CEOs under 30 demonstrate the wisdom of youth

At most of the world’s well-estab­lished com­pa­nies, CEOs have grey hairs and the wis­dom asso­ci­at­ed with gain­ing them. While reach­ing the top of the cor­po­rate lad­der is often the result of many decades of toil, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of under-30s are show­ing that it’s pos­si­ble to lead thriv­ing enter­pris­es long before the grey­ing process starts.

These young CEOs clear­ly don’t have the expe­ri­ence of their FTSE-100 coun­ter­parts, whose aver­age age is 55, but is this such an impor­tant fac­tor in effec­tive busi­ness lead­er­ship?

Whether lead­er­ship is an inher­ent skill – some­thing a young CEO may be pre­dis­posed to – has long been debat­ed. Sev­er­al stud­ies have con­sid­ered the effects of someone’s genet­ics, edu­ca­tion and cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences on their poten­tial to lead, but Conn­son Locke, pro­fes­so­r­i­al lec­tur­er in man­age­ment at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, notes that the research sug­gests that “no par­tic­u­lar trait will make you a good leader in every sin­gle con­text”.

Locke recent­ly wrote a book enti­tled Mak­ing Your Voice Heard: how to own your space, access your inner pow­er and become influ­en­tial. It looks at the deep, authen­tic pas­sions that have been a key part of many young CEOs’ sto­ries. In it, she argues that, to be an influ­en­tial per­son, you must start with your­self. In oth­er words: “If you don’t know what you stand for and care for, what are you going to try and influ­ence peo­ple about?”

Learning on the job

Onyinye Udok­poro, 23, is a CEO who found her pas­sion far soon­er than most. She found­ed Enrich Learn­ing, an online edu­ca­tion plat­form that sup­ports young peo­ple around the world, four years ago while she was an under­grad­u­ate at King’s Col­lege Lon­don. This had actu­al­ly been a long time com­ing: she’d start­ed tutor­ing chil­dren when she was only 12 years old her­self. By the time Udok­poro turned 18, she had helped hun­dreds of stu­dents. 

The cat­a­lyst for start­ing the busi­ness was her expe­ri­ence of attend­ing a sum­mer school at Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Bei­jing. “The time I spent there opened my mind. It enabled me to see how edu­ca­tion could be offered in a unique, cost-effec­tive and more acces­si­ble way,” recalls Udok­poro, who adds: “My record shows that, in some cas­es, I have gained more prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence at the age of 23 than old­er CEOs.”

Are there any par­tic­u­lar attrib­ut­es that tend to be lack­ing in young CEOs? Accord­ing to Locke, all lead­ers need to get bet­ter at ask­ing, lis­ten­ing and learn­ing. The real­i­sa­tion that you don’t always know what’s best often devel­ops with age, so youth­ful busi­ness lead­ers should pay extra atten­tion to devel­op­ing these skills, she advis­es. 

The demands on busi­ness­es are increas­ing and there are lim­its to one person’s abil­i­ty to deal with these, Locke observes. “There are so many stake­hold­ers now – it’s not just about mak­ing a com­pa­ny prof­itable. You also have to take care of the envi­ron­ment, ensure that the com­mu­ni­ty is sup­port­ed, con­sid­er diver­si­ty issues and so on. A leader has to admit that they won’t know the answer to every­thing.”

Young CEOs may not always have high lev­els of humil­i­ty – an impor­tant lead­er­ship qual­i­ty that often comes through bit­ter expe­ri­ence – but an ear­ly fail­ure can cer­tain­ly accel­er­ate its devel­op­ment.

Three businesses by the age of 28

Joel Gujral, 28, is CEO of Myn­dup. It’s already his third busi­ness, fol­low­ing short-lived for­ays into soft­ware and tea. Estab­lished only two years ago, the men­tal health plat­form already has tens of thou­sands of users. His com­pa­ny has won con­tracts with sev­er­al large employ­ers, includ­ing the NHS, to pro­vide ser­vices for their staff. It match­es users with expert prac­ti­tion­ers who can pro­vide one-to-one video ses­sions offer­ing help rang­ing from coun­selling to career coach­ing.

Gujral reports that one of his biggest achieve­ments to date has been build­ing a team with spe­cial­ist strengths and then seek­ing advice from its mem­bers, even if this has meant hav­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions. “As a CEO, I’m always open to feed­back. You have to be able to change and adapt to dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments,” he says

Lead­er­ship styles are often classed as either agen­tic or com­mu­nal. CEOs in the for­mer cat­e­go­ry tend to be inde­pen­dent, assertive and strong influ­encers, where­as those in the lat­ter tend to be warm, car­ing and good lis­ten­ers. Locke says that, if agen­tic can be con­sid­ered left-hand­ed and com­mu­nal right-hand­ed, “a good leader is ambidex­trous”. All CEOs should try to bal­ance these two styles, she sug­gests: inspire peo­ple with your ideas and pas­sion, but also con­sult them and tru­ly heed those with exper­tise. 

Sankalp Chaturve­di, pro­fes­sor of organ­i­sa­tion­al behav­iour and lead­er­ship at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Busi­ness School, is inter­est­ed in the rela­tion­ships between lead­ers and fol­low­ers at work. He observes that the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of busi­ness; people’s chang­ing expec­ta­tions of work; and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions such as the Covid pan­dem­ic and the cli­mate cri­sis have all had an impact on fol­low­ers. Lead­ers must be both resilient and open to new ways of work­ing to ensure that the leader-fol­low­er rela­tion­ship con­tin­ues to be as effec­tive as pos­si­ble, he argues.

“Since the nature of fol­low­ers and types of jobs are chang­ing, the leader’s role needs to adapt to these changes,” Chaturve­di says.

Younger (or aspir­ing) CEOs may look to edu­ca­tion to pre­pare them­selves for the chal­lenges such adjust­ments will present. Chaturve­di likens lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion to swim­ming, where a teacher guides the stu­dent in the right tech­niques, but the learn­er must jump in them­selves, prac­tise and hone their new skills on the job.

CEOs for the social media age

Natasha Eeles, 27, is the founder and CEO of Bold Voic­es, a com­pa­ny that works with schools, pupils and their par­ents to tack­le gen­der inequal­i­ty. Along with Gujral, she is a grad­u­ate of the New Entre­pre­neurs Foun­da­tion (NEF), a lead­er­ship pro­gramme that match­es young busi­ness lead­ers with expe­ri­enced men­tors.

“As a founder, I’ve learnt most things on the job, but there have been ele­ments of edu­ca­tion that I would prob­a­bly be lost with­out,” Eeles acknowl­edges. On the NEF course, she “had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn prac­ti­cal skills along­side oth­er founders, learn from entre­pre­neurs and have peo­ple to bounce ideas off. That has been invalu­able.”

Stef Williams, 29, CEO of cloth­ing brand Sefi and fit­ness app WeGlow, is main­ly self-taught. She believes that the rise of social media has “bro­ken the mould of entre­pre­neur­ship”. Its plat­forms have enabled cre­atives with­out any for­mal lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion to have a shot at start­ing and run­ning suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es.

The youngest CEOs are dig­i­tal natives who may well have a bet­ter under­stand­ing than their old­er coun­ter­parts of how the lat­est tech can work for them com­mer­cial­ly. Williams is an Insta­gram influ­encer who has amassed 1.5 mil­lion fol­low­ers. This has helped her to turn her inter­ests in fit­ness and fash­ion into a pair of busi­ness­es, each with a team of 10 employ­ees.

Williams stress­es that she is open to fur­ther­ing her knowl­edge in a more for­mal set­ting. “I’d def­i­nite­ly be inter­est­ed in tak­ing some cours­es in the future,” she says. “There is always room to grow.”

She and many oth­er young CEOs are demon­strat­ing that there are ways for under-30s and even gen-Zers to enter what was once con­sid­ered the domain of their elders and become effec­tive busi­ness lead­ers. Ulti­mate­ly, good lead­er­ship is a com­bi­na­tion of many things – and it’s clear that expe­ri­ence is by no means the most impor­tant fac­tor.