Why Young Employees Are Turning Away from Leadership Roles: The Three Pillars of Professional Success Today

The Shifting Definition of Career Success

For many years, the path to professional success was clear: work your way up the corporate ladder, get more direct reports, and go after the corner office. They are rewriting that script. For more and more Gen Z and millennial workers, who will make up 74% of the global workforce by 2030, professional development is no longer just about moving up the corporate ladder and becoming a manager. Instead, a new framework is emerging, one based on three pillars: balance, learning, and work that matters.

This change is not small. It's structural, measurable, and it's already making companies in many fields rethink how they hire, train, and keep good workers.

The Three Things: Money, Meaning, and Happiness

Deloitte's 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which is now in its 14th year and has more than 23,000 respondents from 44 countries in North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, may be the best look at this generational shift. The main finding is shocking: only 6% of Gen Z respondents say that their main career goal is to become a leader. Leadership as a primary career aspiration has diminished to single digits.

But this doesn't mean that they aren't ambitious. When asked what the most important reasons were for choosing their current job, learning and professional growth were among the top three. The currency of ambition itself has changed. Deloitte calls the "trifecta" of money, meaning, and well-being that Gen Z and millennials are going after. They don't see these as separate goals, but as goals that are deeply connected.

Money isn't enough to make you feel safe with your finances.

A lot more young workers are worried about money than before. Deloitte's data shows that 48% of Gen Z and 46% of millennials now say they are worried about their finances. This is up from 30% and 32%, respectively, just one year ago, which is a 60% increase for Gen Z alone. Since January 2024, the number of job openings for entry-level positions has dropped by 29%. Wages have barely kept up with inflation, with advertised wages only rising by 2.5% from year to year by the end of 2025.

Even with all of this financial stress, these generations still say that money alone is not enough. About 89% of Gen Z and 92% of millennials say that having a sense of purpose is important for their job happiness and health. The data shows that having a purpose is not just for people who can afford it; it's something everyone should have.

Of course, purpose is different for everyone. For some people, it means making a real difference in the world through their work every day. For some, it means making enough money or learning new skills that let them make a difference outside of work, like by volunteering, doing creative things, or getting involved in their community. This is where well-being becomes a key factor. 67% of Gen Z and 72% of millennials who say they have good mental health say their job lets them make a difference in the world. For people with poor mental health, those numbers drop sharply to 44% and 46%, respectively.

What They Expect from Managers and What They Get

Younger workers aren't just saying no to authority. They want to be led, but not in the way they usually are. The Deloitte survey says that Gen Z and millennials want their bosses to help them set limits on their work and personal lives, give them advice, and be there for them. Instead, they often get someone to watch over their daily tasks and check in with them on administrative matters.

The difference is clear: 42% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials think managers should create a positive and welcoming work environment, but only 22% and 21%, respectively, say their managers are doing that. Managers themselves admit that there is a problem. The Global Human Capital Trends report from Deloitte says that managers spend almost 40% of their time dealing with problems that come up right away and doing administrative work. Only 13% of their time is spent on developing the people who work for them.

Mastery is More Important Than Management

A fundamental reordering of professional prestige is one of the most important cultural changes behind these numbers. Nora Jenkins Townson, the founder of the HR consulting firm Bright + Early, says that for Gen Z, being good at what you do is more important than being in charge of people.

This generation grew up seeing the "bad boss" story spread through social media, workplace forums, and pop culture. They are more critical of directive and authoritarian leadership styles than any other generation. They have seen millennials, many of whom are now in middle management, deal with burnout, anxiety about being laid off, and the thankless pressure of managing both up and down.

A Robert Half survey of 835 Canadian professionals in March 2025 confirmed the trend: about half of Gen Z workers don't want to move up to management positions. That preference is much higher than it was for older generations. Gen X had the next highest rate at 44%. Fifty-one percent of those who prefer non-managerial roles said that being able to keep their current work-life balance was the main reason.

It's clear that younger workers know that the delicate balance between work and life can be broken quickly when you have to manage other people's careers and daily tasks.

The Crisis in Middle Management

Younger workers don't want to be leaders, but there's a crisis that's been building for years: people who are already in management are quitting and getting burned out.

Burnout by the Numbers

Middle managers are under a lot of stress. Data from 2024 to 2025 paints a bleak picture:

• More than any other group of workers, 71% of middle managers in the U.S. say they are burned out.

• Managers are 36% more likely than non-managers to say they are burned out.

• In a study from 2025, 82% of managers said they were burned out, while 73% of entry-level workers said they were.

• In 2025, employee burnout in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 66%. This made things even harder for people in charge of leading teams.

• Gallup data from 2025 shows that the average number of direct reports per manager has gone up to 12.1, up from 10.9 in 2024 and a 50% increase from 2013. This means that managers are being asked to do more with less help.

The event costs a lot of money. Burnout costs managers about $10,000 a year, non-managers about $4,000 a year, and executives over $20,000 a year. Burnout-related disengagement costs the world between $322 billion and $438 billion in lost productivity each year.

The "Manager Crash"

Experts at meQuilibrium, a digital coaching platform, said that in 2025 there would be a "manager crash," which would mean that managers' health, performance, and willingness to keep leading change would all drop sharply. The prediction was based on years of burnout that had not been dealt with, support systems that were not good enough, and the cumulative effects of layoffs that mostly affected middle management. According to Bloomberg data, middle-management jobs made up almost a third of all layoffs in recent years, up from a fifth five years ago.

According to DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2025, about four out of ten stressed-out leaders have thought about quitting their jobs as leaders to feel better. The number of high-potential workers who said they wanted to leave went from 13% in 2020 to 21% in 2024. These workers were almost four times more likely to say they would leave within the year if their managers didn't give them chances to grow and develop.

The picture is clear: the people in charge right now are getting burned out and thinking about quitting, while the next generation is watching and making a different choice.

The Growth of the Individual Contributor

As younger workers change their priorities and management becomes less appealing, a similar trend is speeding up: the rise of the specialist, or "individual contributor," as a valid and equally valued career path.

The Dual-Track Model from Shopify

The most well-known case of structural adaptation happened in March 2023, when Shopify changed how it hired and paid its employees. It divided all of its workers into two separate career paths: managers and "crafters" (individual contributors). Most importantly, the pay levels were made the same on both tracks. This went against the long-standing corporate norm of giving management roles the highest pay and the best chances for advancement.

Atlee Clark, Shopify's VP of Talent Operations, said that the reason for this was that the only way to get ahead at Shopify was to become a manager. This meant that some of the company's best builders had to do management work that kept them from doing their main job. With the new model, crafters could move up and make money at the same rate as managers, and managers could focus only on developing people.

The results were good. Shopify said that it now had fewer managers and more crafters, both of whom were seen as leaders and paid accordingly. The company also learned that crafters were more excited about their work and thought they had more chances to learn and improve their skills.

A Bigger Change in Business

Shopify is not the only one. Walmart's Global Tech division has a new career path for individual contributors. Remote is a global HR platform that has had two tracks since it started. Both the managerial and non-managerial tracks offer the same amount of pay growth. And for years, many big companies have quietly let workers get higher-level titles that don't involve managing other people.

Char Stark, who is in charge of people and growth at Beacon HR, says that for people who don't want to become leaders, this means becoming more specialized and focusing on specific skills. Companies are also making career paths for individual contributors that let them coach and mentor junior coworkers without having to be in charge of their daily management or career development.

The Leadership Pipeline Problem and How to Fix It

The combination of these trends—Gen Z's changing priorities, the burnout epidemic among current managers, and the growing popularity of specialist roles—has led to a real crisis in the leadership pipeline. It has become much harder to build a "pool" of future executives, and senior leaders have been feeling the lack of willing candidates for management positions for about ten years.

Finding and training people early

HR professionals contend that a fundamental cause is timing: companies often elevate individuals to management positions prior to providing them with the necessary training for success. Robert Walters says that more than two-thirds of current managers started out as "accidental managers," meaning they didn't get any formal management training before becoming managers. Many people who could be leaders don't want to show interest in management because they are afraid of being thrown into the role without being ready.

Experts say that the best way to solve the problem is to find employees who have leadership potential early in their careers and give them training and development before they are promoted, not after. More people are willing to try to be a manager when they feel ready and supported, not at risk.

Changing the Way We Think About Management

There is also a bigger case for completely rethinking what a manager should do. Younger workers say they want their leaders to mentor, coach, and create inclusive team cultures. If managers spent less time on administrative tasks and more time on these things, the job itself might become more appealing. Deloitte's data shows that the gap between what young workers want from management and what management is currently giving them is not too big to close. It just needs to be redesigned on purpose.

Last Thoughts

The change in what younger generations want from their jobs is not just a passing trend; it's a structural change that is already changing the job market. Gen Z and millennials aren't less ambitious than the generations before them; they just want different things. They want to be in charge of management, have a purpose along with pay, and have balance as a non-negotiable base.

Companies that think that moving up in the company means moving up in the hierarchy will lose their best employees, including those who don't want to manage and those who are already managing and are about to quit. Companies that do well will be those that offer multiple, equally valuable ways to grow, such as management for those who want it and deep craft for those who don't. It's not a ladder to the future of work. It is a lattice, and the companies that build one will have an advantage in getting and keeping the workers of the future.