the insights and talent trends shaping the future of professional services and private equity, presented by Beecher Reagan and Kinavic Leadership Acceleration.
Together, Beecher Reagan and Kinavic make up a strategic talent platform to help leading professional services and private equity firms identify, select, and accelerate the performance of executive talent to enable growth.
Recent Executive Searches We've Completed
Chief Executive Officer | Investor-Backed Digital Services Firm
An investor-backed digital transformation consultancy engaged us to recruit a CEO to succeed its founder and reignite growth following an acquisition-led expansion. The mandate required a leader who could unify a fragmented global workforce, reaccelerate topline performance, and scale a practice-led consulting model. We delivered a proven operator with experience scaling digital services businesses, positioning the firm for its next phase of growth.
Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer | Digital & Technology Services Firm
A high-growth digital services firm engaged us to recruit a Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer to scale from $50M to $100M. The firm needed to move beyond referral-driven sales and build a structured, repeatable go-to-market engine. We delivered a seasoned commercial leader with experience scaling beyond $100M, now driving alignment across sales and marketing.
Board Advisor Pipeline | Private Equity Technology Investor
A technology-focused private equity firm engaged us to build a pipeline of board chairs, board members, and executive advisors across multiple portfolio companies. The mandate required commercially oriented leaders with deep sector expertise and flexibility for retained advisory roles. Over 18 months, we placed eight board advisors who are now accelerating value creation and deal execution.
Want to discuss your next search for executive leaders who can navigate disruption and drive growth? Get in touch with us to book a strategy call today.
Professional Services Executive Trends & Insights
Professional Services: Top 10 Leadership Trends to Watch in 2026
Across consulting, business services, and technology-enabled services, demand has rebounded after a difficult stretch from mid-2022 through mid-2024. We're seeing clients spending again—what they are buying, however, looks very different from what it did just a few years ago.
Our work placing transformational executive leaders in firms across private and investor-backed professional services has given us a unique perspective on the most pressing issues that firms are wrestling with.
Here are the top 10 trends shaping professional services to start 2026:
1. The partner of the future sells outcomes, not expertise
The traditional “smartest person in the room” partner model continues to lose relevance.
Firms increasingly need client partners who can sell business outcomes, not just advice. The most effective partners understand their client’s strategy, competitive landscape, and financial pressures, and can clearly connect firm capabilities to measurable ROI.
Credibility now comes from judgment, relevance, and execution, not from being the loudest voice in the room.
2. Tax and advisory services continue moving up-market
Accounting firms are accelerating their move up-market, particularly in tax and advisory.
Clients are looking for more sophisticated guidance around tax strategy, regulatory complexity, and structuring decisions, not just compliance. This shift is pushing firms to invest in deeper expertise and more commercially oriented partners who can operate alongside senior finance and executive leadership.
The line between traditional accounting and advisory work continues to blur.
3. Functional expertise is driving reinvention
Clients are no longer satisfied with broad recommendations alone. They want specialists who can help reinvent specific parts of the business.
This includes expertise across finance, go-to-market, operations, supply chain, and technology. Firms that bring functional leaders into client conversations earlier, rather than keeping them in delivery silos, are seeing stronger traction.
Depth, not breadth, is becoming the differentiator.
4. CFO services expand as a core advisory offering
CFO services are becoming a critical growth area within professional services.
As finance organizations face increasing complexity from technology, AI, reporting requirements, and investor expectations, demand for CFO-level advisory support continues to rise. This includes help with forecasting, capital allocation, systems, and performance management.
Technology and AI are increasingly embedded in these offerings, changing both how the work is delivered and the profile of leaders required to deliver it.
5. AI subject matter experts become scarce and expensive
AI talent remains one of the most constrained resources in professional services.
Most credible AI experts have come from data analytics and machine learning backgrounds and have been repurposed over time. Demand for these individuals is accelerating rapidly, and firms are increasingly competing for them directly.
Those without embedded AI expertise in client delivery will struggle to remain relevant as expectations continue to rise.
6. Operational efficiency and supply chain work regain urgency
Operational fundamentals are back in focus.
Tariffs, taxes, and geopolitical uncertainty are forcing clients to rethink where and how they procure, manufacture, and distribute. Questions around resilience, cost structure, and risk exposure are driving renewed demand for operational and supply chain advisory work.
Firms that combine operational expertise with technology and data analytics are particularly well-positioned.
7. Change management eclipses the technology work
One of the most misunderstood aspects of AI adoption is where the real work sits.
The challenge is not implementing technology. It is managing change. AI alters roles, workflows, incentives, and decision-making structures. Without strong change management, even the best technology investments fail to deliver value.
Professional services firms are investing more heavily in this capability as clients recognize its importance.
8. Capability building becomes the product
Clients increasingly want to be taught how to operate differently, not just told what to do.
Capability building is becoming a core offering across consulting, accounting, and technology services. Firms are helping clients develop internal skills, embed new ways of working, and sustain change long after the engagement ends.
Capabilities are becoming currency. Outcomes are the proof.
9. Talent transformation moves to the center of delivery
Technology and AI are reshaping traditional talent models.
Junior roles are changing, mid-level expectations are rising, and career velocity is accelerating. Professional services firms are being forced to rethink hiring, development, and promotion models to keep pace.
Talent transformation is no longer an internal initiative. It is central to client delivery and long-term competitiveness.
10. Technology-enabled services professionalize their commercial engine
Technology-enabled services firms are rapidly maturing their go-to-market models.
There is a clear shift toward hiring CCOs, CROs, and dedicated sales leadership to bring structure, discipline, and predictability to growth. Founder-led selling and loosely organized regional sales approaches are giving way to more formal, industry-aligned commercial models.
As these firms scale, commercial leadership is becoming just as important as delivery leadership. The ability to consistently generate, qualify, and close demand is emerging as a core differentiator in the tech-enabled services landscape.
Professional services remains a people business, but the expectations placed on those people have never been higher.
If you're looking to identify and hire the right leaders to navigate disruption, drive growth, and enable value creation, we'd love to be a resource Get in touch with us to start the conversation.
CASE Studies
A Leading Consulting Firm Faced a 50% Failure Rate Among Newly Hired Partners—Here’s What We Uncovered
Kinavic Leadership Acceleration was brought in when a global consulting firm discovered that 50% of its newly hired Partners were failing to gain traction—revealing that the issue wasn’t talent, but how leaders were selected, integrated, and supported.
This case study breaks down what Kinavic uncovered and how a data-driven performance acceleration approach helped address the root causes.
Together, Beecher Reagan and Kinavic Leadership Acceleration offer an integrated talent platform that improves executive selection and accelerates leadership performance for growth-focused private equity and professional services firms.
Whenever you're ready, here's how we can help your organization:
Get in touch with a Beecher Reagan Partner today to discuss identifying and hiring your next resilient leader to navigate disruption and drive growth.
Contact Kinavic Leadership Acceleration to discuss how to predict and accelerate the performance of your Partners and executive leadership.