How to Fix a Leaky Leadership Pipeline
By Darcy Eikenberg

Once upon a time in our world of work, a young professional might dream of a long-term career in a large, respected organization. There, she would increasingly take on more responsibility, expanding her opportunities to grow. She’d become a key contributor to the organization’s success. In return, she’d have the chance to build personal and generational wealth, while also making a positive impact on the lives of colleagues, teams, and even customers or clients.

While these dreams still exist for some, senior executives and their boards are increasingly faced with a dangerous trend—the growing choice by smart, able professionals to decline opportunities to move into advanced managerial and leader-level positions.

In the past two years, many of the senior leaders and boards wrote this trend off as a temporary reflex to the dramatic lifestyle changes many employees made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others believe it’s generational, a symptom of digital-first, iPad-raised Gen Zers who simply don’t want to get more involved.

It’s dangerous to live in these assumptions, since now, five years later, many leaders and boards struggle—and often, express surprise—because they don’t have obvious, ready-now successors for senior leaders who are retiring or need to be replaced.

Plus, it can be challenging to fill this huge gap by hiring from the outside, since senior-level hires are not only more expensive to recruit and compensate but also have a higher chance of failing, with half leaving in the first 18 months, as I noted in my article in Chief Talent Officer (“Why Your Senior-Level New Hire Isn’t Working Out”).

The trend of opting out of higher management and leadership roles is creating a smaller pool of talent on the path to senior leadership. Gallup’s latest “State of the Global Workplace” report (2025) helps illustrate this trend. Its global research found that most U.S. managers—over two-thirds—report they would say “no thanks” if offered higher leadership roles.

That gap will soon become a crevasse as more than 11,200 people will turn 65 every day from 2024 through 2027, according to the Retirement Income Institute at the Alliance for Lifetime Income. While actual retirement ages vary significantly as people’s economic or health needs change, it’s clear that now is the time to fill those gaps—fast.