Are You Ready to Face Ageism?
- Published on March 30, 2021
I remember a lecture during my MBA studies, when the lecturer tried to persuade the audience that managers tread up on the corporate hierarchy till the age of 35, then they should leave and create their own business.
The audience – we all were way under 35, all of us doing everything to reach higher and higher in the corporate world – were puzzled. At that moment I had two thoughts: one, that it was ridiculous, why would any successful manager voluntarily leave the uphill march, the second being that 35 was coming fast and I was not sure if I would be ready by that time. As it turned out later, I was not.
Now, while you are under 35, you are clearly and undoubtedly reassured that the world is yours and nothing, absolutely nothing can stand in your way.
Time is Passing – For All
Bad news is that – even under 35 – the clock is ticking. Tiny hindrances start to distract your exclusive focus on your career, and they will slowly but surely nest themselves unnoticed in your life and environment. These hindrances, – which for many include starting a family, birth of children, childcare, the happiest events of life – all take pieces of your concentration away from work. With time, you may also face less pleasant experiences, sicknesses, injuries that heal slower and slower as your age advances. If you’re one of those, who do not meet any of these hindrances until 45 – 50, make no mistake, you will still fall victim of the stereotyping that accompanies the aging workforce.
To top all this, there are brand new, young generations, who keep arriving to the organization with their new perspective on the world, with their fresh ideas, young agility, and with their irrefutable belief that the world is theirs (read: not yours anymore).
You still believe that your knowledge and experiences will prevail over their ‘greenness’, and being so young, the new generation needs someone’s guidance – management – so that they are able to perform according to organization’s expectations.
You also might be right in these thoughts – partially.
Fact is that each incoming generation enters the employee phase with much higher knowledge than the previous generation. The very simple reason is the exponential growth of data availability and of the individual’s technical development to access information.
You may be right, on the other hand, that the new generation may not necessarily straight strive for responsibility. At young ages, only few have the vision of leading others, of creating their own business. Many prefer leaving these responsibilities to their more experienced colleagues and choose a care-free life as long as possible.
You can, therefore, extend the time while you allure yourself in the belief that you and your experiences are indispensable for the organization to survive. You are only deferring facing reality. The incoming generation may not take the responsibility today, but they soon will – at which point, from a guiding hand, you suddenly turn to be an obstacle.
Ageism in Workplaces
There are laws against ageism. There are laws against discrimination in the workplace, including discrimination due to age. There are additional company policies with directions of how to employ elderly colleagues, how many of them and so on.
Yet, most of these measures are forced-on trials to be conform to laws and trade agreements, and we see very few real efforts to search ways to employ people above 50 in their highest capacities. Even less to optimize the cooperation of potentially 3-4 generations in a workplace. This is an issue that all the organizations face already today and so little is being done about.
Over the past years, diversity became the slogan of respectable multinational companies. They have recognized the value that women, LGBT individuals, people of color contribute to organization. Yet, “the single class that is not represented from a diversity and inclusion perspective is older workers. LGBT, racial and ethnic diversity, women, people with physical disabilities – you can find an affinity group in a corporation for everything, except an older worker” (Patricia Milligan, Mercer)
For the most part, employers continue to invest far more in young employees and generally do not train employees over 50. In fact, many companies would rather not think about the existence of older workers at all.
This phenomenon is highlighted in the corporate world. Here, employees are valued until they contribute on one hundred percent and it’s rare that they would be rewarded equally generously in their mature years, except for unique positions as CEOs, who then turn to honorary presidents or board members.
Your earning potential will top around the age 45. This is because your skills become increasingly valuable until you accrue fifteen years’ experience, at which point you have hit a peak. According to statisticians, in all fields except law and healthcare, people are not paid more money for experience beyond fifteen years.
What Can You Do?
When you arrive at this point you can keep lingering around and hope that you will somehow vegetate at your current position till retirement, or you can take your life into your own hands and initiate the changes yourself.
There are endless number of possibilities to remain relevant and continue to increase your value. But be prepared for the efforts, for the challenges and for the changes that you will face. You will need to let go what brought you so far: what took you here, will not take you further. You will have to find new ways and learn skills outside of your field.
You will have countless options, depending on how much you believe in your explorer self.
For example, if you are employed in an organization as a Sales expert, handling accounts, you can train yourself to be a forecaster. Your value as a forecaster (provided that you acquired the necessary skills to be a forecaster) will now be increased by your considerable expertise in account management, which gives invaluable insight into forecasting.
You can also change your field and go from one science to a completely different one, for example change from a Sales Manager into a Marketing Manager. Cross functional experiences have high value in each organization and contribute to synergies and enhanced cooperation between the organizational units, which, at the end, results in higher performance of the organization as a whole.
Alternatively, you can remain in your actual field of expertise and change company. Organizations might value your different perspective and experiences collected at another market participant.
For all the above examples, you will only need to find an organization, who welcomes the 50+ generation with open arms. Which brings us back to the paragraph about age discrimination.
The Ultimate Choice
“To be mature you have to realize what you value most. It is extraordinary to discover that comparatively few people reach this level of maturity. … They spend great effort and sometimes make great sacrifices for values that, fundamentally, meet no real needs of their own. …Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.” (Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
There is one more option – and this, my favorite. Once you feel that you reached your peak and promotions have started to avoid you, when your salary discussion is rather limited to ‘why so high’ and you have been able to slice smaller and smaller pieces out of the talent pool’s cake – this is the time to face yourself honestly and truly.
Who you are? What do you want?
When I arrived at this point in my career and looked into the mirror, I realized a very important thing. I have an unquestionably successful, nearly 30-year career in the corporate world behind my back, but the one and only choice that I consciously made in my adult life was that I wanted to have children.
I have always been diligent in my life. I never felt that I was enough, and this made me constantly educate myself to be the best. To know everything the best. To do everything the best. All this had resulted in a successful management career starting at an early age. However, this career was mainly based on my having been offered different and higher positions, which I usually happily accepted.
I never faced the basic questions of life: who I am, what I want to do and how I want to change the world by the time I’ll need to leave it.
The time I have recently spent with the quest of answers to these questions, has been the most fruitful, self-contributing and energizing times I have ever had.
You need to have the courage though, to look into this mirror. You might realize that it’s time to leave your previous self behind and start something new, possibly above 45, 50, or 60 years of age. If you choose this way, always remember, you will not start it all from the beginning. You will start everything anew with all your experiences behind.
Be reassured that you are not alone, there are thousands, who face the same reality. What helped me invaluably was coaching. Coaching, that simply mediated the conversation between me and myself.
What Can You Do? – Recap
If you want to read more about how to stay relevant through your life, there are numerous articles that you can google about the subject (a more serious and a cheerful one here) and they will give you great advice.
Being prepared for life-long training and embracing changes are the two key elements that you will find in each of them.
Most importantly, be brave in your choices and have control on your future. Make your own decisions, do not concede this task to others, independent on your age. This will bring you to your optimal experience through your whole life.
You may also seek coaching in your life- and career-quests. A good coach will support you in facing yourself, discover who you are, what you want.
A great coach will help you be SAFE, OK and ENOUGH to start creating your future. This will lead you to your FLOW, the optimal life experience.
Published by
Hedi Kovacs Resnik Business Consultant, Executive Coach
Published • 7mo
#ageism, #agingwell, #agediscrimination, #coaching, #personaldevelopment, #flow, #optimalexperience