Gen Z’s entrepreneurial spirit is thriving. The most recent Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found that the number of businesses incorporated by 16-to-25-year-old female founders grew by 24% over a four-year period. However, traditional leadership paths are being rejected.
Is this just youthful rebellion? I don’t think it is. It’s a rational response to what they are seeing in the workplace. The management burnout epidemic is impossible to ignore, with 71% of middle managers reporting exhaustion. For a generation that prioritises wellbeing alongside purpose, the current management model simply doesn’t add up.
The leadership paradox
Gen Z has observed that managers face pressure and responsibility to translate executive vision while supporting increasingly diverse teams, often without enough resources, recognition or real authority. But this generation isn’t rejecting leadership entirely. Many aspire to entrepreneurship or creating their own pathways. Gen Z craves environments where they can lead with purpose without compromising personal wellbeing; conditions that traditional management structures rarely provide.
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When Gen Z sees management willing to conform to rigid expectations and burning out, they question whether these roles align with their values. But there’s an opportunity to reimagine leadership for everyone’s benefit. Here are some practical steps that HR leaders can implement now:
Redesign the manager’s role: Strip away administrative burdens that don’t add value. Audit your managers’ responsibilities and eliminate tasks that could be automated.
Create genuine flexibility: Move beyond hybrid working. Empower managers to design team rhythms that work for everyone. When managers can truly shape how their teams operate, both wellbeing and performance improve. This shows trust and empowerment.
Build peer support: We must help create structured networks which challenge without judgment. Our AllBright Future of Work report found that middle managers with strong peer support report 40% less burnout.
Develop skills proactively: Invest in crucial capabilities before promotion, not after. This includes emotional intelligence, difficult conversations, and boundary setting – skills that make management sustainable. Our report found that 56% of women want urgent support to develop their leadership and management skills, believing this to be integral to career success.
Read more: The skills mismatch problem
Prioritise wellbeing: Create accountability around manager wellbeing, with measurable targets. Celebrate leaders who model healthy behaviours.
Create stepping stones: Develop ‘leadership light’ roles, allowing Gen Z to test management responsibilities without assuming full team oversight immediately.
Connect to purpose: Help managers see their direct impact. When leaders understand how they’re contributing to meaningful outcomes, admin-related tasks become more tolerable.
All of this requires collaborative effort. Companies successfully attracting Gen Z into leadership aren’t just adding wellness programmes and ticking boxes, they are reimagining management itself. They’re creating roles with clear purpose, genuine authority and sustainable expectations.
The question isn’t whether Gen Z should adapt to our management models but how we can transform those models to harness their creativity and passion. When young people feel genuine ownership and connection to purpose, they leap at opportunities to lead. By transforming our management models, we won’t just make leadership more appealing to Gen Z, we’ll create organisations where everyone can thrive.
Viviane Paxinos is CEO of AllBright, a global collective of business women
This article was published in the May/June 2025 edition of HR magazine.
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