Organisations have spent years building leadership pipelines, identifying high-potential talent, creating development programmes, and preparing people for bigger roles.
The traditional career path has been clear: gain experience, take on more responsibility, move into management, and eventually lead others. For many professionals, leadership has represented progression, recognition, and the opportunity to make a greater impact.
But expectations around careers are changing.
What happens when the leadership roles organisations have always designed are no longer the roles people aspire to?
Recent research suggests organisations may need to reconsider the question they are asking. Instead of focusing only on why some professionals are less attracted to traditional leadership paths, perhaps the bigger question is whether those roles still align with what people value from their careers today.
Leadership Is No Longer The Obvious Next Step
For many professionals, leadership was once closely tied to career progression. More responsibility, larger teams and broader influence were seen as natural indicators of success.
That relationship is becoming more complex.
According to Deloitte's 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, only 6% of Gen Z respondents identified reaching a leadership position as their primary career goal. The findings also highlighted stress, burnout and the weight of responsibility as factors shaping how younger professionals view leadership.
It would be easy to interpret those findings as a lack of ambition.
A more useful interpretation is that expectations of leadership are changing.
Professionals still want to grow, develop their careers develop expertise and create meaningful impact. What is shifting is the belief that managing larger teams is the only, or even the best, way to achieve those goals.
Some professionals may aspire to become recognised specialists. Others may want greater strategic influence without taking responsibility for large teams. Many may still want to lead, but they are questioning whether traditional leadership roles reflect the kind of impact, autonomy and growth they are looking for.
The challenge for organisations is not simply developing more leaders.
It is understanding what future leaders are looking for from leadership itself.
Have Leadership Roles Changed Faster Than Careers?
Leadership itself has evolved significantly.
Today's leaders are expected to deliver results while navigating uncertainty, managing greater complexity and supporting both business performance and people development. At the same time, new technologies such as AI are reshaping how leaders make decisions, operate and create value.
Yet while expectations have expanded, many leadership roles have simply accumulated more responsibility rather than being fundamentally redesigned.
Deloitte's findings reflect this tension. Stress, burnout and the weight of responsibility continue to shape how younger professionals view leadership.
The concern is not simply whether people want to lead, but whether traditional leadership roles still reflect the kind of careers people want to build, especially when considering the personal trade-offs these roles can require.
These concerns should not simply be viewed as generational preferences.
They raise a broader organisational question: if talented professionals increasingly associate leadership with pressure, reduced autonomy and constant demands, are organisations evolving leadership roles in a way that encourages people to step forward — or are they unintentionally making leadership less appealing?
Leadership Is Not The Only Path
For many organisations, career progression has traditionally followed a familiar path: experience leads to management, and management leads to senior leadership.
But careers are becoming far less linear.
Interestingly, professionals are recognising that growth does not always need to mean managing larger teams. A specialist may choose to deepen their expertise. A project leader may create significant impact by influencing across functions. Others may seek broader experience through strategic projects, new capabilities or cross-functional opportunities.
These choices should not be mistaken for a lack of ambition or commitment.
They reflect a broader understanding of what career success can look like.
Organisations that rely on a single definition of progression risk overlooking valuable capability. When people management becomes the only visible route to advancement, businesses may unintentionally limit the ways talented individuals can contribute and grow.
Creating multiple pathways for progression does not weaken leadership pipelines. It strengthens organisational capability by recognising that different people create value in different ways.
The Leadership Role Has Become More Complex
While career paths are becoming less linear, the expectations placed on those who do step into leadership have also expanded.
Today's leaders are expected to do more than deliver operational results. They are increasingly responsible for coaching teams, providing feedback, supporting career development and creating an environment where people can grow.
Deloitte's 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey highlighted this gap. Half of Gen Z respondents said they wanted their managers to coach and mentor them, yet only 36% believed they were receiving that support.
This is not necessarily a reflection of poor managers. It may be a reflection of how leadership roles have been designed.
Many managers are expected to deliver operational performance, manage risk, implement change, oversee budgets, engage their teams and develop future talent, often without the time or support needed to balance these responsibilities effectively.
When every new organisational priority is added to a manager's role, people development can become one of the first areas to suffer.
If organisations want stronger leadership pipelines, they cannot simply ask managers to develop future leaders. They must also create leadership roles that make effective leadership achievable.
This Is Bigger Than Gen Z
Although much of the conversation focuses on younger generations, the questions being raised extend well beyond Gen Z.
Across the workforce, professionals are re-evaluating what they want from their careers and what they expect from leadership. They are considering how progression fits alongside flexibility, wellbeing, personal fulfilment and the kind of impact they want to make.
These are not signs of declining ambition. They are signs that career expectations are evolving.
For organisations, that presents an opportunity to rethink what leadership offers. It should be attractive because of the opportunity to influence strategy, develop people and shape the future of the business—not simply because it comes with a more senior title.
What Should Organisations Consider?
There is no single blueprint for redesigning leadership. Every organisation will have different priorities, structures and workforce needs.
What matters is whether leadership has evolved alongside the expectations of the people organisations hope will step into those roles.
That may mean creating stronger specialist career pathways alongside traditional management routes. It may mean redesigning leadership roles so managers have the capacity to coach and develop their teams, rather than simply absorbing more responsibility. It could also involve recognising project leadership, cross-functional influence and technical expertise as equally valuable forms of career progression.
Most importantly, organisations should spend as much time evaluating leadership roles as they do identifying future leaders.
Leadership pipelines are not built through succession planning alone. They are built by creating leadership opportunities that talented people genuinely want to pursue.
The Question Worth Asking
The future of leadership may not depend on convincing more people to climb the traditional ladder.
It may depend on building leadership roles that reflect how work, careers and organisational expectations have evolved.
That does not mean lowering expectations or reducing accountability. It means designing leadership that is sustainable, meaningful and capable of attracting talented people over the long term.
Because the question is no longer simply who your future leaders are.
It is whether the leadership roles you've designed are still the ones they want to step into.
Beyond the Conversation
Leadership challenges rarely begin—or end—with hiring. As organisations rethink career progression, leadership design and workforce capability, they need talent strategies that support long-term growth.
At JMR, we partner with organisations to solve talent challenges from a broader perspective. Alongside executive search, we help businesses strengthen leadership capability, workforce strategy and talent infrastructure—building the people, pathways and capability needed to grow with confidence.
If your organisation is rethinking leadership, succession or workforce capability, we'd be happy to continue the conversation.
What happens when the leadership roles organisations have always designed are no longer the roles people aspire to?