The University of Sydney's 2027 Skills Horizon landed last week with a finding that deserves more attention than it has received. Buried inside a wide-ranging report on the future of work and leadership is a provocation that cuts to something most organisations have not yet reckoned with: nobody wants to be the boss anymore.
This is already showing up inside organisations. People are looking at the leaders around them, seeing what the job takes, and deciding they don’t want it.
The numbers are striking. Forty-one percent of jobseekers no longer see leadership as part of their career trajectory. Three quarters of middle managers report burning out. Younger workers are turning down promotions at a rate 1.7 times higher than their predecessors, and the research suggests the most common reason is not ambition or apathy but a clear-eyed assessment that the job is not worth what it costs.
That last point matters. If nearly half of jobseekers can’t see themselves becoming leaders, I don’t think the first question should be what’s wrong with their ambition. I’d be asking what they’ve seen of leadership that makes them think, no thanks.
The Middle Is Holding Too Much
Leadership pipeline conversations tend to focus on the top: who is ready to step into senior roles, who is being developed for executive succession, who has the strategic capability the organisation will need in five years. These are legitimate questions. They are also questions that largely ignore the layer where the pipeline is actually breaking.
Middle managers are the connective tissue of most organisations. They translate strategy into action. They absorb the friction between what the executive team decides and what the frontline experiences. They manage the expectations of people above and below them simultaneously, often with limited authority, limited support, and no formal preparation for the complexity the role involves.
The 2027 Skills Horizon identifies this layer as being under particular pressure. The role has grown, but the support around it hasn’t kept pace. Every change program, technology transition and restructure eventually reaches a manager who has to help real people make sense of it. Too often, we assume they’ll just absorb whatever comes their way.
If 75% of middle managers are burning out, we need to look at how the role is designed. We keep adding responsibilities without taking much away, then act surprised when capable people struggle or decide they don’t want to move into management at all.
What Young Workers Are Actually Saying
The finding that younger workers are more likely to turn down leadership roles for work-life reasons will probably bring out the usual commentary about Gen Z and ambition. But I think they’re paying attention to something the rest of us have learned to accept.
They’re watching their managers. They see the late calls, the competing demands and the pressure that comes with being accountable for decisions you can’t always control. They can also see what those managers get back in return. Some are looking at that trade-off and deciding it isn’t for them.
We can call that a lack of ambition if we want to. I think it would be more useful to ask whether we’ve made leadership a role that people can actually do well and still have a life outside work.
The same research found that only 2% of Gen Z workers share the priorities that most employers are looking for in future leaders: a drive for success, comfort with hard work, and an interest in continuous learning. The instinct is to read this as a talent pipeline problem. The more accurate reading is that organisations are looking for a profile that no longer matches the lived reality of what leadership actually delivers, and the cohort coming through is perceptive enough to notice the gap.
The Preparation Problem
Alongside the pipeline question, there is a readiness question that organisations are equally underprepared for. Research cited in the Skills Horizon shows that only 7% of operations leaders believe their workforce is fully ready for the changes ahead. Thirty-four percent of finance leaders say upskilling is underfunded. And across organisations of all sizes, the pattern is consistent: the pace at which the world is changing has outrun the pace at which leaders are being developed to meet it.
The job itself has changed. Leaders are being asked to manage AI transitions, constant change, strained trust and teams with different expectations of work. The report describes strategy cycles shrinking from 3-5 years to 6 months. Yet many organisations are still preparing people for leadership in much the same way they did a decade ago.
That gap worries me. We promote strong technical performers, give them a team, and expect them to work out the people side as they go. By the time they get meaningful support, they may already be overwhelmed, and their team has felt the impact too.
What a Leadership Pipeline That Works Actually Looks Like
I don’t think the answer is to push more people towards management and hope they stay. We have to make the role more workable and prepare people properly for it.
There are a few things that distinguish organisations that are getting this right.
They develop people before they become managers. Too often, someone gets promoted because they’re excellent at their current job and receives leadership development only once they’re struggling in the new one. Give people a chance to practise the conversations, decisions and judgement the role requires while they still have room to learn.
They take the transition seriously. Becoming a leader changes how you spend your time and how you measure your own success. The person who used to solve the hardest problems may now need to help someone else solve them. That shift can be uncomfortable, even for someone who wanted the promotion. A new title and a few online modules won’t carry them through it.
They give leaders people to learn alongside. New managers need somewhere to talk honestly about what’s happening, hear how others have handled similar situations and realise they aren’t the only ones finding it hard. Companies who build genuine peer communities for people in leadership roles find that the relationships they build with peers can be as valuable as the formal content.
They create genuine peer community for people in leadership roles. One of the most consistent findings
They measure what changes. Attendance tells you who turned up but it doesn’t tell you whether they lead differently afterwards. Very few organisations report on whether that program changed the way people lead, and fewer still can connect leadership development investment to the business outcomes it is meant to produce. Ask their teams, look at the work they’ve improved, and check whether the development is helping with the outcomes the organisation invested in it for.
The Cost of Letting This Drift
Leadership pipeline problems tend to feel like future problems until they are not. But the data is clear: people are already opting out, managers are already burning out, and teams are already experiencing the effects of leaders who were given too much responsibility with too little preparation and training. Those effects often appear in reports as retention, performance or culture problems, rather than as a clearly labelled leadership failure.
The organisations that act now have a chance to change what leadership looks like before the gap gets wider. That means preparing people earlier, supporting the managers they already have and being honest about whether the role they’re offering is one people would actually want.
The 2027 Skills Horizon frames this as one of the defining challenges for Australian organisations in the period ahead. Based on what we see inside the organisations we work with, that framing is right. The pipeline is not going to refill on its own. But it can be rebuilt, deliberately, by organisations that are willing to take the problem seriously enough to change how they approach it.
Building the Pipeline Before It Breaks
This is precisely the problem that Engage was designed to address. Engage is a leadership development program built specifically for emerging leaders navigating the step into management for the first time, or experienced leaders who need to hone their skills. The programs within the platform provide the structured development, expert guidance, and peer community that most organisations are not yet offering at this stage of a leader's career.
If you’re thinking about who will lead your organisation next, and whether they are truly ready, you can explore Engage here: https://www.engage.international/