ajcjobs > BlogBreak > Archives > 2006 > December > 19
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
You’re old enough to be my grandfather!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Yikes, I have just been promoted to management and some of my team are twice my age! How are they ever going to accept me as their leader?”
More and more these days in a multi-generational workforce, new managers are having to be the leader of people much older and with more work experience. The implications are obvious…will it be against the grain to tell your ‘elders’ what to do or better yet, earn the respect of those that are older and maybe wiser.
As boomers decide that retirement isn’t what they expected or their income needs change, they are coming back into the workforce after retirement with a vengeance. A younger manager might find themselves interviewing and hiring older workers, so how do they act?
For one thing, interviewing a person who is considerably older for a position might drudge up old time prejudices…’Wow! This person is older than my Dad! How could I possibly be my Dad’s boss?” If not totally secure in their management abilities, a new manager might find themselves intimidated when making hiring decisions.
And let’s face it, how many of us in a new management role are totally convinced that we are good at it until tested. Visualization of potential discipline action if the older worker is not living up to expected performance may be an illustration that is difficult to conceive.
Well, we need to get over this. Boomers are deciding to continue to work after retirement for reasons of money or boredom. In fact, you don’t know you are not ready for retirement until you retire. I can say this as I retired and got bored and returned to the business world. A life of golf wasn’t for me!
We now have 4 different generations in the workplace…the traditionalists, the boomers, the gen-x’ers, and the new millennium. At my place of work, we have this type of multi-generational workforce, and what we have found (myself being a Boomer) is that the younger generation is acting as mentors and teachers to us older guys in the area of technology and the Internet. As Darwin predicted, we Boomers have adapted and evolved to our new tech environment, but it didn’t come naturally, and we get by on the minimum amount we can absorb or need to function on a daily basis.
On the other hand, the newest members of our workforce are integrated into technology as if it were ingrained into their DNA. I think it is time to understand that one generation can learn from the other regardless of older or younger.
Older doesn’t mean over the hill, and younger doesn’t mean a greenhorn. Cheers to the up and coming new managers! I hope I will never be too old to learn something new.
