Bridge the Intergenerational Leadership Gap

Today’s workforce spans five generations, with millennials and Generation Z together accounting for over 60% of workers globally — a share projected to reach 74% by 2030. Yet there’s a widening intergenerational gap in business leadership. While age diversity in the workplace is growing, decision-making power increasingly rests with more senior generations.

The average age of CEOs at S&P 1500-listed companies has risen significantly over the past several years, from 54 in 2008 to nearly 59 in 2023. Only 5% of directors on S&P 500 boards are under 50. Similar dynamics can be observed worldwide. The average age of board members across major markets such as Brazil, the European Union, and India ranges from 58 to 64 years old — around 20 years older than the median age (about 39) of the global workforce.

Why Age-Diverse Leadership Drives Better Decision-Making

While experience is undoubtedly important for effective leadership, it also comes with the risk of relying on the same mental models that have underpinned past successes. When the context of business changes rapidly, maintaining the same strategy can hinder adaptability exactly when new thinking is required.

Enter younger leaders. More age-diverse leadership teams have been found to excel at ambidextrous learning: They’re better at communicating important tacit know-how from one generation to the next. This helps organizations retain critical expertise over time. Simultaneously, younger leaders help counterbalance experience with curiosity and a willingness to question the status quo, which supports a continuous update of organizational knowledge.

Such ambidextrous learning and a diversity of ideas can also unlock innovation. Age diversity has been found to accelerate product innovation and foster creative problem-solving, particularly in times of crisis, such as international conflict or the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has found that intergenerational leadership teams perform particularly strongly in the realms of sustainable business model innovation and eco-innovation.

Importantly, this does not in any way suggest that older managers are less capable or willing to innovate; rather, analyses emphasize the potential of a greater diversity of generational perspectives. Recent research highlights the positive effects that “grey entrepreneurs” on age-diverse teams of founders can have on measures of innovation performance and business growth.1

Three Ways to Advance Intergenerational Leadership

The case for intergenerational leadership is increasingly clear. A more systematic, bold approach to involving younger leaders promises to drive progress on key strategic goals, such as innovation, talent recruitment, and sustainability. For a recent report, the four of us conducted a structured evidence review and interviews, which led us to identify three main approaches to increasing the influence of younger leaders: consultation, decision rights, and an intergenerational leadership pipeline.

Consultation

When taking a consultation approach, senior leadership actively seeks opportunities to learn from younger generations. Typically, the focus is on employees from within the organization, but businesses can also find ways to involve external emerging talent. Consultation programs that have recently gained prominence include reverse mentoring — where younger employees mentor senior leaders on selected issues — and shadow boards, in which teams of younger experts act as sparring partners for the executive committee of the board.

Gucci offers an effective example of the potential of shadow boards as “boards of disrupters.” In 2015, the Italian fashion giant assembled its first shadow board, which, according to then-CEO Mario Bizzarri, served as a “wake-up call for the executives.” The shadow board helped rejuvenate the brand, embrace digital marketing channels, and advance sustainability, such as by reducing unnecessary leather waste. Its role as a sparring partner for the C-suite was credited with an increase in sales in the years that followed.

In consultative approaches, the role of younger generations is usually confined to providing senior executives with new insights or fresh perspectives. But with no guarantee of any meaningful follow-up, consultation risks encouraging talk without corresponding action.

Decision Rights

For real change, it may be necessary to go beyond consultation and integrate younger perspectives into executive-level venues.

This is the core idea behind shared decision rights: Younger leaders are included in key leadership structures and empowered with formal roles on executive teams, project teams, and boards. This shared leadership combines the range of perspectives and strengths across people of different ages in everyday and strategic direction-setting.

Telstra, a leading Australian telecommunications company, has prioritized intergenerational leadership on its board. In 2020, amid a major digital transformation, the company appointed Bridget Loudon, then 32 and founder of Australia’s largest skilled-talent platform, as its nonexecutive director. Telstra chairman John Mullen noted that Loudon “is a leader in how organizations transform themselves to capture the opportunities presented by developments in technology.” Beyond providing strategic input, she has driven concrete policy innovations, such as advising on flexible working models in the wake of COVID-19 and helping Telstra establish the first director of parental leave policy at any $20 billion-plus listed company worldwide.

At Ford Motors, Alexandra Ford English joined the board in 2021 at age 32 — continuing the Ford family legacy while representing a new generation’s perspective on technology and transformation. With experience leading Ford’s autonomous vehicle deployment, she now serves on the Sustainability, Innovation, and Policy Committee, helping to bridge the gap between the company’s legacy leadership and its digital future.

Formally involving younger generations in key decision-making structures can add value for organizations, but the practice can also meet significant resistance from more entrenched leadership. Strong and determined advocacy to rally and sustain support for change must be deployed, especially by senior leadership, such as board presidents or CEOs. Again, context matters: Smaller and privately held companies may be more independent than publicly listed companies that face strong shareholder pressure.

Finding pragmatic solutions that are fit for purpose in an organization’s specific context may require some adjustment. For example, if extending full board membership to a young leader is unrealistic, a business may be able to add “permanent guests” or strategic advisers to the board or a subcommittee. Even if these members lack voting rights, their valuable input can inform deliberations and decision-making.

An Intergenerational Leadership Pipeline

Most consultation and co-leadership practices typically remain confined to episodic one-off engagements for specific segments of the organization’s workforce. A more holistic approach is to embed age-diverse leadership as a guiding principle across organizational structure, culture, and leadership development strategy. Organizations should thereby seek to build and sustain an ongoing intergenerational leadership pipeline by deliberately recruiting younger talent into leadership tracks, accelerating their advancement, and integrating their perspectives into decision-making at every level. Organizations that pursue this enterprisewide approach earlier and more decisively than competitors can turn intergenerational leadership into a lasting source of strategic advantage.

Companies considered some of the best for future leaders — including IBM and Procter & Gamble in the U.S. — illustrate how multiple approaches to intergenerational leadership can be combined across career stages. Procter & Gamble, for instance, exemplifies this model through a “build from within” philosophy, ensuring that 99% of senior leaders are developed internally and that every top role has three ready successors. Its leadership academy provides structured pathways from entry-level roles to the C-suite, embedding C-suite potential at every level. Common strategies across all leading companies include accelerating younger leaders’ learning and growth through structured rotational programs that expose them to different roles across the organization, as well as succession-focused initiatives designed to ensure that high-potential talent is systematically identified, supported, and prepared to step into top decision-making roles.

Embedding intergenerational leadership requires a cultural shift in work routines and inclusive behaviors: Moving away from traditional hierarchies to more participatory, decentralized structures can empower younger employees to take on greater responsibility. Recent research found that generationally inclusive meetings are a proven approach to normalizing shared leadership in operational and strategic decisions. The research also found that companies with balanced generational meeting participation report tangible gains: For example, 82% of executives at such companies said they outperformed competitors, and 60% of employees in those inclusive-meeting cultures were unlikely to leave their job within a year (versus just 36% in less-inclusive environments). But most organizations still have work to do: Three-quarters of executive meetings include no Gen Z representatives. For effective age-diverse meetings, inclusive participation and facilitation are essential. Leaders should ensure that all contributions are valued, consider all participants’ insights to avoid groupthink, and remain open to new ideas.

These three approaches to embedding age-diverse perspectives — consultation, decision rights, and an intergenerational leadership pipeline — can encourage innovation, enhance corporate resilience, and cultivate a more inclusive and forward-thinking culture. Businesses that embrace this intergenerational shift — still a relatively new and largely untapped opportunity — will be best positioned to navigate future complexities while reaping tangible benefits.