The decline in the desire for leadership among young managers

One of the traditional units of measurement of a manager's power is the number of people under him in the organisational chart: the more you command, the more you count according to an old hierarchical scheme. Following this way of reasoning, the concept of 'moving up the ladder' would coincide with the concept of becoming a boss and increasing the number of people coordinated over time.

Although it is difficult to find statistical evidence to prove it, one fact seems to emerge from empirical observation of career paths in recent years: 'being a boss' is less of a desire than it once was. It is not uncommon to find 'old' managers, who grew up in a cultural context in which the investiture as leader was a glorious destiny from which one could not escape, shaking their heads in astonishment because their young colleague did not accept a position of responsibility, preferring to retreat to a quieter working dimension or a more stimulating professional project.

The sociologists of work could probably tell us that today our lives are less 'work-centric' than they used to be, that we like less and less to be defined as people by our professional status. I believe, however, that there is at least another, more concrete reason that leads many of us in our career choices to no longer consider as a must the opportunity to 'be a boss'. It is the shift in the 'honours-only' balance that managerial responsibility brings.

Leading people entails important rewards, material (salaries, benefits, etc.) and above all intangible (power, visibility, social consideration, etc.). Of course, there are also burdens. If in our scale of personal values the immaterial honours (the status of 'boss') count for less than before and are not counterbalanced by a reduction in burdens (the daily stress of guaranteeing results by managing the thousand demands of the people in one's employ) then physiologically there are those who say 'no, thanks, it's not worth it'. This happens especially when the role of manager entails responsibilities that are not adequately proportionate to the level of decision-making autonomy and the actual ability to impact on the business.

Commanding is less easy than it used to be. The symbolic universe of authority in the company has undergone the same process of deconstruction over the decades that we have observed with regard to authority in the family. If my father could impose his decisions on me with a glance, to achieve the same with my children I have to laboriously explain and persuade. And if I fall into the temptation to rant and impose myself by force, I lose authority and credibility. Ceteris paribus the same can be said in the boss-collaborator dynamics at work. Companies are full of frustrated bosses who have to engage in laborious and costly negotiations to get their employees to make little extra efforts, for which a half-ironic joke was once sufficient. In short, they still like to be in charge, but how much effort. For many, the game is not worth the candle.