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“Overseeing Workers Who Are Closer In Age To Your Parents”

Filed under On the Job
Posted by Libraries, June 22, 2007
View all posts for June 2007

Sarah E. Needleman, CareerJournal.com, June 21, 2007.
http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/management/20070621-needleman.html?mod=RSSCareerJournal&cjrss=frontpage

So, maybe you earned your MBA right after your undergraduate years and have moved up the corporate ladder pretty quickly. Or, maybe you have taken over a family business fresh out of college. Regardless of how you succeeded, young managers such as yourself are bound to be managing some employees who are significantly older than you. In this situation, it is not uncommon for older employees to question your authority based on the perception that you lack the experience to lead and/or that you will make unwise changes to long-established office policy and practice. In this article, the author provides sound advice for twenty-something managers in order to navigate between their own innovative business plans and those that are viewed as tried and true by older staff members. Important management skills such as willingness to hear out older staff, allowing older staff to prove that their older ways of doing things are more efficient, and openness to viewing one’s elders as possible mentors are all stressed. As well, the article gives valuable advice to young managers regarding knowing when to hold their ground and how to downplay their age. Read the article to learn how to defuse potential conflicts which may arise simply because of a generation gap.

—Peter Simm