What Happens to Leadership with Increasingly Later Retirement

Longer lifespans are reshaping leadership. Explore how aging workforces, delayed retirement, and portfolio careers are transforming succession, and executive planning.

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What if everything you thought you knew about leadership—when it happens, how it looks, who gets it—was quietly being rewritten by a single demographic shift?

People are living longer. A lot longer. In most developed countries, life expectancy is nearing or surpassing 100. That means many of today’s professionals won’t just work into their 60s—they’ll lead, pivot and reinvent themselves well into their 70s and 80s. This isn’t a distant future. It’s already here. And it’s transforming how leadership is earned, sustained and shared across the modern workplace.

The question isn’t whether this matters. It’s whether your organization is ready.

Leadership Is No Longer a Midlife Milestone

For decades, the traditional career path looked something like this: learn, work, lead, retire. Rising through the ranks was seen as a midlife milestone, something earned after years of climbing. But that model was built on the assumption of a 40-year career and a life expectancy that capped out somewhere in the mid-70s. That math no longer holds.

In a world where people may work into their 70s or beyond—not just because they need to, but because they can and want to—the leadership pipeline can’t be restricted to those in their 40s and 50s. Instead, responsibility is being taken up earlier, and longevity is extending the horizon for influence later in life. Early-career professionals are expected to step up from the outset, while seasoned figures are increasingly seen as reservoirs of wisdom, mentorship and memory.

The result is not just a flattening of hierarchy but an expansion of opportunity across the working lifespan. Organizations that recognize and adapt to this shift stand to benefit from a more dynamic, inclusive and resilient leadership culture.

Rethinking Succession: A Longer Game

One of the most profound effects of longer working lives is on succession planning. The old model—linear, time-bound and often opaque—is becoming outdated. In its place, employers are experimenting with more fluid, overlapping leadership structures that reflect evolving career arcs.

Executives who once retired at 60 are now pursuing encore careers or taking on advisory roles that keep them engaged without occupying formal posts. Meanwhile, rising talent is increasingly impatient to make an impact. They want influence now—not necessarily through title, but through innovation, initiative and meaningful contribution.

This creates a design challenge: how do you develop succession systems that honor deep experience without blocking upward mobility, and that create pathways for emerging leaders without rushing the transition? Some large firms, like Unilever, have responded by reimagining internal mobility and development pipelines, ensuring employees can stretch across disciplines, age groups and even regions over time. Their approach models how a long game can still be agile.

The Rise of the Portfolio Leader

One major outcome of longer careers is the rise of the portfolio leader—someone who moves fluidly between roles, sectors or even identities across decades. Some step in and out of formal leadership to care for others or pursue learning. Others pivot completely, reshaping their expertise in new contexts.

This modular approach challenges the old assumptions about what influence looks like. It may be accumulated across startups, nonprofits, multinationals or public service—and still feed into traditional corporate leadership later on. What matters is less the linearity of someone’s path and more the range and depth of what they bring.

Organizations that resist this model risk missing out on exceptional talent that no longer fits the climb-the-ladder blueprint. But those that embrace it can build leadership teams that are more diverse, more empathetic and more aligned with how modern life actually works.

Health Isn’t Just Personal—It’s Professional

Of course, longevity doesn’t automatically mean vitality. For people to contribute meaningfully well into their later decades, they need to stay mentally sharp, physically well and emotionally engaged. That’s pushing organizations to rethink health—not as a perk, but as a performance issue.

This goes well beyond gym subsidies or wellness apps. It’s about understanding how daily routines—like sleep, movement and stress—shape long-term leadership capacity. And increasingly, companies are turning to behavioral health insights to do it.

Aktivo Labs, for example, uses passive data from smartphones and wearables to generate a personalized health score that correlates with chronic disease risk. The company’s aim isn’t to monitor but to inform—helping users spot and change long-term patterns that might otherwise undermine performance later in life. By translating invisible data into meaningful insight, tools like this are quietly being integrated into leadership development strategies.

Others, like Virgin Pulse, are building digital ecosystems that connect everyday habits to outcomes that matter to both people and businesses. These systems are helping employers move from reactive wellness to proactive human sustainability.

This attention to wellbeing aligns with growing calls for professionals—particularly those in leadership positions—to approach the end of their careers with the same intentionality they brought to building them. James Stoller, chairman of the education institute at Cleveland Clinic, and Gerard Rabalais, emeritus chairman of the department of pediatrics at the University of Louisville, explore this idea in BMJ Leader, in which they urge professionals—especially physicians—to be as “planful and intentional” about their retirement as they are about their careers. Their article, "Winding Up to Wind Down," proposes a rubric for transitioning into retirement, encouraging an asset-based mindset that embraces new purpose and identity.

As James Mountford, editor-in-chief of BMJ Leader, said to me in an interview, the article “describes a set of archetypes—ways of being in retirement—that reflect the varied paths retired doctors take.” Mountford then explained that, while doctors spend decades developing their careers with care and structure, they are often shocked—and sometimes even traumatized—by entering an unthought-through retirement. He added that this gap in planning is as much a leadership issue as any other career transition. And that sometimes when we “lead” the bit we forget is how we lead our own selves.

The message is clear: leadership isn’t something we grow out of—it’s something we grow into, at every stage of life.

Toward an Age-Integrated Workforce

Finally, the workplace of the future must be designed not just for youth or experience, but for both. Development programs, mentorship structures and workplace culture need to support a more age-integrated mindset.

This means moving beyond generational labels and instead fostering shared growth across life stages. Diverse teams that include generational variety have been shown to make better decisions, innovate more and manage risk more effectively. The longevity dividend isn’t just about having more people in the room—it’s about unlocking what becomes possible when those people lead, learn and grow together.

As the boundaries of work and life stretch further, it’s time to update the story we tell about leadership. It’s no longer the exclusive domain of a particular age bracket or career stage. It’s a lifelong practice—one that demands adaptability, resilience and wellbeing as much as strategy or vision.

At the end of the day, the question isn’t whether someone is too young or too old to lead. It’s whether they’re ready—and whether their workplace is ready to support leadership that lasts a lifetime.

By Benjamin Laker, Senior Contributor