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Talent
Tap into the talent of the ‘high potentials’ aged 50 and above
Published April 27, 2026 in Talent • 9 min read • 
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Organizations should stop using rigid assessments, embrace ‘messy’ human talent, and harness the talent of multigenerational teams, argue Robert Hooijberg and Tania Lennon. Here, they explore ways to make the most of the wisdom and experience of older workers.
Emerging evidence from neuroscience indicates that the human brain can peak in integrative reasoning, focus, creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and social and emotional intelligence well into our 60s and beyond.
Given that many organizations stop investing in people over 50, these findings could be transformative for how we think about older talent. They take on even greater significance given the rapidly expanding capabilities and adoption of artificial intelligence. A recent IMF report noted that AI was moving beyond analytical thinking and complex data integration into nuanced judgment and creativity. As AI branches out, value creation from humans will increasingly come from deep expertise, sophisticated interpersonal skills, and engagement.
Older workers are uniquely equipped for this environment. Sophisticated insight comes from breadth of experience and cumulative knowledge. When it comes to people skills, research shows that older people are better at considering the perspectives of others and can more readily regulate their emotions in difficult situations.
As executive coach and entrepreneur Michael Netzley has observed: “This is the cohort that may be best placed to contribute the higher-order thinking and business-critical capabilities that your organization is going to need in the future. Key to this will be letting go of the prevalent deficit model of human capabilities that sees many businesses cease to invest in people over 50. It will mean reframing where value can be found in the organization and how it can be nurtured.”
A new approach to talent spotting
For organizations, the findings raise questions about the tools and processes we depend on to spot, develop, and deploy talent. The cognitive, strategic, and emotional capabilities through which humans add value are inherently messy. They are the product of complex interactions across neural pathways that span thinking, feeling, and perceiving in response to the dynamic ecosystems in which they operate. The human connectome (a wiring diagram of the brain) is characterized by a wealth of overlapping connections. In contrast, AI is built to deconstruct components and examine them separately.
Many of the traditional tools we use to identify talent are better suited to the AI model than to the human brain. We’ve relied on a positivist approach: standardized assessments that distill people into measurable components to yield an overall score. Think aptitude or personality tests.
This approach tends to oversimplify human talent and, therefore, risks underestimating or discounting certain groups and pools of potential. People are the product of complex interactions, both internal and external. Their complex strengths can evade detection by standard tests that rely on a fragmented, numerical view. Traditional assessments do not do a great job of capturing the sophisticated, dynamic capabilities that research shows we can develop later in life and even reach a peak as we age.
By clinging to these simple, rigid lenses and tried-and-tested tools, organizations are likely failing to detect and appreciate the true value that older workers can bring. So, what can we do about it?
Embrace the messiness
HR departments need to embrace the messiness of human talent and the way it develops and grows. This means shifting from efficiency and compartmentalization toward a more nuanced approach that can identify, integrate, and leverage strengths at the sophisticated end of the capability spectrum. Organizations that make this transition will carve out a competitive advantage in talent. But where to start? We recommend a hybrid approach to talent management that leverages the emerging strengths of technology in tandem with the expertise of HR professionals.
Organizations should consider deploying AI at the baseline of talent, for example, where it can deliver the most value by mopping up processes that have traditionally eaten up time and resources. This will free up in-house talent experts to bring distinctly human value to their work: sophisticated people skills and an understanding of the situational complexity of organizational dynamics, teams, and needs. HR teams can focus on what they are uniquely placed to do: joining the dots in the companies they work for and know inside out – connecting the right people in the right ways to create exceptional value for teams, projects, initiatives, and for the organization. Companies should also seek out and embrace more advanced assessment tools that can better assess complex, interconnected human capabilities. Our research has found that simulation-based tools that gather data through interactive means and open questions can generate objective, valid data on conceptual abilities and provide much deeper insight into how people address complex challenges.
This more nuanced approach will help improve talent identification and assessment, given the messy nature of human capabilities across the ages. But how can organizations then unlock the value offered by older colleagues?
How to harness and integrate ‘older’ potential
From working with experienced leaders for many years, we’ve fallen into the habit of addressing program participants as “high potentials.” This typically raises a laugh – the average age in one senior leadership class is 50. But it’s no joke. The highest potential in people is intrinsically tied to their capacity to learn from experience – making mistakes, launching the wrong product or service, hiring or firing the wrong person – and then synthesizing that experience into applied learning. These experience-inspired insights are what make for better decisions, performance, and results going forward. Game-changing potential surfaces when decision-makers have (negative) experiences, learn from them, and make changes in their behavior. This progression is more prevalent among senior executives and seasoned workers than among the 20-something cohort, who haven’t yet had enough lived experience (or made enough mistakes) to develop the modes of thinking that emerge with age.
We often invite participants to share a mistake or failure and the learning that emerged from it. This shifts the focus from performance to reflection: to how individuals have learned and evolved – and how those insights can fuel growth or more effective decision-making. There’s a lesson for organizations here, too.
There is a temptation for organizational decision-making to become an exercise in speed – a race to make the “right” choice and take decisive action. We prize leaders who can think on their feet and make swift decisions, especially in a world prone to rapid change and volatility. What if we were willing to allow the time to go deeper into the variables involved in developing a strategy or tackling an organizational problem? What if we included a few more of the “right” people – the experienced high potentials, with the advanced integrative thinking skills and emotional intelligence to assess diverse perspectives and options? It might take a little longer to arrive at a solution, but once reached, it would take less time to implement and yield better outcomes.
Here are four practical ways for your organization to harness the cognitive advantages of high-potential talent, including the over-45s that may not sit within the ranks of senior executive leadership.
Research by Anita Woolley and her colleagues on collective intelligence shows that teams are enhanced by greater diversity.
1. Mixing it up: a multigenerational exercise
A simple one-day exercise is to give the same business problem to two teams: a 20-something and a 50-something team. Each group has a day to identify the root cause of the problem, explore the variables, and devise a solution, presenting their findings at the close of business. These interventions can (and should) be fun and, importantly, they will generate different ideas that can offer greater scope for constructive solutions.
A second day could see the two teams mixed up: two new groups, each composed of younger and more mature colleagues, who work to create a new round of solutions. One of our pet peeves is the tendency to homogenize teams according to age. Why not build multi-generational teams for tasks like root cause analysis and problem hacking, creating the space for fun and exploration, and opening up different ways of thinking about your business challenges?
2. The voice of experience: seek the counsel of your ‘elders’
Devise regular think tank opportunities designed for older workers to consider a challenge the business is facing. Let seasoned employees bring integrative thinking and experience to bear on the problem and see what bubbles to the surface.
Taking this one step further, put together a periodic diagnostic exercise or even a competition open to older employees, inviting them to weigh in on what the organization is doing well or not so well, how effectively it is defining problems, and how it might go deeper in exploring and articulating new approaches. The key to making this work is to abandon a top-down assignment approach and enable creative solutions for what the organization might do differently. These interventions should be organized, structured, and facilitated – perhaps by an external actor or a learning partner – so they are optimized to allow for the free flow of ideas.
3. Build complex capabilities in younger generations
Along with other technologies, AI is driving efficiencies and faster wins across functions, including HR and learning and development. While this may improve productivity, it also removes opportunities for younger workers to develop the complex mental models and interpersonal skills that come with practice and experience.
Older workers can engage in mentoring, shadowing, coaching, and action learning with younger colleagues to fill the development gap caused by the rapid adoption of AI. By training older workers in tools and methods that support triple loop learning, they can help younger workers extract insights that build toward the complex conceptual and emotional capabilities garnered through experience and trial and error.
4. Multigenerational teams for robust solutions
Research by Anita Woolley and her colleagues on collective intelligence shows that teams are enhanced by greater diversity. The performance of teams comprising diverse people is dependent on their ability to exchange information and explore alternative perspectives. With effective facilitation, multigenerational teams can not only offer better solutions to complex problems but also use the process as a vehicle for developing the cognitive capabilities of all those involved. Research suggests that employees value generational diversity in teams, especially when effective facilitation and group processes overcome the tensions and challenges that can hinder diverse groups.
Beware the bias
There is a growing recognition of the competitive value and workforce benefits that come with age and experience, but there is still a need to overcome bias. As organizations, we tend to hitch our wagon to younger generations – digital natives with open minds, fresh perspectives, and all the other indicators we typically (over) associate with potential. We tend to default to outmoded assumptions about more mature employees: they no longer have what it takes to disrupt, innovate, or make the waves the organization needs to sustain competitive advantage. These biases are baked into the way we allocate resources for talent spotting, development, and progression.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Imperial London Hotels, for example, identified that the language of its job adverts – which used terms such as “vibrant” and “exciting” – was turning off older workers. Adapting its language and reinforcing its willingness to provide training has enabled the company to address the challenge of staffing shortages in the hospitality industry. Similarly, ISS, a facilities management and workplace experience company, realized that workers over 55 were underrepresented in its apprenticeship programs. Today, they have a more balanced apprentice workforce spread across a range of roles, including data analysis, leadership, HR, and engineering.
Challenging inherent biases calls for a transformation in how we think about, measure, and design for talent: a shift from traditional processes to principle- or evidence-based practices. Organizations should capitalize on the distinct and highly valuable capabilities that older workers bring and continue to invest in them. This means focusing on the application – and not just the acquisition – of skills across the employee lifecycle.
Science shows us that older workers bring unique strengths to the workplace. Businesses that challenge outdated assumptions and standardized approaches to talent identification and development will be best placed to attract and build high-potential teams in the disruptive age of AI.
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