Dr. David Schwegmann, who is the divisional executive for consumer banking at Nedbank, likes to share a party joke his wife, Karlene, delivers each time the conversation turns to retirement: “I married Dave for dinner, not breakfast and lunch.”
Having voluntarily deferred his own retirement by three years, in line with a recent policy change at Nedbank, Schwegmann is part of a tsunami of senior South African leaders who are on the cusp of retirement. Research by Spencer Stuart tells us that the average age of CEOs in South Africa is 55.8 years. This points to a significant number of leaders who, like Schwegmann, will soon be transitioning out of corporate life.
Welcome to ‘no man’s land’
Former CEO and current chair of Lamberti Holdings Dr. Mark Lamberti has experienced first-hand the “no man’s land” of retirement where “the emails aren’t coming in and the phone isn’t ringing”. It’s an intense time for any leader, who must confront an uncertain future while also dealing with the challenges of ageing, waning energy levels, and the potential for physical and cognitive decline.
For GIBS’ Prof. Charlene Lew, this journey calls for “vulnerability and questioning” on the part of the individual, qualities that are in stark contrast to those that cemented their success as leaders.
In Lamberti’s case, self-reflection and introspection involved thinking and writing. He obtained a PhD from GIBS, published a journal paper with Lew and shared his retirement insights in a two-part series carried on the GIBS YouTube channel. His research offers valuable insights into the retirement transition.
“The average CE is not too much into self-reflection,” says Lamberti. “Whether that’s arrogance or confidence or a combination, when I tell these guys about asking those big questions [as highlighted in Filling the Void], they say, ‘I’ve never thought about that in my life.’ So, I think getting through the process is very much an internal thing. At best, an external coach … helps you to articulate your own problems in a way that you actually solve them.”
This is not to say that executives are blindly ignoring the retirement elephant in the room; many just choose to put it on the back burner. Lamberti believes this is the wrong approach: “You should be structuring your life from, probably, your midlife to make sure that your post full-time executive life is wholesome and fulsome.”
According to Lew, “What we should all be doing is asking ourselves: How do I really want to be living? How do I build greater meaning into my existence before I retire, so that when I retire I actually continue with the stuff I love as well?” She points to Lamberti’s journey as an example of “planfulness” in action. “He’s worked out every facet of his life and exactly what he still wants to achieve in life in a specific period of time. I think that’s is very important,” she says.
Schwegmann – a “strict perfectionist” – is applying a similarly structured approach to his looming retirement. Building on a personally transformative coaching experience with GIBS executive coach Sharon Jansen, he has set his sights on reskilling as a certified master coach.
While not every retiree is drawn to the idea of venturing into mentorship and coaching, for Schwegmann – who already mentors young leaders in his organisation – coaching offers an ideal bridge into retirement and as a way of giving back. This approach aligns strongly with Lamberti’s view about creating capabilities that give the retiree options that they can draw on “to give their life purpose and meaning”.
It’s not what you do, but why you do it
Ultimately, agrees Schwegmann, the plan of action you settle on must go back to self-knowledge and the all-important “why”. “Does it serve your why?” he asks. “My ‘why’ is far greater than going and running another business or a different business. [That may be] very exciting, very energising, but it’s not going to serve my ‘why’ very well, and if I’m not aligned to my ‘why’ then I’m not going to be able to put my full self into it and be fully present.”
Lamberti agrees. “What one decides to do is the lesser part of the process, or the easier part of the process. One will take a direction around activities which, hopefully, builds on established strengths and takes one into fields of enjoyment or personal growth. Those can be multiple and varied. One person’s coaching is another person’s working for an NGO, is another person’s becoming deeply involved with the local sports club, or running a similar job at a lower level of intensity.”
While you can read every book available on how to have a happy retirement, Lamberti stresses that the choices you make for your retirement start with making peace with the inevitable identity change.
“That’s the hard thing,” he says, “to come to terms with the fact that you are not the same person that you were.”
Schwegmann, Lamberti and Lew are in alignment that “know thyself” should be the underlying ambition for anyone heading into retirement, not just when they stand at the precipice of retiring, but as an active development of self-awareness across all life stages.
“There are so many people who get to retirement and it’s the day they start dying, because they haven’t thought about why they should live,” says Schwegmann, who feels that, on a personal level, “it would have been fantastic if I had become fully immersed in coaching a lot earlier”.
Defer this self-reflection and intentionality at your peril, but it’s still a path each retiree needs to walk – with, or without, a personal guide.
The kaleidoscope of giving back
Dr. Mark Lamberti believes that “the whole idea of creating something beyond oneself is a very, very important part of a happy second life”. In a joint article with GIBS Prof. Charlene Lew, published in 2024, the authors discuss six interrelated elements that play a role in reshaping role identities post-retirement. The insights were drawn from 30 in-depth interviews and shared in the December 2025 edition of Acumen.
Among the comments highlighted in the article are a strong theme of giving back and adding value to “younger generations, the business world and society” as part of the emerging retirement identity of former CEOs in South Africa.
As one interviewee observed, “Society, my friends, my colleagues would expect me to give back. If there are corporates that you can play a role in as a non-exec and add value, you should do that, because it is needed. And if you can give back to the country, society would be happier if you are giving back 90%. Society is not too excited if I spend 90% of my time looking after the pot that I have built up.”
Another commented, “A massive chunk of your good fortune in life is purely luck [along with] obviously the hard work. And so that’s always led me to believe that you owe it to the world to do something in return when you retire.”
Lamberti and Lew note, however, that this is sometimes easier said than done in the South African context, which makes giving back at a national level a challenge due to legislative and transformational constraints. “My unfulfilled wish in South Africa has been to go and help the government and work for nothing,” said one interviewee. Another noted, “[Contributing to politics] would have been my natural space because no one in politics understands business. And, you know, I could really have made a difference there, but not in this country.”
For Nedbank’s Dr. David Schwegmann, giving back does not have to take any specific structured form. It can be varied and tailored to each retiree’s skill set and competencies. He, for instance, already serves on several boards, including St Anne’s Diocesan College in KwaZulu-Natal, his daughters’ alma mater.
Different avenues that occurred to him during deliberations and conversations with others navigating the retirement transition included the popular option of contracting to their current organisation or industry, or seeking out new business opportunities. In Schwegmann’s case, coaching offered an outlet for giving back that also enables him to play a constructive part of someone else’s journey in life. “It’s just amazing,” he says. “It’s what I’m passionate about, what I deeply love.”
Executive summary
- Sixty-nine percent of CEOs in South Africa fall into the 55-65 age bracket, while 57% of board chairs are older than 65.
- Many of these individuals will retire in the next five to 10 years.
- Most will have a solid financial retirement plan in place, but only a small number have planned for the psychological impacts of retiring.
- Self-reflection, vulnerability, and personal knowledge play a huge role in easing the retirement transition.
