Alan Murray has spent a career decoding power, first as a Wall Street Journal Bureau Chief, then reinventing Fortune, and now leading the WSJ Leadership Institute through one of the most turbulent eras in modern business. In an exclusive conversation with Beyond the Boardroom during his recent Singapore visit, Murray explains why AI anxiety is eclipsing geopolitical chaos in the C-suite, how empathy has become strategic infrastructure, and what Asia’s leadership instincts reveal about the future of work.

Across boardrooms from Manhattan to Mumbai, the old certainties of corporate power are collapsing in real time. Artificial intelligence isn’t a distant disruption on a five-year roadmap, it’s already in the room, dismantling business models with forensic precision and the ruthlessness of a hostile takeover. Sustainability is no longer a “nice to have,” and geopolitics isn’t playing out in the background.

The above and more, were the focus of Dow Jones’ Journal House Singapore event last week (October 1-3), convening for its second year in the Lion City. The annual gathering felt less like a conference and more like a diagnostic session for an industry in crisis. Anchored by The Wall Street Journal, it assembled a formidable roster including Robert Thomson himself, Chief Executive of News Corp, Tony Fernandes, Chief Executive Officer of Capital A (AirAsia’s parent company), Pedro Cebrian, Head of Content and Social Media for Scuderia Ferrari, Pav Gill, Founder of the Confide Platform and former Wirecard whistleblower, among a cross-section of chief executives from global finance, luxury conglomerates, and technology’s frontier.

Yet beneath the technical discussions of risk matrices, energy and sustainability challenges, and policy divergence, a pattern emerged that had nothing to do with strategy decks or quarterly forecasts, the tone of leadership itself has fundamentally shifted. What once operated purely as strategic imperative—top-down directives delivered from boardrooms to battalions—has given way to something that demands grassroots engagement, coherence-building, and a vocabulary that includes words like “empathy” and “trust.”

This evolution is precisely what Alan Murray, President of the WSJ Leadership Institute, has been documenting and shepherding. Murray brings unusual credibility to the diagnosis, two decades at The Wall Street Journal as senior editor and bureau chief, followed by his reinvention of the 94-year-old Fortune brand, where he launched the influential CEO Daily newsletter and Leadership Next podcast. The Institute he now leads exists to help executives navigate this transformation through peer learning via its prestigious CEO Council and executive networks. During his Singapore visit, Murray sat down with Beyond the Boardroom to dissect why authourity has lost its currency, how empathy became strategic infrastructure, and what Asia’s leadership instincts expose about Western blind spots. Below are the edited excerpts.

You’ve been leading the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute for just over a year now. How does it feel to be back at Dow Jones, and what’s the fundamental purpose of the Institute? What gap are you trying to fill?

It’s been fun! The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones are really my home, I spent more than 20 years there before I went to Fortune. So in some ways, coming back is a homecoming. But it’s different now because I’m trying to build a new organisation within a large, complex one, and that has its own challenges. It’s almost a truism now to say we live in a time of unprecedented change, but we really do. For the people running large corporations, it’s very hard to keep up. They can’t go back to school or take a 30-hour Coursera course. What I’ve learned over the last decade is that their preferred method of learning is from one another via peer sharing, peer engagement, and peer learning. So, what we’re trying to do with the Leadership Institute is create opportunities for that, and to provide whatever tools, data, or information we can to help them master this unprecedented pace of change that defines their work and their leadership journeys.

How do you actually compel leaders to open up in that process? There’s always the specter of competitive advantage, after all they can’t reveal everything about how they navigate challenges.

That’s certainly a challenge at times. Of course, there are certain things they won’t discuss because they represent genuine competitive advantages. But many of the problems they face today are news-driven disruptions, crises that arrive without warning and demand immediate response. Think about the last five years: the pandemic suddenly forced everyone into remote work, creating an unprecedented leadership challenge overnight. Then came the conflict in Russia and Ukraine and the urgent demands that companies divest from the region—decisions that had to be made in weeks, not quarters. Supply chain catastrophes followed—ports paralysed, prices spiking, the Suez Canal blocked—all massive, unpredictable shocks. And now, in the US, we have a President who’s enacted more policy changes in nine months than any administration since Franklin Roosevelt. There’s this relentless cascade of news-driven challenges that everyone is confronting simultaneously. On those fronts, they’re eager to convene and share best practices: “How did you handle that? What did you decide? How are you deploying AI?” There’s a hunger for that kind of exchange today like never before.

You unlocked the golden word: AI. Is it still the elephant in the room when these leaders convene?

Absolutely. It surprised me, actually, because earlier in the year there was so much happening geopolitically from two wars to tariffs to trade system upheavals. Yet when we bring CEOs together, the number one topic is consistently AI. Part of that is that geopolitical and political factors feel beyond their control. But AI? That’s squarely in their domain. It’s their responsibility to figure out how to deploy it inside their organisations and make their businesses better.

We’re witnessing a curious split in that political leadership globally is becoming more directorial, even authoritarian in some cases as people appear to be craving strong direction. Is it your observation that business leadership is manifesting the same?

Dramatically different trajectories. If you go back 25 years, think of Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric. I interviewed him many times, he was the archetype of the all-knowing, top-down leader. Leadership then was about telling people what to do. That model simply doesn’t work anymore. Things change too rapidly; no one can possibly have all the answers. The best leaders today spend less time instructing and more time setting a North Star, motivating people, and asking them to generate solutions. There’s far more humility in leadership now. During the pandemic, I started hearing a word from CEOs I’d almost never heard before: empathy. We conducted a survey in 2023—roughly half the CEOs cited “empathy” when describing how their leadership evolved during the pandemic. That tells you everything. To lead effectively now, you have to listen to and genuinely understand the people you’re leading. You can’t simply say, “Take that hill.”

That incongruence between geopolitics and business is striking. What are the biggest struggles leaders are wrestling with right now?

Creating coherence out of chaos. That’s what I hear from nearly every CEO. I asked Leena Nair, CEO of Chanel, on my new Leaders podcast what her biggest challenge was, she said exactly that: “Creating coherence out of change.” It’s a precise diagnosis that applies universally. People today are drowning in information, uncertainty, and fear, geopolitical, economic, and technological. The result is organisational paralysis. People are terrified of making mistakes. In that environment, a leader’s job is to create enough coherence that people feel they can move. To provide direction, a plan, permission to act without all the answers. Because if you don’t, fear wins.

Leena framed this through Chanel, a beautiful, timeless luxury brand that’s still filled with anxious human beings worried about change, technology, and relevance. Her biggest challenge wasn’t the external market; it was helping her people feel confident enough to move forward. That applies to every leader right now. Whether you run a retailer, tech company, bank, or luxury house, you’re managing fear as much as business performance. If you can create coherence and give people confidence to act when the world feels chaotic, that’s modern leadership.

Do you still think inspirational leadership is even possible in that kind of environment?

I do. It’s difficult, but absolutely possible. Take Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, the world’s largest private employer. He said publicly that AI will change every single job at Walmart. If you’re an employee, that’s terrifying. But Doug did something smart. He made a simple video, just him talking directly to employees. He reminded them that ten years ago, during another major transformation, Walmart doubled down on its people: raised wages, invested in education, expanded opportunities. That period built real, earned trust. Then he said: “Now we have to create a new future. And if you come with me, I’ll get you to the other side.” That’s inspirational leadership. You build trust over time through actions, earn it in hard moments, then leverage it to carry people through transformation, be it digital, structural, or cultural. You guide people through disruption, not shield them from it.

How does that translate in Asia? Leadership styles here are often perceived as more hierarchical, more top-down.

It’s interesting, because you’d assume the new, more empathetic model of leadership wouldn’t sit naturally in Asia’s traditionally top-down corporate cultures. But the best leaders here are adapting fast. At Journal House, I spoke with Anthony Tan, CEO of Grab, whose approach echoed Doug McMillon’s at Walmart. He described how, over recent years, Grab has focused on driving growth through technology and efficiency rather than expanding headcount, and how that strategy demands clear communication and trust. Instead of letting automation or AI spark fear, he told his teams, “If you come with me, I’ll retrain you. I’ll give you the skills to move through this next phase.” That, to me, captures what’s happening in Asia. It’s a blend of discipline and humanity. Leaders are realising that empathy and trust aren’t Western concepts, they’re universal. The language may differ, but the leadership lesson is the same everywhere that transformation only works when people come with you.

What are your thoughts on leaders such as Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, figures who inspire and repel in equal measure? Where do they fit in this new paradigm?

Leadership manifests in many forms, and that’s part of what makes it so fascinating right now. At the end of the day, effective leadership is whatever makes people want to follow you. Elon Musk does that. He paints a vision of the future that’s bold and galvanising: electrifying the planet, colonising Mars, or building entirely new industries out of thin air. That kind of visionary audacity inspires people, even if they don’t necessarily agree with his style.

You can say the same, in a very different way, about political leaders like the US President. He also inspires people—just in a different direction—by invoking nostalgia for a “better past.” It’s still vision-driven leadership; it’s just rooted in emotion rather than innovation. But when I look at what’s happening among corporate leaders more broadly, I see a marked shift away from that kind of authoritarian, personality-led model. The most effective CEOs today are not the loudest voices in the room. They’re the ones who can combine conviction with empathy, who can build trust while still moving fast, and who can listen as well as lead. The emphasis is less on domination and more on inspiration. In a sense, what defines great leadership today isn’t charisma, it’s coherence. The leaders who will endure are the ones who can hold people together through complexity, not just command them through certainty.

In your prior roles, you made the leap from Editor-in-Chief to CEO of Fortune Media in 2018, a rare transition in journalism. How did that shift feel from the inside?

The interesting thing is, I never really saw it as a leap, it was always inherent in me. When I became CEO of Fortune in 2018, after decades in editorial leadership, it might have looked like a dramatic career pivot. But to me, it felt like the natural next step. I’ve always had both sides in me: the journalist and the entrepreneur. I actually started my first newspaper when I was nine years old, walking up and down my street in Pittsburgh interviewing neighbours about lost dogs and visiting grandparents! I’d write up the stories, have my mother type them, make thirty copies, and sell them for five cents each. From the beginning, I was both storyteller and operator. That duality has defined my whole career. Even as a journalist, I was drawn to the management side—building teams, rethinking business models, and driving transformation. So, when I took on the CEO role, it didn’t feel like leaving journalism behind; it felt like leading it into its future.

What’re you most excited about building via the Leadership Institute in the next 12 months?

Everyone’s obsessed with technology right now. But when you actually talk to executives about AI, 15 minutes into the conversation they’re not talking about the technology anymore, they’re talking about people. “How do I get my people to adopt it? How do I get them not to be afraid?” That’s leadership. We spend too much time discussing the tools and not enough on the human capabilities needed to make them work. That’s where the WSJ Leadership Institute comes in. The mission is to help these big, inertia-laden organisations learn to move at the speed of technology, without losing their humanity in the process.

How is data underpinning all of that work?

Data is going to be the connective tissue of everything we do. Because our foundation is peer learning, we’re building tools to rapidly survey CEOs when major news breaks—tariffs, elections, new policies—and feed that collective intelligence back to them in real time. We’re also developing a benchmarking platform that allows leaders to see how their organisations rank on key dimensions like AI readiness, talent culture, organisational resilience, and leadership agility. The idea is to make leadership insight as measurable and actionable as business performance metrics.

Finally, who is a leader you personally admire?

Doug McMillon, without question. Ten years ago, most journalists would have confidently predicted Walmart was doomed—Amazon was rewriting retail, and Walmart looked like a legacy giant that couldn’t possibly keep up. But McMillon defied that narrative. Under his leadership, Walmart became not just a stronger retailer, but a better technology company than anyone expected—and, more importantly, a better people company. McMillon once told me, “If we beat Amazon, it’ll be because we know how to engage and motivate talent better than they do.” I love that fight. It captures what I believe about modern leadership: technology will always evolve, but people remain the defining advantage. The leaders who win aren’t just the ones who innovate, they’re the ones who elevate their people in the process.