How old is too old to lead? It’s a difficult question to answer—in politics and in business—and an awkward one.
Following a disastrous debate performance in which 81-year-old President Joe Biden appeared doddering (even alongside his 78-year-old opponent, Donald Trump, who has often also seemed confused), many Democrats are demanding that their incumbent candidate in the 2024 election step down.
It’s a tough conversation: Figuring out when an aged leader should hand the reins over to a successor can be painful for everyone involved. But there may be lessons for politicians and voters from the world of corporate whisperers who routinely confront this problem.
As I wrote in a piece published last September, the urgency of this issue is only increasing, “as the average U.S. lifespan has leaped from 68 in 1950 to 76 today; as the average retirement age ticks up to 61 (from 57 in 1991); as older workers contend with dwindling retirement savings and the slow death of traditional pensions; and as Silicon Valley develops elaborate life-extension treatments for those who can afford them, it’s becoming clear that boomers and Gen X workers can and will stay in their jobs far longer than their parents.”
There’s also an entire cohort of aging CEOs providing a glimpse of our possible future. Last year, we counted among octogenarians: the corporate raider “Carl Icahn, still running his Icahn Enterprises from Florida, and Michael Bloomberg, founder of his namesake financial information and media giant, who recently told employees, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’” Coming up the ranks behind them were the seventysomethings: Blackstone cofounder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman; Larry Ellison, who remains the CTO of Oracle; and Disney’s “boomerang” leader Bob Iger. (George Soros only gave up control of his Open Society Foundations in his 90s, and Rupert Murdoch had only just stepped down from his role running News Corp at the age of 92, vowing to stay “involved every day.”)
Then there is Warren Buffett, of course, who has said he’ll work until he expires. His partner Charlie Munger did just that, dying at age 99 last November, still at the top of his game.
Aging can be "transformational"—and make great leaders even better
Munger’s legacy is instructive. In my reporting, I found that academics and consultants didn't provide one answer to the question about when someone should step down: “Aging today is far from a singular experience. For many, every passing year brings declines in cognition and physical mobility; for others, the changes are barely detectable. In fact, many researchers and aging experts argue that fretting over anyone’s age is both alarmist and ageist.”
Mo Wang, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, told me that there should be no maximum age for a CEO or chair. Decades of data indicated that age is not correlated to job performance at an individual level. “Whenever people tell you, ‘Older people, they are less competent,’ that’s a stereotype, but that’s not true,” he said. Instead, “being older actually sets up the conditions for good leadership.”
As leaders, older adults are usually “warmer, friendlier, and more empathetic than younger people. By the time people reach their later years, they’re also generally more content, which gives them emotional stability,” I reported.
“As we grow nearer to the end of our lives, most people ponder what they’ll be leaving for future generations beyond material goods. What values will they instill? This concern can influence a person’s leadership style and the degree to which it is deemed ‘transformational.’
But the most intuitive defense of older CEOs is that age confers experience and lessons learned: wisdom. Older leaders have built a deep virtual database of playbooks to tap when a problem arises or when a company faces a new challenge, says Wang. We tend to think of a leader as someone who is good at taking charge and being a decision-maker, he adds, and older leaders have more practice in making tough calls.”
Chip Conley, author of Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and founder of the Modern Elder Academy, said that he sees older employees as “wisdom workers”—a grade above the “knowledge worker” and “more critical than ever” in an era of AI. Some leading consultants also suggested we should use other criteria besides age to help determine when someone should make space for a new leader. The story explained:
“A study by the leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart suggests that unceremoniously dumping a CEO at an arbitrary age could mean dethroning talented executives who still have a lot to contribute. Although the data show that CEOs can fall into a ‘complacency trap’ in years six to 10 of a long tenure, the consultants found that those who stayed on beyond that period experienced their ‘golden years’ of stellar performance.
Jim Citrin, head of Spencer Stuart’s North American CEO practice and one of the study’s authors, says boards ought to stop using age as a marker of capability—full stop. ‘Use passion, energy level, health, vitality, adaptability, motivation,’ he says.
Leadership research supports his proposition. Having a ‘growth mindset’—being eager to learn and experiment, and quick to change what isn’t working—is an important predictor of effective leadership. And the young do not have a lock on this trait, just as the old are not the only ones vulnerable to poor health.
In some cases, technology and other support systems can make up for the symptoms of decline that eventually affect every aging human. The older CEO who is slightly hard of hearing might turn to nearly invisible hearing aids or inconspicuous earbuds, for example. Scheduling online meetings means executives can forgo some physically grueling trips. One day, AI tools—already shown in studies to help brain injury victims—might allow leaders to quickly revisit information they need, essentially outsourcing their memories. (For now, an executive assistant or deputy can perform this role.)”
A beautiful exit
Then again, technology can also hide reality and inadvertently enable leaders who refuse to leave, whether they’re addicted to power or afraid of the void that retirement will create. “When leaders show signs of decline while still on the job, it’s often hard for others to do anything about it, especially when it comes to founders with a deep emotional connection to their companies,” I wrote.
“All you can do is inspire a conversation,” a leadership coach explained last year, “because at the end of the day, it’s their company, their money, their choice.”
It must be noted that the same isn’t true in politics. And right now, it appears that many Americans who support Biden’s policies would prefer to see the politician make like Mitt Romney and embark on what Dutch management scholar Manfred Kets de Vries calls a “beautiful exit”—one that forges a lasting impression of a leader.
After all, the off-ramp options are endless for CEOs or past presidents, from joining corporate boards, setting out on the speaker circuit, or taking on humanitarian projects. Or there are hobbies: globe-trotting, fly-fishing, or as former president George W. Bush has demonstrated, painting.
Eventually, Kets de Vries told me, “companies should support off-boarding as they do onboarding: with training and ongoing coaching. But to get there, our culture first needs to get over the tendency to see geriatric issues as gloomy, while fawning over the wonders and beauty of youth.”
