Leadership Expert Explains The Rise Of ‘Conscious Unbossing’

Recent research from talent solutions firm Robert Walters highlights a notable shift in the British workforce: 72% of professionals say they would now prefer an “individual route” to progression rather than moving into middle management. This trend, often described as “Conscious Unbossing,” reflects a growing preference for skill mastery and meaningful impact over hierarchical titles. For many businesses, however, it presents a structural challenge: who leads teams when top performers are increasingly opting out of management roles?

Fineas Tatar, leadership expert and co-founder of premium executive assistant service Viva, believes this shift exposes the growing cost of the modern “management tax.” “Younger professionals are looking at burned-out middle managers and thinking it’s not for them,” says Tatar. “They want to contribute fully to high-impact work, not spend their week chasing status updates or managing diaries. This is not disengagement but a rational response to an over-complicated workplace.” 

Rather than climbing a linear ladder, professionals are moving laterally to build diverse skills. Organisations that fail to offer these lateral ‘lily pads’ risk losing top talent to more flexible, project-based environments.

Management roles are increasingly viewed as high-stress and low-reward due to the volume of tactical work involved. For leadership to remain attractive, businesses must strip away routine administrative demands through better support and smarter systems.

Robert Walters’ data shows younger workers favour flat, team-based structures over rigid hierarchies by a two-to-one margin. Companies that cling to command-and-control models are increasingly out of step with their workforce.

To adapt to an “unbossed” culture, Fineas Tatar suggests three practical steps:

• Normalise ‘lily pad’ progression. Encourage lateral moves that allow employees to rotate across functions and build expertise without taking on permanent people management.
• Remove the administrative tax. Make leadership roles more sustainable by delegating tactical tasks such as diary management and travel coordination.
• Define clear areas of responsibility. Give individual contributors ownership and decision-making authority over specific projects, without forcing a managerial title.

Fineas Tatar concludes, “The real question isn’t how closely leaders monitor their people, but whether organisations are designed to let people do their best work. That requires executives to spend less time on administration and more time on leadership.”

This article originally appeared on Your Coffee Break. Written by Indiana Lee.