The Waiting Game by Cornelia Schuler

Senior executives often reach a point in their careers that is hard to name yet impossible to ignore. It’s not burnout, nor dissatisfaction, nor a loss of ambition. It is something quieter: the realization that the role they worked decades to attain is no longer the environment in which they can grow. This moment rarely appears in board reports or leadership pipelines. It doesn’t show up in performance evaluations or succession plans. Yet it is becoming more common especially as the nature of executive leadership itself shifts. Harvard Business Review reports that CEO turnover has been rising even among high-performing companies, driven partly by the growing expectation that leaders continually reinvent themselves. McKinsey similarly notes that the “leadership half-life” is shortening as disruptions accelerate and organizations demand a broader repertoire of capability than ever before.¹² These trends underscore an uncomfortable truth: the decision to leave the C-suite is no longer primarily about performance or tenure; it is increasingly about personal evolution. The Unspoken Drift Between Leader and Role For many senior leaders, staying in a C-suite role for multiple years creates a form of organizational gravity. Over time, executives become closely identified with the company’s structure, history, and internal power dynamics. It is not unusual for a CEO, CHRO, or CFO to realize that their name carries weight largely because of the corporate logo that accompanies it. This identity interdependence can be both stabilizing and limiting. It provides access, authority, and influence but it also narrows the perception of who the leader is beyond the enterprise. Egon Zehnder’s long-running research on CEO evolution argues that leaders today must cultivate a sense of “self outside the role,” because the role itself can become an echo chamber: highly visible externally, yet increasingly narrow internally.³ The longer an executive stays in one environment, the more subtle this drift becomes. Meetings that once stretched thinking become predictable. Strategic reviews start echoing prior years. The organizational machinery depends on the executive’s experience, but that experience can also restrict reinvention. The executive who once championed transformation can unknowingly become the guardian of existing patterns. This is not stagnation in a traditional sense. Many executives continue to deliver strong results, mentor rising leaders, and guide the organization through complexity. The drift is internal. It is the sense that one’s own learning curve is flattening even while the organization’s demands remain steep. A growing body of research suggests that executives often remain in roles longer than their development curve supports, yet the recognition of stagnation does not emerge uniformly across genders. Studies and leadership assessments indicate that women tend to sense plateauing earlier, often around the four- to five-year mark, whereas men commonly reach that recognition closer to seven years. This gap is consistent with broader findings in leadership psychology: women generally reassess their growth trajectories more frequently, while men are more likely to interpret role stability as a sign of continued progress. In organizational terms, this divergence can shape the leadership pipeline and influence succession dynamics, and contribute to the stagnation effect of the senior management team. 4 Within this context, stagnation becomes less a matter of capability than of timing: the point at which leaders recognize that the environment no longer expands their competence or identity. The gendered timing differences highlight an overlooked dimension of executive development, one that organizations rarely measure and leaders seldom articulate, yet one that significantly shapes the moment when readiness to move on begins to form. Why Ambition Sometimes Outgrows Position Executives rarely wake up one day and decide it’s time to leave. Instead, a series of small realizations accumulate: The work remains meaningful, but no longer stretches them. Strategic conversations start to feel iterative rather than generative. Opportunities for self-renewal lessen as the organizational expectation to be “the steady hand” increases. Curiosity shifts from internal priorities to personal ones: new industries, new problems, new ways of leading. McKinsey’s research on senior-leader transitions states that at this level, “performance rarely declines first, learning does.”² And when learning plateaus, so does energy, strategic elasticity, and the capacity for imaginative thinking. Put differently: executives don’t typically outgrow their responsibilities. They outgrow the environment in which those responsibilities exist. This is why some of the most capable leaders sense their next chapter before anyone else does. They recognize that continuing to grow requires stepping away from the very structure that once accelerated them. The Identity Question Few Prepare For Leaving the C-suite is not simply a career transition; it is an identity transition. The corporate platform that amplified a leader’s voice begins to fade, and what remains is the leader’s true reputation independent of title, hierarchy, or organizational influence. Executives often underestimate how much of their network, access, and perceived authority is tethered to the role, not the individual. For years, colleagues, boards, investors, regulators, and partners interact with the leader through the lens of the institution. When the title goes, the lens changes. This is where many senior leaders discover a gap: They have developed extraordinary credibility inside the system but not enough visibility outside it. Egon Zehnder has described this as the “external portable identity” challenge. Leaders who fail to intentionally cultivate their independent professional identity may find the transition out of corporate leadership jarring, not because they lack capability but because the ecosystem they relied on belonged to the company.³ Preparing for this identity shift is not ego-driven. It is strategic. Leaders who successfully navigate major transitions tend to invest early in broader networks, thought leadership, industry presence, and personal purpose. Not to build a brand, but to clarify who they are when their role no longer defines them. Recognizing Readiness: A Quiet Internal Inflection Point Unlike performance issues or board conflicts, readiness to leave the C-suite rarely has clear external signals. Instead, executives describe it as a shift in how they experience their work: The horizon starts to feel narrower, even when responsibilities remain wide. The satisfaction of mastery is eclipsed by the desire for renewed challenge. Strategic clarity begins to coexist with personal restlessness. The executive’s ambition becomes less about advancing the organization and more about evolving themselves. Leaders who reflect deeply often articulate a variation of the same insight: “I’m not unhappy. I expired myself..” Expiration is not resignation. It is a recognition that one chapter has fully served its purpose. HBR’s work on leadership transitions emphasizes that the best-performing executives are often those who recognize this inflection point early and act from intention rather than circumstance.¹ Leaving on your own terms is not impulsive; it is a disciplined act of stewardship over one’s future. Walking Away as a Form of Leadership Stepping away from the C-suite is often interpreted externally as a loss of influence. Yet internally, many leaders describe it as the opposite: a return to choice, spaciousness, and strategic autonomy. Without the institutional scaffolding of the role, executives rediscover their own curiosity and agency. Many go on to portfolio careers, advisory roles, entrepreneurial ventures, or impact-driven work that reconnects them with the very motivations that brought them into leadership in the first place. McKinsey’s research notes that transitions at this stage can accelerate a leader’s growth more than any prior phase of their career if they approach it as a reinvention rather than a retreat.² Walking away, then, is not simply exiting. It is repositioning. Reframing. Reclaiming the part of leadership that is most difficult to nurture inside large systems: the leader’s evolving self. The Path Forward Executives rarely talk openly about the moment they sense their chapter is drawing to a natural close. Yet this moment is becoming a defining feature of modern leadership. The rise in turnover is not just a story about boards, performance pressures, or market volatility. It reflects a deeper shift: leadership today is no longer about maintaining altitude but sustaining evolution. Rather than signaling withdrawal, these transitions often represent a recalibration, a move toward contexts that allow for renewed learning, broader influence, or a different kind of strategic contribution. In this sense, leaving the C-suite is not an abandonment of leadership, but a recognition that leadership continues in new forms when the conditions for growth shift. The question for senior leaders is not, “Should I stay or go?” The more generative question is, “Where does my next cycle of growth truly exist?” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources (for editorial reference) Harvard Business Review — CEO turnover and leadership evolution (2024–2025). McKinsey & Company — Senior leadership transitions, CEO excellence, and the future of executive capability. Egon Zehnder — CEO transformation and the evolving demands of modern top leadership. Cornelia Schuler — The Waiting Game An essay by Cornelia Schuler November 2025