Many organizations say they want younger leaders.
What they often want are younger people willing to live by the assumptions of an older generation.
Recently, I heard about the final contract negotiations of a woman who will join an Executive Board next year. She is in her thirties, has an impressive track record, carries international responsibility, and is stepping into a global role. Exactly the kind of talent companies claim is hard to find.
She also has a young child.
During the negotiations, the conversation turned to commitment, accountability, and consequences. It also turned to how many days she should spend in a headquarters where she does not even live, despite a role that already demands constant travel between markets, countries, and stakeholders.
Nobody reaches an Executive Board needing a lesson about responsibility.
I am roughly the same age as the chairman in this story, which is exactly why I think this needs saying.
The moment we start explaining the world to people who are already succeeding in it, we should at least consider the possibility that we are no longer teaching. We may simply be protecting our own biography.
My generation built successful careers on a particular set of assumptions. We believed visibility proved commitment, presence created trust, availability signaled loyalty, and family fit around the job. Those beliefs worked for many of us.
They are not laws of nature.
What I see is not a generation unwilling to carry responsibility. I see a generation questioning inherited ideas about what responsibility, commitment, and leadership are supposed to look like.
That is where many organizations become strangely inconsistent.
They ask for fresh thinking, then become uncomfortable when fresh thinking questions old assumptions. They celebrate diversity until it shows up as different priorities, different life choices, and different definitions of success. The conversation quietly shifts from capability to conformity.
The adaptation is almost always expected from the younger generation. I rarely see the same expectation placed on those of us who currently hold power.
If you sit on a Supervisory Board or an Executive Board, ask yourself one uncomfortable question.
When was the last time you expected your own generation to adapt instead of the next one?
Because the future does not need younger copies of us.
It needs leaders who are free to become something we never had the chance to be.