“I Didn’t Think This Would Happen to Me”

CGC

The speaker is rarely junior. More often, they are a Managing Director, a senior partner, a regional CIO, or a transformation lead with decades of delivery behind them. They have led multicounty programmes, signed off seven figure budgets, and survived more reorganisations than they care to remember.

And yet here they are. Out of role. Searching. Waiting for calls that do not come…

What surprises them most is not the job loss itself. Senior leaders understand restructures, politics, and cycles. What unsettles them is what follows: recruiters are suddenly elusive, roles appear oddly narrow, and conversations that once began easily now end with courteous silence.

The market, it seems, has moved on while they were busy running it.

The market that has changed its mind

Across financial services, technology, and consulting particularly, the senior leadership market has not collapsed. It has narrowed.

According to CIPD data, employer hiring intentions remain subdued while redundancy planning continues at scale. Fewer organisations report difficulty filling vacancies, an unglamorous but telling signal: supply is no longer scarce, even at senior levels.

At the same time, automation has ceased to be aspirational. McKinsey estimates that existing technologies could automate activities accounting for 60–70% of the time spent in today’s jobs, with significant implications for organisational design and leadership density.

Gartner’s HR research shows organisations deliberately reducing management layers while expanding individual spans of control. Fewer leadership seats exist, and those that remain are broader, more demanding, and less tolerant of prolonged ramp up.

Mercer characterises the current period as one of value extraction rather than experimentation. Boards want returns on past investment, not additional complexity.

None of this is dramatic. It is structural.

There is an irony many leaders only recognise in hindsight.

For years, they simplified operating models, automated processes, standardised platforms, and removed duplication. They did precisely what boards asked.

In some cases, that success reduced the need for their own role.

Once a transformation is embedded, fewer people are required to oversee it. When budgets tighten, organisations rarely replace senior leaders unless the business case is immediate and unmistakable. No one describes this as redundancy caused by competence; it is handled politely, efficiently, and with carefully chosen language.

Why the phone is quieter than expected

When senior leaders ask why recruiters appear less engaged, the reasons are rarely personal.

First, the market now rewards precision. Profiles written in internal grade language, “strategic leadership,” “enterprise transformation,” “business partnering”, do not translate cleanly into today’s narrower mandates. Recruiters are searching for outcomes, not abstractions.

Second, compensation history matters more than it once did. With senior pay increasingly compressed, organisations become cautious about candidates whose previous packages imply negotiation, precedent, or internal tension.

Third, many roles that once justified permanent executive appointments are now delivered differently: interim, fractional, contract, or absorbed into existing leadership portfolios.

And finally, there is timing. Leaders who spent years declining recruiter calls missed the chance to build market equity when conditions were favourable. Relationships, like pensions, tend to work best when funded early.

The age question (never asked, always present)

By the early to mid-fifties, a quiet recalibration often occurs.

Not because capability declines experience is often at its peak but because organisations increasingly favour either long run succession bets or short-term delivery specialists. The space in between has narrowed.

Some leaders will return to corporate roles at the same level. Others will not.

Not because they lack ability, but because the organisational mathematics has changed.

This is not failure. It is alignment with a labour market that has adjusted its preferences.

A word of caution on “stepping down”

Stepping down a level is often offered as pragmatic advice. In practice, it is one of the most misunderstood and frequently unsuccessful moves senior leaders make.

From the organisation’s perspective, an overqualified hire creates unease. There is a persistent concern that the individual will leave as soon as a more senior opportunity appears, or that the role is merely a holding position. Even when unspoken, this doubt influences hiring decisions and internal trust.

From the individual’s perspective, the experience can be equally problematic. Initially, the role feels reassuring: structure, colleagues, familiarity. Over time, however, many leaders find themselves underused. Decision rights are narrower, influence is constrained, and the very experience that once differentiated them now sits politely on the sidelines.

Boredom follows. Frustration rarely lags far behind. And eventually, so does another exit often within twelve to eighteen months.

The issue is not ego. It is misalignment.

Stepping down works only when the role is explicitly framed as timebound, problem specific, or a bridge to a clearly defined next phase. Absent that clarity, it tends to disappoint everyone involved.

What tends to work better

For many senior leaders, the more durable recalibration is not a lower title, but a different engagement model.

The more useful question is often not “What role should I accept?” but:

“What problem am I best placed to solve right now?”

This shift opens more credible paths:

• defined scope mandates where experience is required, not tolerated

• interim or transformation leadership with explicit outcomes and endpoints

• portfolio careers combining advisory, fractional leadership, and delivery work

• contract operating roles tied to integration, remediation, or turnaround

In these models, seniority is not something to downplay. It is the product.

Practical adjustments that help

Leaders who navigate this phase well, tend to do a few deliberate things early:

They decide what they are selling, corporate re-entry, interim delivery, portfolio work, or reinvention rather than presenting optionality as flexibility.

They rewrite their narrative in commercial terms: costs removed, risks reduced, revenue protected, time saved. The CV becomes an argument, not a chronicle.

They treat the search like a pipeline, applying the same discipline they once expected of their teams: target lists, warm introductions, consistent visibility, and measured follow-up.

They engage a small number of recruiters properly, with clarity on scope, geography, and trade-offs, rather than dispersing energy widely.

And when contracting is the answer, they professionalise it, clear offers, defined outcomes, credible pricing rather than treating it as a pause.

Coaching, when used well, is not about reassurance. It is about perspective, decision-making, and reframing identity beyond job title.

Corporate life has always been conditional. What has changed is the speed with which conditions are reviewed.

Many senior leaders were insulated for years by momentum and title. That insulation has thinned.

Those who come through this period best, are not necessarily the most decorated. They are the ones willing to reposition deliberately, resist false humility, and deploy their experience where it is genuinely needed, rather than shrinking themselves to fit roles that no longer require them.

After all, transformation was never meant to stop at the organisation. It has a habit of continuing, personally, long after the programme has closed.

I spend a significant amount of time speaking with senior leaders across financial services, technology, and consulting who find themselves navigating this exact transition often for the first time in their careers.

These conversations are rarely about CVs alone. They are about positioning, timing, market reality, and how to deploy experience without diminishing it.

If this resonates, I share further insights on executive transitions, leadership recalibration, and market dynamics at C Graham Consulting:

 https://www.cgrahamconsulting.com/

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