Can Older Leaders Keep Up?

The 2024 U.S. presidential election has raised a number of questions about the characteristics of effective leaders. Given that the election includes contenders who are 77 and 81, people across the political spectrum are asking whether age is related to leadership and, more generally, to competence at work. Luckily, it turns out that many social scientists have been interested in this question for quite some time.

Age and Job Performance

A large body of studies has investigated the association between age and job performance; indeed, so many studies have been done that researchers can now conduct overarching analyses (i.e., meta-analyses) that collapse across thousands of people and organizations and allow for more robust conclusions than any single study.

For example, one meta-analysis of 438 separate samples determined that age had little to zero relationship with how well people perform the core tasks of their jobs. Similarly, age did not correlate with creativity or performance in training programs. This suggests that being older does not detract from job performance.

In fact, age was associated with more positive organizational behaviors like helping colleagues and being safe. Compared to younger workers, older workers were less likely to be aggressive, engage in substance use, or be absent from work.

Another meta-analysis directly addressed the possibility that maybe it's only "really" old people who work in complicated jobs that show performance declines; in other words, maybe the relationship between age and performance is curvilinear. Contradicting this argument, age is actually helpful to people who work in complex jobs. This is probably because experience is particularly helpful in complicated jobs.

Concerns about older workers may extend beyond their performance on the job to questions about their cognitive abilities. Evidence suggests that some kinds of cognitive functions do decline with age. Generally speaking, some abilities, like information processing speed, seem to decline in late adulthood.

However, other types of cognitive abilities—such as those that help people apply prior knowledge and experience—can increase with age. And it is possible that people compensate for any age-related declines by leveraging the knowledge acquired through experience.

Age and Leadership

In terms of leadership effectiveness specifically, there is less evidence, and the findings are mixed. Some studies suggest that older leaders are more effective than younger leaders; some show the opposite, and others show no effect of age on leadership. This may be because what makes a leader effective is a complicated issue.

On the one hand, older leaders may have access to networks and resources and may be in a better position than younger leaders to select, train, and support others. On the other hand, younger leaders may be inherently preferred to "old school" organizational representatives who are seen as inflexible or inaccessible.

More research is needed to understand the circumstances under which older or younger leaders are more effective. Still, the existing evidence does not point to any consistent or meaningful decline in leadership effectiveness with age.

In sum, assumptions that older people are less competent than their younger counterparts are based on false stereotypes. Getting older can come with some helpful experiences that have meaningful job-related benefits.