Why Senior Leaders Move: Insights on Pay and Culture in Real Estate

Executive hiring has always had a familiar opening move: lead with compensation. It signals seriousness. It saves everyone from the awkward theatre of pretending money is ‘not the point’ while quietly doing the math.

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But at director (or EVP/SVP in the U.S.) and board level, it is rarely the whole story, and often not even the most interesting chapter. What decides whether an executive moves is usually a combination of mandate, governance, culture, and credibility. In other words, can they do the job properly? And will the organisation let them?

That distinction matters because senior hires do not fail in the way junior hires fail. They rarely collapse under technical demands. They fracture under misalignment, fuzzy decision rights, competing power centres, and cultures that punish delivery when it becomes inconvenient. In other words, the real negotiation is often about how a leader will be allowed to lead.

Macdonald & Company’s latest data points to a simple truth. Senior leaders may talk about pay, but they often leave because of the environment around it. When executive-level leaders in the U.K. feel undervalued, ‘company culture/values’ is the most cited reason, with 42% of them selecting this factor in a multiple-choice question. Salary trails behind at 16%.

If you are hiring leaders in 2026, it is worth taking those numbers seriously.

What decides whether an executive moves is usually a combination of mandate, governance, culture, and credibility.

In other words, can they do the job properly?

And will the organisation let them?

How important is salary at director and C-suite level?

A useful way to think about senior compensation is that it works like underwriting. It is a risk signal. It tells a candidate what the organisation believes the role is worth, how performance is valued, and how confidently the business expects to deliver.

The number gives useful context.

At Director, EVP/SVP or ‘Head-of’ level, base salaries typically cluster around £150,000, while for Managing Directors and Board Directors, the median rises to £350,000. Bonuses are substantial, averaging 47% of base salary at the Director level and 66% at the C-suite level. Pension contributions hover near 7%, and long-term incentives are far from symbolic: the median LTIP paid out in the last 12 months was £75,000 for Directors and £100,000 for C-suite executives and above.

So yes, salary matters. But the shape of the package matters even more. Everything around base pay tells you what the organisation is really paying for.

A chunky annual bonus is a not-so-subtle instruction to deliver this year’s numbers. A long-term incentive plan or shares is the board’s way of steering you towards value that can be measured over several yearly cycles, not several quarters. Pension and benefits do a quieter job, signalling stability and an expectation that you will still be there when the strategy stops being theoretical.

Taken together, this architecture of rewards is a set of incentives dressed up as compensation. It rewards annual performance, aligns leaders to long-term outcomes, and encourages retention, partly because replacing senior talent is rarely cheap, quick, or free of risk.

This is where experienced executive recruiters can be useful. They have seen enough packages to know what is normal for the role, what will land well with the calibre of candidate you want, and where a seemingly minor clause will become a major problem six months after appointment.

Feeling valued: what leaders actually respond to

At executive level, ‘feeling valued’ can sound like the softer end of organisational psychology. In practice, it’s closer to operational infrastructure. A director who feels valued is not one who is praised. It is one who can do the job without constantly negotiating for the basic right to do it.

When directors and C-suite leaders say they feel valued, the drivers are strikingly practical:

Again, salary makes a feature, but it’s a smaller slice of the pie. The single biggest factor is the relationship with other stakeholders, which is shorthand for clarity, trust, sponsorship and a sense the organisation will back the leader when their decisions become unpopular.

This is why leadership hiring is often won (or lost) in the subtext. Candidates listen to how executives speak about colleagues who are not in the room. They watch whether stakeholders are aligned or simply well-trained in appearing so. They assess whether high standards mean accountability, or politics with better vocabulary.

A good recruitment consultancy can add value here in a way that is hard to replicate internally – by doing the unglamorous diligence early. Quiet referencing, triangulating market feedback, and testing whether the organisation’s story holds together across stakeholders. It reduces the chance of an expensive mismatch.

Feeling undervalued: why culture breaks retention

When determining what makes senior leaders feel undervalued, the data is less subtle.

Company culture and values dominates at 42%, with relationship with stakeholders and salary tied at 16% each, followed closely by bonus/commission level at 11%.

This is the quiet truth behind many supposedly ‘compensation-driven’ resignations. Pay often becomes the clean explanation for a messy reality. Culture is harder to cite in an exit interview without sounding emotional. Governance is even harder to explain in a LinkedIn update without sounding bitter.

Salary, by contrast, is tidy, measurable and socially acceptable.

For employers, the message is clear and very uncomfortable. Good leadership and retention cannot be solved by spending more money. When company culture and values are misaligned, higher pay will not solve the problem. The real answer lies in creating a credible environment, a lesson many organisations learn too late.

Mandate: decision rights and real authority

Real estate is not short of grand titles.

What is rarer is a mandate that has remit, boundaries and actual decision making authority. What is within scope, what is shared, and what disappears into a committee? Without that clarity, the role becomes a guessing game with your reputation on the line.

There is no room for ambiguity in real estate. Billions are committed to acquisitions, development and refinancing. Construction timetables collide with planning constraints. Design choices shape cost and compliance, and capital raising depends on credibility, not optimism. In this environment, executives favour employers who speak plainly about strategy and can show how the role connects to delivery in the real world, not just on the slide deck.

In practice, this is where a search partner can save time. The best executive recruiters will pressure test the brief, figure out who really has the power, spot any stakeholder tensions before you take the role to market. It is, in effect, a pre-emptive effort against the two great killers of executive hiring: surprises and rewinds.

What senior leaders prioritise in-role (pay, balance, flexibility)

When asked what matters most in their current role, senior leaders do not pretend reward is irrelevant. Salary does top the list here at 57%, however, it is followed closely work-life balance (46%), bonus/commission level (38%), and flexible working location (34%).

This is not an inconsistency. It is the executive trade off made visible.

Senior leaders are not less motivated by money. They simply understand the full cost of earning it. When the role consumes every part of life, salary starts to look less like reward and more like compensation for a lifestyle tax. In a market with more governance complexity and scrutiny, leaders want roles that are sustainable, not merely impressive on paper.

Flexibility, in the meantime, has shifted from perk to proxy. A coherent flexibility policy signals trust, accountability, and adult management. A confused one signals politics, inconsistency, and a preference for avoiding arguments over delivering outcomes.

Many boards still treat flexibility as a compromise. In reality, it’s becoming a clear indicator of how a business operates. A recruiter who is speaking to senior candidates every week can tell you where expectations are headed, not where it stood two years ago.

The 2026 rewards package: benefits, bonus, pension and LTIP

Benefits at a senior level are often treated as an afterthought. The data suggests something closer to risk management.

When asked which benefits are most attractive to senior candidates, the hierarchy is unambiguous:

This is less about luxury or indulgence and more about creating a solid framework that supports performance and retention. Bonus drives short term performance by rewarding delivery. Pension contributions provide long term security. Healthcare is resilience, particularly in roles where stress isn’t theoretical. LTIP and share schemes encourages retention and aligns the executive’s interests with the company’s long term success.

If you want a senior leader to really care about the organisation’s success, the package must be built for durability, not optics.

This is where benchmarking stops being a nice-to-have and becomes a practical tool. A good consultancy can help ensure the package is competitive and coherent, especially if you’re trying to recruit talent from adjacent sectors or geographies.

Are executives likely to move jobs in the next 12 months?

Senior talent markets rarely behave like mass markets. Their moves are fewer, quieter and often arranged well before anyone updates their profile picture.

Even so, our research suggests a meaningful proportion of senior leaders are at least open to change in the next 12 months. Across Director and C-suite levels, 27% say they are likely to move and 20% say very likely.

Here is the spilt:

This is hardly surprising. The higher the seniority, the higher the switching cost. At the top, the market narrows: fewer credible roles, more stakeholder involvement and a greater reputational risk if the move goes wrong. A misstep at this level is expensive, both financially and professionally. This is why executive level moves are rarely impulsive. It is usually the outcome of careful diligence and occasionally, accumulated frustration in their current role.

The pace of your hiring process often determines its success. Executive hiring is slower than people like to admit. A consultancy that is set up for search can reduce the risk of leadership processes collapsing through delays and ambiguity.

How senior roles are actually filled

If you treat executive level hiring like an applications market, the data will disappoint. At director level and above, roles are filled through proactive, relationship focused channels.

Here’s the data:

This is the operating system for executive search.

The best senior candidates are passive, only in the narrow sense that they are not sending their CVs. They will respond quickly if the opportunity is credible and the approach is professional.

For employers, that has two implications; If your leadership hiring strategy relies heavily on inbound applications, you may get volume but miss the market’s best. Secondly, reputation matters more than job advert copy ever will. It’s important to remember senior leaders are not just buying into the role, they’re buying into the entire organisation and the mandate that comes with it.

What the best employers do differently

The organisations that consistently hire well at leadership level share a common trait: discipline.

They are open about their business strategy, including any limitations and trade offs. They define the remit, setting clear decision rights and measures of success. The leadership team are truly on the same page, so candidates know exactly what they’re walking into.

For the best employers, the compensation package is more than just a number. It’s a framework. Base salary that says ‘we’re serious about you’. A bonus that rewards what matters, and benefits that make their commitment sustainable.

They also have a process that respects senior candidates’ time. Clear timelines, fast feedback, and serious conversations early are the foundations of success. The kind of process that signals an organisation knows what it wants and is ready to back it.

Final thoughts

A good base salary is only good to grab the attention of executives in real estate. It doesn’t win buy-in or commitment.

The leaders you want are not swayed by numbers alone. If you’re appointing at a director or a c-suite level in 2026, assume candidates will do more diligence, not less. They will interrogate the mandate and look for coherence in leadership. They will test whether the organisation is hiring them to lead, or to tidy up the consequences of indecision.

And yes, they will measure up the rewards package against that.