| Managing Employees Older than You | |
You’ve been moved into a leadership position! Even better, you are ahead of schedule: When you took this job, you were told most people spent two or three years rotating into different functions before being offered the chance to manage. Now, 18 months into the job, you’ve been offered the chance to lead of team of six employees working on a special assignment for the rest of the year.
The assignment is interesting and fairly important. More daunting is the makeup of the team: everyone you will be managing has been at the organization longer than you. Two of the workers have been there for more than 15 years! How can you effectively manage a group of people uniformly older and more experienced than you are? Can you garner respect and actually be effective? Here are some guidelines that you may find helpful in your new role.
Think (and talk) in terms of how long people have been at the job or in the industry. More important than physical age is an employee’s time in a role or community (though, of course, these things often go together). And certainly an essential step to managing this team well is to make sure that you never do anything that could be construed as age discrimination. In light of these considerations, the key demographic of this team is their years of experience, not their years of life. Hold yourself accountable to thinking and talking in these terms.
Use their experience to your advantage. The experience that your reports have is an asset to you. Perhaps they have seen past efforts fail and succeed. Perhaps they know the informal—but essential—decision-makers. Perhaps they know how to tweak proposals to meet the subtleties of the organization’s culture. Do not be afraid to address what they know directly with employees and ask for input.
Beware the notion of “innovation versus experience.” Not only will this alienate workers, there is no need for these to be opposites. After all, the best management marries the best of both.
When communication is important, choose the style your employee prefers. There is a lot of research on how physical age changes work style. One significant finding is that age affects workers’ choice of communication medium. Without making assumptions based on age, pay attention to how teammates choose to communicate with you, or ask them directly how they prefer to exchange ideas and information. You might have your own preferences, but when the stakes are high, choose what your employee prefers.
Old dogs can learn new tricks. Do not dance around what long-term employees might need to learn to move forward in their career or current position. Older employees are trainable, of course, and should be expected to stay current for their sake as well as to meet the organization’s goals. And you may need to remind employees that training does not mean they have been doing something wrong nor are they outdated. Rather, introduce training as something new, additional skills for the employee.
Consider what your relative age represents to your employees. If there is any dis-ease about your relative youth or less experience, what assumptions are behind it? Perhaps employees think that your job requires wisdom that only years of experience can foster. Perhaps your employees believe that management must be earned by years of service. Whatever their reservations might be, be sensitive in your actions—as best you can—not to fuel the belief that they are correct.
Employees can joke about how young you are, but you cannot joke about how old they are. Humor may be a way to lighten age-related anxiety. And when the whole group is having a good-hearted laugh about your youth, you may feel the urge to make a joke about someone’s older age. Don’t! In a different moment, in a different mood, this may be remembered as evidence of age discrimination. Or it may just be less funny coming from the young boss.
Don’t fill in the blanks. Perhaps most important is to not make assumptions about employees until you are familiar with their work. Employees stick around for a long time for a reason—and that reason is most often their competence and solid record. Begin with that assumption, and you’ll manage better, even if proven wrong in selected cases.
Congratulations on your first management role! The fact that you have older or more experienced folks working for you should be a huge help to your work—if you manage it well.