Generational Drift: Fast & Furious

Note from the editor,

I’ve just come back from the Reykjavik Global Forum in Iceland and this week’s, deep dive really features the insights of someone who inspires so much of the chief briefs work. Michelle Harrison. She is the CEO of Verian Group and the driving force behind the Rekjavik Global Index for leadership. Now, it was the data from last year’s index that really put the fear of god in me and pushed me to turn The Chief Brief, from what was a fun passion project into now what has become my mission. A platform for real impact and real storytelling of expertise. So when people hear the good, the bad, and the inspiring stories of women leading across the world. They can trust it.

This year’s findings are not good. And if anyone thinks strategies from a year ago will work in 2025, let alone 2026, well it’s time for a wake up call! For the first time. Young people, both male and female from across the G-7 are showing greater prejudice against women in leadership, be it the C-suite or politics than older generations. More terrifying? The UK- first on the leaderboard all these years, has nose dived with British kids following America’s young, in their polarization. Even the Nordics have seen a dip. This is why shifting attitudes, not just systems, has become central to our mission, here at The Chief Brief. Here’s my conversation with Michelle, really breaking down the numbers and the story for you.

Reykjavik Index For Leadership

An Interview with Michelle Harrison, CEO, Verian

Transcript

Maithreyi:

Michelle, great to see you. Um, run us through what the Reykjavik Index is telling us in 2025, because the picture over the last two years has been really worrying. Is it getting better, is it getting worse out there for women in leadership?

Michelle:

Thank you. Uh, I don’t have, I don’t have better news for you.

So to remind ourselves, the Reykjavik Index for leadership is a measure of how societies view men and women in terms of their suitability for leadership. And it looks across many different sectors of the economy, and it asks the public the question that this particular sector, do you think a man is more suited to lead or a woman is more suited to lead or it doesn’t matter?

And what the index is scoring is how many people say it doesn’t matter. And so a score of a hundred would mean a society really didn’t think, um, that it mattered whether a man or woman, however they defined was in a leadership position. So what we’ve seen over the last three years, a start of a drop in the overall index for the G-7 group of countries.

This year, overall the G-7 has stayed steady, but there have been some important differences. So first of all, it’s uh, Italy and Japan who have actually over the last eight years as we’ve been studying this, have actually seen improvements. So that’s, that’s great. But if we look at the countries that when we first started measuring in 2018, we’re at the sort of top of the ranks with an average score in their seventies.

We’ve seen decline across all of them. So if I think about France and Canada, they’ve declined, but stayed towards the top of the ranks. The big changes are with America and with the UK.. So in America, over the last three years, We have seen a significant drop. So this is less people are saying that it doesn’t matter that leadership is gender neutral.

More people are saying that they don’t believe a woman is suitable to lead, particularly in the areas that are seen as more masculine traditionally, defense, economics, um, uh, police and uh, engineering. And that there’s also increasing prejudice against men in the more caring professions. Teaching, healthcare provision, childcare.

So we’re seeing a very significant drop in the U.S. what I would then say is in the UK, the country that was at the very top of the G-7, we are also seeing a fast decline.

Maithreyi:

Does it somehow mirror the numbers that you saw last year in the United States, uh, the scenario that you’re painting for the United Kingdom?

Michelle:

Yes. Yes. It’s continued to drop in, in, uh, in those countries that are, that are seeing that same, same trend and. The issue about it, which I think is the most important one, is that that change is coming from younger adults. So the group that is seeing particular change in a reduction in what we might call progressive views is that group of people age between 18 and 34.

And that’s consistent across five, the five major biggest economies of, uh, of the G-7.

Maithreyi:

That is extremely worrying as a trend if, you’re seeing this not in a bubble, but spreading globally. Yeah. Um, what do you think is driving it? Because we seem to be either lagging behind the trend in the United States for the G-7, but again, there’s a picture that’s very different in Japan.

What is going on in the world when you look at it through numbers?

Michelle:

Yeah. And I think we should also just remind ourselves. Just how extraordinary it’s to see this happen. So from the point at which we have been measuring, um, public opinion and values and attitudes across populations since the 1960s, there has never been a time where it was young people who were moving into a more aggressive position.

This is the first time we have seen it. It’s a once in 80 year phenomenon. So I think for something as significant as this, it’s coming from many different, um. Areas there are different external drivers. We have to understand the lack of confidence that young people have in the economy. The lack of confidence that young men have in their ability to play the role that they have, um, traditionally seen as their role as provider.

And we’ve also got, within that group of young people also some incredibly progress. It’s very polarized. We also have some very. Progressive groups and particularly women who are increasingly doing everything by themselves, but with confidence and with and with agency. So we see that polarisation. I think however, it is impossible to not think about the role of online and targeting of young men and women by actors with a very different agenda.

And I think that’s also part of it.

Maithreyi:

Social media, chucking things down young people’s throats. One of it, what is the driver behind polarising people to the extent that we are seeing with the numbers?

Michelle:

Well, I think what all leaders know, whether they’re in the commercial sector or in the public sector, or in working in the community space.

So diverse, heavily engaged communities, cohesive communities, live better. The economy grows better, businesses thrive under those conditions. So if there is an attempt to undermine that, the answer must be that that’s to do with not wanting to see, um, these very

significant economies thrive and prosper.

Maithreyi:

What’s the most worrying bit of data in 2025, uh, that you saw when you were running the index in terms of the trend, in terms of the predictability of behaviors? Um, what was the first thing that you noticed this year?

Michelle:

Okay, so I’m going to start off with a positive, that in both in Canada and France, we actually saw amongst young people a little uptick.

So that gives us a good sense that these things as fast as they can decline, they can be turned the other way too. So what I would say is the most worrying was seeing the UK data start to look more like the U.S. So we are we are clear about some of the sociocultural changes that have been happening in the US but watching the indications of that coming through in the UK.

Maithreyi:

That’s interesting because the UK uh, the government currently has a number of women leaders in it, including the chancellor, including, um, you know, across the board in the cabinet. What does it say about policymakers and the way they are speaking to young people um, that that trust is declining at such a fast level?

Michelle:

So it’s, and that’s also, it’s not so much trust as the way in which society is viewing men and women and their roles. Okay. So first of all, to get it into perspective, the UK still sits in a top three position in the G-7, but it has dropped by more than 10 points since we started to look at this. So it was at the top of that table.

There is very significant cognitive resilience, um, amongst our cultural norms in the UK, amongst older adults and they haven’t moved at all. So the issue is just that our younger generation are not coming with us, and that’s what we need to look at and really understand and work out what it is and the, the types of insecurities and concerns that are putting young people in this position, how do we better support them?

Maithreyi:

I’m gonna flip this around and also ask you about the countries that surprised you and did better. Yeah. Yeah. Um, because maybe there are lessons to be learned over there. Yeah. So run us through what surprised you positively this year?

Michelle:

Yeah. So actually I could go to, uh, two countries, um, actually with the support of the Gates Foundation that we’ve also been studying in the African continent, Kenya and Nigeria.

The Reykjavik Index is growing in those countries. The support, the acceptability of female leaders in business, particularly in finance, is very high. So good news stories coming out of there.

And then when we look at Japan and Italy, when we started off, um, looking at those. Those countries, we could see that older generations have not made the kind of progressive journey that older generations in the UK or the US have, but now their young people are coming through.

So it is a different trajectory. I think we all, in all of this, we understand the seriousness of the data that we’re seeing. We understand it comes from many different drivers, but we also see how quickly it can turn. So at the speed at which it can go in the direction that we don’t want. Equally, we can understand that it can be flipped the other way if we can get the right interventions in place now.

Maithreyi:

So between 2025’s index and 2026, what’s your advice to the leadership that you speak to, to turn that ship around quickly?

Michelle:

Right. So if you are in a policy making sphere, first of all, what we really must do is to work on that data and recognize it, because often the speed at which the sort of very high quality data gets into the policy making community, sometimes it’s not as fast as we need it to be, to be able to act.

Secondly, for us to tackle this. This is all types of leaders and all types of stakeholders from across society. This won’t just get fixed by government and policy makers. This won’t just get fixed by corporations either. We are all in this together if we are looking at ways to better support our young people and in particular our young men.

But what I do think is we need to recognize the speed of this change, and our response needs to be just as fast.

Maithreyi:

Do you think that’s changing? Because I know you told me that the first time you put this, these numbers out there, there was a, an atmosphere of denial here at Reykjavik. Do you think that’s changing fast enough?

Michelle:

Actually, I’ve just come out of a couple of sessions this morning with, uh, Icelandic, uh, ministers and, and other leaders from around the world, and I have felt, such a, a sort of shift in, in energy and understanding. I think three years ago, the data surprised everyone and uh, mostly when it relates to the young people, they know it’s not making sense because we all live in our own bubbles, I would say, there has been a very rapid shift in understanding what’s going on and a very firm, um, desire and set of actions coming into play now to, to get going on, really looking at what we must be doing now to bring our young people back into the, into the heart of society.

Maithreyi:

Well, Michelle, thank you for the work that you do.

Uh, thanks to the index, you inspired The Chief Brief to take on a bigger role in doing exactly that, getting that information into the right hands and changing the mindset quicker. So appreciate you. Thank you for some worrying data, but inspiration to start turning the ship around.

Michelle:

Thank you. We’re all in this together.

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