Why senior leaders facing the layoff wave are rethinking how they present themselves, and how AI and the next generation are at the heart of it
If it feels as though the ground under senior careers is shifting, that’s because it is.
Volkswagen plans to cut more than 5,500 management positions by the end of the decade, close to one in four of its roughly 21,500 managers worldwide. Group chief executive Oliver Blume was candid at a works meeting in Emden: the company is looking closely at management and cutting a quarter of the positions, mainly in group functions, development and sales rather than on the production line (manager magazin). Deutsche Bahn is removing around 30 percent of jobs at its headquarters, affecting 21 of 43 leadership positions below board level. Bayer has reduced its management roles by two-thirds since 2023, from 17,000 to just over 5,000. And in a Civey poll for Handelsblatt, 40 percent of top decision-makers said their company had cut middle-management roles in the past twelve months.
The picture is similar across the DAX, where companies employed 41,000 fewer people at the end of June 2026 than a year earlier. EY Germany chairman Henrik Ahlers told tagesschau that AI is changing employment structures, especially in administrative functions, and that companies are being “extremely cautious” about new hires.
Behind those numbers are real people. Federal Employment Agency figures reported by Handelsblatt show an average of around 85,000 managers registered as unemployed in the year to June 2026, almost 45 percent more than in 2022/2023. When Handelsblatt asked affected leaders to share their stories, more than 100 responded, most of them between 50 and 60, many with team or C-level experience. The Süddeutsche Zeitung captured the human side through one 53-year-old executive walking along the Main in Würzburg, sorting through his fears, his hopes and the big question of what comes next.
It isn’t only a German story, either. Oracle disclosed that it had cut 21,000 jobs, almost 13 percent of its workforce, over twelve months, pointing to the “adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations” (Forbes).
As WiseForce Advisors has noted, restructuring is no longer a phase companies pass through but simply how they now operate (WiseForce Advisors). For anyone still in a senior role who expects to move on in the next few years, that’s worth taking to heart. The next chapter may come with a new industry, a new title or a new functional focus. And that means it’s time to think differently about how you tell your story.
Why the straight-line career story no longer works
For a long time, senior careers followed a familiar path. A divisional CFO became a group CFO. A head of sales in automotive moved up to chief commercial officer at a larger supplier. The CV showed steadily growing responsibility in one lane, and the title did most of the talking.
That path only works when there are enough roles waiting further up the lane, and delayering is removing exactly those roles. When a carmaker, a railway operator and a life-sciences group all slim down their management layers at once, there are simply fewer “next step up” jobs to go around. For many experienced leaders, the most natural next move will be sideways: into a new industry, a broader general-management role, an interim or transformation mandate, or a mix of board and advisory work.
A sideways move asks for a different kind of introduction. A title that means a great deal inside one company or sector can mean surprisingly little outside it. “Head of Plant Operations, Powertrain” carries real weight in Wolfsburg; a medtech scale-up or a logistics group may need it translated. The skills usually travel well. The vocabulary often doesn’t. WiseForce Advisors has explored this for leaders leaving the German car industry (WiseForce Advisors).
There’s an emotional side to this too. WiseForce Advisors has written about why so many executives go quiet after leaving a role: so much of their identity was wrapped up in the title and the organisation (WiseForce Advisors). Repositioning is the same challenge in a new form. The old label no longer fits, and the new one hasn’t been written yet. The good news is that you get to write it.
From job title to the value you bring
Leaders who make these transitions well tend to stop describing the jobs they’ve held and start describing the problems they’re good at solving. It’s a small shift in language that makes a big difference.
From sector to situation. Instead of “twenty years in automotive”, try “led three restructurings through margin pressure and technology change”. Turnarounds, integrations, scale-ups, carve-outs and regulatory upheaval happen in every industry, and boards and investors hire for situations far more often than they let on.
From function to outcome. An HR leader who redesigned a 40,000-person organisation around new skills is really a transformation leader, which is one reason the people function has become one of the most contested seats in the C-suite (WiseForce Advisors). A CFO who built the case for an AI programme and then guided its rollout has operating credentials well beyond finance.
From title to scope. Headcount, budget, number of countries, the complexity of stakeholders: these translate easily across industries. Internal titles rarely do.
From history to relevance. A track record matters most when it answers the question every hiring board is asking right now: can this person help us through what comes next?
More and more, the answer to that question comes down to two things.
Differentiator one: leading well in the age of AI
Handelsblatt’s reporting is clear about where the pressure on management is coming from. Mercer partner Andrea Anderson explains that information sharing, coordination, reporting and forecasting, the traditional bread and butter of middle management, are increasingly being automated or eliminated, with AI speeding up a shift that was already under way. IAB labour-market economist Enzo Weber adds an encouraging note: managers who have a sensible plan for using AI are in demand, and making AI adoption actually stick is a core leadership task (Handelsblatt).
Expectations also rise with seniority. A separate Handelsblatt piece notes that the higher the role, the more AI competence is expected, and cites the IAB’s Job-Futuromat estimate that 67 percent of the executive job profile could, in principle, be handled by algorithms. Resource planning, calculation and cost control are already within AI’s reach. What’s left is the part of leadership that only people can do.
McKinsey’s research points the same way. Its Superagency in the Workplace report found that almost every company is investing in AI, yet only 1 percent consider themselves mature, and the biggest barrier isn’t employees, who are ready, but leaders who aren’t yet steering fast enough.
So what does that mean when you’re introducing yourself to a new organisation? Simply calling yourself “AI-savvy” won’t do much. What resonates are specifics: which decisions you helped redesign, which processes were rebuilt, how you brought people along, where you deliberately chose not to use AI, and what changed as a result. Leaders who can speak comfortably about governance, risk, change and the human side of adoption stand out in a market full of people who can only talk about tools.
Gallup’s latest data shows just how much the human side matters. Employees who say their manager actively supports their team’s use of AI have an engagement rate of 48 percent, compared with 30 percent for those who don’t. When frequent AI use, a clear plan and active manager support all come together, engagement rises to 53 percent (Gallup). In other words, AI leadership is people leadership.
Differentiator two: bringing out the best in a new generation
The second theme gets less attention in executive positioning, but it may matter even more. The teams senior leaders will inherit in their next role are increasingly made up of Gen Z and millennials, who already use AI every day and have their own ideas about what good leadership looks like.
Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, covering more than 22,500 people in 44 countries, found that 74 percent of both generations now use AI in their daily work, up from 57 percent of Gen Zs a year earlier. Seventy-six percent of Gen Zs would like a senior leadership role at some point, yet only 6 percent say leadership is their main career goal. Half of Gen Zs see stress and burnout as a barrier to leading, and half point to the weight of responsibility. Thirty percent feel their organisation isn’t ready for the changes AI will bring.
Put together, this paints a picture of a generation that is often ahead of its employers on AI, understandably cautious about the personal cost of traditional leadership, and looking for leaders who offer direction, development and a healthier way of working. Gallup also notes that younger workers and managers have seen some of the sharpest drops in engagement since 2020 (Gallup).
In Germany, this hesitation already shows up as a real gap. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports, the German Economic Institute (IW) estimates that 28,180 qualified people were missing in leadership positions last year. A representative survey of more than 3,100 employees without management responsibility, also covered by the FAZ, found that only about one in seven (14 percent) would take on a leadership role if offered. It’s a striking paradox: experienced managers are leaving at the very moment organisations are struggling to find people willing to lead.
That’s a genuine opening for seasoned executives. Their value isn’t knowing more about AI tools than a 26-year-old analyst. It’s judgement, perspective, calm decision-making under uncertainty, and the ability to help people grow. The experts in Handelsblatt’s reporting agree that work built on human judgement, responsibility and decisions under uncertainty can’t be automated. Even Bayer, after cutting two-thirds of its management roles, says its remaining leaders, the visionaries, architects and coaches, need to be experienced people.
Leaders who can show they’ve built teams where younger, AI-fluent colleagues lead on the tools while they provide direction, standards and mentoring are offering exactly what many organisations are missing. Reverse mentoring, cross-generational project teams and career paths for people who’d rather not manage aren’t HR side projects anymore. They’re signs of modern leadership. And passing judgement on to the next generation is also how experience becomes legacy, a theme WiseForce Advisors has explored in its look at how senior leaders turn experience into lasting impact (WiseForce Advisors).
Shaping the next chapter on your own terms
Repositioning works best when it begins before it’s needed. Executives who expect to move within the next one to five years have a real advantage: time to shape their story, try it out and collect the proof points behind it.
In practice, that can mean keeping a record of AI-related decisions and their results while still in the role. It can mean building relationships outside your current industry before your existing network starts to thin out (WiseForce Advisors). It helps to be able to say, in a few sentences, which situations you lead best, regardless of sector or title. And it pays to have a clear, generous point of view on how leadership is changing, shared through writing, speaking or conversations in the boardroom.
WiseForce Advisors has made the case that interim mandates and portfolio careers are increasingly deliberate choices rather than consolation prizes (WiseForce Advisors), and its guide to the portfolio executive shows how boards, advisory roles and projects can come together into a fulfilling next chapter. The same thinking applies to a change of industry or function. Changing lanes is no longer a step back. In a world reshaped by delayering and AI, it’s often the most natural next step for a leader whose experience is bigger than any one title.
Your title may not travel with you. Your leadership story can.
