Does age correlate to skill or level of contribution? Of course not. As I write this, Warren Buffet still ably
leads Berkshire Hathaway, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg sits on the Supreme Court. Both are people in their 80s and by all
accounts remain skilled at what they do.
Even if these two examples are anomalies, people live longer and the
lifespan of the average person’s career is much longer than it was in 1776 or
even 1976. So it makes sense that
someone would be longer in a leadership role, right?
In truth, there isn’t a magic age or age range at which a leader
is ready to step aside. And stepping
aside because of age actually isn’t the question at all. Change to the next generation is
inevitable. That’s the case whether the
current leadership in an organization is on the verge of moving on, or whether
the current leadership is decades away from turning over control. The most important question, whether we’re
discussing the role of leading the nation or a local club chapter, is about the
plans to bring the next generation into leadership.
As we explore that planning, those of us nearer the end of
our participation than the beginning need to ask what our role should be in the
transition. That’s important because the
transition won’t magically happen. While
the technical skills of leadership and management can be taught in seminars, workshops,
and degree programs, there’s more to leadership than the technical skills of
how to manage personnel, organize a project, or generate a budget. Those of us who’ve taken leadership and
management roles in our lives had to learn the complexity required in those
roles through experiences. It’s in
consideration of what we’ve learned and how we developed our skills and
knowledge that we must find a role for ourselves in the transition to the next
generation of leaders. While our less
experienced colleagues can learn from seminars and classes and workshops, they must
also benefit from what we’ve learned.
It’s the idea of being the experienced voice.
That’s being able to share knowledge and the perspectives that take
years to develop – not as rules that have to be followed, but as a source of wisdom, a word that often gets
forgotten when we think of management and leadership. If an experienced voice is part of the ongoing
mixture of ideas and discussions, it can help contextualize and add perspective
– it can offer wisdom. When all people
hear is that experienced voice of wisdom, the danger is that they’re only
hearing the past; so it’s important that the experienced voice isn’t the only
voice. The experienced voice can’t be
dominant; but it should be integrated as part of any conversation about an
organization’s purpose or actions.
Of course, that means colleagues need to be willing to
listen to us. However, in my
experience, that’s rarely the issue. I
have long ago tired of the “how to manage millennials” or the “unmotivated
Generation X” babble that seems to be permeating current consultants’
spiels. You know: the ones who tell us that younger generations
are self-defining and unable to take direction because they were raised on a
diet of getting praised for every childhood act. In my experiences in managing and leading
people, I find that defining colleagues by the years they were born is about
effective as relegating them to personality type by their astral
birthdate. Instead, I’ve found that most
people of any age listen to advice and direction if it’s carefully explained
and rationally justified from someone they’ve learned to trust. Therefore, building those trusted
relationships is critical to being an experienced voice.
That means leaders need to be aware of who our colleagues
are and remain committed to their success as much as the success of the
organization. In truth, those two
successes are symbiotic, with one not possible without the other. If I work with my colleagues from a position
of mutual connectivity and respect, they’re more likely to see my perspectives
as worth hearing about. Will that work
for every employee? Not all of them,
since some people (regardless of their generation) are self-absorbed and
unwilling to listen to any other voice besides their own. But it will work with the majority, and it’s
the majority whom you need to build an organization.
Also, being an experienced voice means contributing to the
future without restricting it. We need
to give control to others. Whether the
people we lead are administrative assistants or other managers, we need to be
giving them opportunities to independently develop projects that they initiate
and complete. There need to be processes
where people at all levels are encouraged to see their ideas merged into the
strategic direction of the organization.
That means allowing administrative assistants, for example, to develop
onboarding training for new employees.
Or it means allowing mid-level managers independently to reorganize
their units in more effective ways.
This is where a critical component of being the experienced
voice has to happen: Succession planning
isn’t about who’ll be next at the top of the organization. Effective succession planning requires a
culture of leadership development where all people in the organization see
themselves as leading. Not in the
sense that they all go in their own way, but in the sense that they control
their efforts and see their efforts as moving the organization toward its aims. People who have freedom to manage their work
and make it more effective will innovate and create; and they’ll become
leaders. Their innovations will lead
others and create a culture of innovation around the strategic aims of the
organization. Once all people see
themselves as leaders, then finding the next executive who manages and leads
the entire organization isn’t as daunting.
It becomes a natural next step in the organization’s work of
self-renewal. The experienced voice
works toward that daily.
In traditional communities, we with years of experience
would be named “elders” who are part of the community structure. In those communities, we would be given the
tasks of teaching and counseling, even after the time when we were done leading
and managing. That’s one place where
many organizations miss an opportunity.
The current process for many organizations is to have someone retire and
leave the organization to successors.
That happens for directors of non-profits as it does for corporate CEOs.
While we sometimes bestow titles in that transition (in my profession, it’s
“emeritus”), those titles carry little value in furthering the work of the
organization. In an era when we live
longer with vibrant cognitive and physical agility, that system becomes
actually a disincentive for us to leave our leadership roles. When leaders do finally retire, they typically
disconnect and the organization loses their wisdom and institutional
knowledge.
Both as we approach the end of our formal leadership and
afterward, our most important work is to develop our skills to be the
experienced voice. We need to cultivate
the leadership of others in our organization as we consider what comes after
our departure. We need to find ways to
become a teacher and counselor after we leave formal leadership – in ways that
support the new vision that new leaders will bring. After all, new leaders will mean a new direction
that will differ from the past. Success
will mean understanding the past and building on it. But it can’t mean replicating it. Ask Packard
automobiles or Wang
or Tower
Records what happened to them when they couldn’t evolve. The important value in leadership change is
that it offers the opportunity for new directions and new energy. So those of us who are transitioning away
from leadership and management need to understand and support those changes in
this new role as elders providing the experienced voice. And those who replace us need to be wise
enough to understand that.
