50+ — (Career) Game Over?
Have you ever considered the reason is you — and not your employer, ageism or the greedy capitalist system overall?
You can take concrete steps not to let your career peter out. Not all of these are equally easy for everyone, but with the help of a coach, they are not out of reach:
· Cement your own relevance to your organization
Obviously, companies do take a hard look at people nearing the legal retirement age. A 55-year-old manager is expensive and the hard fact is the question how much will a company still get out of him (or her if she actually made it to the higher echelons of the organization). There is younger (and cheaper) talent to consider as they jockey for management slots.
Despite paying lip-service to oppose discrimination and countless workshops and sensitivity trainings to combat sub-conscious bias, old(er) employees find themselves sidelined if not plain pushed out of their jobs.
What Have You Done to Stay Relevant?
However, there are other things at work here, too. The relationship you have with your employer is reciprocal, meaning, they offered you that compensation package in return for the hard and soft skills, know-how, etc. you brought to the table. After 25 years of climbing the corporate ladder the question is whether that relationship is still reciprocal. Presumably managers have received raises and other perks over the years. In return what have managers done to stay on top of their game? This may sound like harsh corporate Darwinism. The challenge I want to pose is to openly explore what reasons beyond payroll costs and age could be behind your sagging career.
Do Not Assume HR or your Company Has a Plan for You
Let’s take a look at your organization’s career development plans. Do they even have any? If you look around carefully, you will see the corporate landscape littered with 32-year-old hot shots who at some point or another had been nominated for internal and external high potential programs only to flame out after they got their certificates and dinner vouchers. Not because they didn’t deserve those junkets. The reasons behind such still-born careers are rather dull: the organization did not really know what to do with them. Still below 40 these high-flyers (male and female) are disenchanted and leave — because the company had no plan and was just throwing red meat at promising candidates. Raising new high potentials will probably cost them just as much as getting you over to “proper” retirement age. Organizations with no plan might safe themselves some payroll money by pushing you into early retirement. However, they probably lose as much if not more by wasting other talented staff members.
What is harder to explore is your relevance to the organization. Businesses have a responsibility to ensure their workforce is up to snuff. They are not charitable organizations. At 55 are you up to date with what’s going on or do you sub-consciously believe there is nothing new under the sun? The last generation of managers we all know who fell into this trap were the top marketing professionals who failed to realize what was coming their way with the internet and social media.
Here is a little personal note: I am pushing my mid-50s now and have come to the painful conclusion that it has become harder for me to stay curious. Often I have to make an intentional effort to keep my trap shut and just listen and ask questions — and not start pontificating because I think I’ve seen it all. If this does not apply to you, well done.
Retirement Should Not Come as a Surprise
Another important point is that our age should not come to anyone’s surprise. It’s a daily thing. Every day brings us closer to retirement. Everyone of us. And we are not irreplaceable. But we can ensure our relevance. We can take steps to control the process before HR figures out we’ve just had our 25th anniversary with the company.
There are ways to carve out expert niches without advertising it and thus create facts. Alternatively, work with HR to raise the next generation, including your successors. As you mentor them make sure you learn as much from them as they should learn from you. Use your experience and institutional knowledge to your advantage to make things happen — for you and your colleagues. They will remember, especially the bright young things. We all know the attraction of outside expertise. A tremendous amount of the consultancy sector’s turnover is simply based on the fact that they are outsiders, expensive and therefore must be smart. Newbies and outside experts (including the good ones) cannot match your institutional knowledge and expertise. Use it.
Learn the Tricks of the Trade — Continuously
Another concrete action step is at least implicitly part of your job description anyway, regardless of your age: stay on top of the game. Know what’s going on in your field. Know who the thinkers and players are and see what they have to say. Learn from their trials and errors. Here is the hard part: be ready to learn new tricks as an old dog. Remember those marketing execs who were unable to transition from TV to social media? How much of that was due to attitude and unwillingness to open up? People sniff out the wrong attitude. Don’t have it.
This is not easy. Change is uncomfortable and having to adapt is challenging and it doesn’t get easier with age. However, making sense of your aging career and how to turn your years from a headache for HR into a corporate and personal success is rewarding. A coach can provide support to transform your thinking process and to become aware of the strengths you can (still) develop further. A coach can also work with you to uncover how to use your strengths in the context of your organization.
I want to end this with the example of one of my best friends who is a trained lawyer. Life took him out of his job for several years. At around 60, he went back into it. Frankly it was challenging and it took a while for him to find his bearings. He had the law down but he had been out of a corporate setting for so long and now found himself significantly older than the juniors — no surprise there — but also older than the people he reported to.
The youngsters probably worked faster and were certainly more up to speed when it came to the technical stuff. However, my friend asked questions and signaled he was ready to learn. Eventually, at some stage my friend’s significant experience kicked in — and people began to notice.
Now the young hot shots appreciate his input and I am sure calming presence. Just picture yourself as a 25-year-old with ambitions of becoming partner facing a new and terrifying crisis. It would have been great to have someone who had seen these things before and is now able to treat this as an old hat. His “superiors” have learned to value his professionalism, reliability and I bet the occasional calming word themselves.
On the other hand, my friend is developing new skills on top of the old ones, makes money and gets to contribute. How can that become your story?
This blog post was first published in German on March 16, 2023 on crimalin.com.
You can take concrete steps not to let your career peter out. Not all of these are equally easy for everyone, but with the help of a coach, they are not out of reach:
· Cement your own relevance to your organization
Obviously, companies do take a hard look at people nearing the legal retirement age. A 55-year-old manager is expensive and the hard fact is the question how much will a company still get out of him (or her if she actually made it to the higher echelons of the organization). There is younger (and cheaper) talent to consider as they jockey for management slots.
Despite paying lip-service to oppose discrimination and countless workshops and sensitivity trainings to combat sub-conscious bias, old(er) employees find themselves sidelined if not plain pushed out of their jobs.
What Have You Done to Stay Relevant?
However, there are other things at work here, too. The relationship you have with your employer is reciprocal, meaning, they offered you that compensation package in return for the hard and soft skills, know-how, etc. you brought to the table. After 25 years of climbing the corporate ladder the question is whether that relationship is still reciprocal. Presumably managers have received raises and other perks over the years. In return what have managers done to stay on top of their game? This may sound like harsh corporate Darwinism. The challenge I want to pose is to openly explore what reasons beyond payroll costs and age could be behind your sagging career.
Do Not Assume HR or your Company Has a Plan for You
Let’s take a look at your organization’s career development plans. Do they even have any? If you look around carefully, you will see the corporate landscape littered with 32-year-old hot shots who at some point or another had been nominated for internal and external high potential programs only to flame out after they got their certificates and dinner vouchers. Not because they didn’t deserve those junkets. The reasons behind such still-born careers are rather dull: the organization did not really know what to do with them. Still below 40 these high-flyers (male and female) are disenchanted and leave — because the company had no plan and was just throwing red meat at promising candidates. Raising new high potentials will probably cost them just as much as getting you over to “proper” retirement age. Organizations with no plan might safe themselves some payroll money by pushing you into early retirement. However, they probably lose as much if not more by wasting other talented staff members.
What is harder to explore is your relevance to the organization. Businesses have a responsibility to ensure their workforce is up to snuff. They are not charitable organizations. At 55 are you up to date with what’s going on or do you sub-consciously believe there is nothing new under the sun? The last generation of managers we all know who fell into this trap were the top marketing professionals who failed to realize what was coming their way with the internet and social media.
Here is a little personal note: I am pushing my mid-50s now and have come to the painful conclusion that it has become harder for me to stay curious. Often I have to make an intentional effort to keep my trap shut and just listen and ask questions — and not start pontificating because I think I’ve seen it all. If this does not apply to you, well done.
Retirement Should Not Come as a Surprise
Another important point is that our age should not come to anyone’s surprise. It’s a daily thing. Every day brings us closer to retirement. Everyone of us. And we are not irreplaceable. But we can ensure our relevance. We can take steps to control the process before HR figures out we’ve just had our 25th anniversary with the company.
There are ways to carve out expert niches without advertising it and thus create facts. Alternatively, work with HR to raise the next generation, including your successors. As you mentor them make sure you learn as much from them as they should learn from you. Use your experience and institutional knowledge to your advantage to make things happen — for you and your colleagues. They will remember, especially the bright young things. We all know the attraction of outside expertise. A tremendous amount of the consultancy sector’s turnover is simply based on the fact that they are outsiders, expensive and therefore must be smart. Newbies and outside experts (including the good ones) cannot match your institutional knowledge and expertise. Use it.
Learn the Tricks of the Trade — Continuously
Another concrete action step is at least implicitly part of your job description anyway, regardless of your age: stay on top of the game. Know what’s going on in your field. Know who the thinkers and players are and see what they have to say. Learn from their trials and errors. Here is the hard part: be ready to learn new tricks as an old dog. Remember those marketing execs who were unable to transition from TV to social media? How much of that was due to attitude and unwillingness to open up? People sniff out the wrong attitude. Don’t have it.
This is not easy. Change is uncomfortable and having to adapt is challenging and it doesn’t get easier with age. However, making sense of your aging career and how to turn your years from a headache for HR into a corporate and personal success is rewarding. A coach can provide support to transform your thinking process and to become aware of the strengths you can (still) develop further. A coach can also work with you to uncover how to use your strengths in the context of your organization.
I want to end this with the example of one of my best friends who is a trained lawyer. Life took him out of his job for several years. At around 60, he went back into it. Frankly it was challenging and it took a while for him to find his bearings. He had the law down but he had been out of a corporate setting for so long and now found himself significantly older than the juniors — no surprise there — but also older than the people he reported to.
The youngsters probably worked faster and were certainly more up to speed when it came to the technical stuff. However, my friend asked questions and signaled he was ready to learn. Eventually, at some stage my friend’s significant experience kicked in — and people began to notice.
Now the young hot shots appreciate his input and I am sure calming presence. Just picture yourself as a 25-year-old with ambitions of becoming partner facing a new and terrifying crisis. It would have been great to have someone who had seen these things before and is now able to treat this as an old hat. His “superiors” have learned to value his professionalism, reliability and I bet the occasional calming word themselves.
On the other hand, my friend is developing new skills on top of the old ones, makes money and gets to contribute. How can that become your story?
This blog post was first published in German on March 16, 2023 on crimalin.com.
posted by Peter at 12:50 PM
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