“Youth is the gift of nature,
but age is a work of art.”

— Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I am discovering that age is not the determinate of contribution, capability, or relevancy.

I love it when I read an article that includes data to confirm my experience.

At a recent American Society on Aging annual conference, this statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was shared:

“There were 11 million Americans aged 65 and older working last year. That’s nearly one in five people (19%) of the entire U.S. labor force. And that percentage is expected to grow to one in four (25%) over the next few years.”

So, I am far from alone in my desire to stay active and engaged in my field. I have spent most of my career life taking the road less traveled. But in this case, I am joining a growing army of individuals who are still needed and vital to our economy. Who knew?

It is not a new phenomenon. I have been surrounded by parents and grandparents who worked well past the retirement age finding ways to add value and pursue purpose. My grandfather retired from his executive position to become the mayor of his small Pennsylvania town. My father volunteered at the local hospital until the day he went down and was diagnosed with advanced bone cancer. My mother turned her avocation of antiquing into a thirty-year career post-retirement as a respected antique appraiser and shop owner. I am sure if I look back further into my lineage, I will find many hard-working individuals who finished one career only to start another – in a possibly completely different direction. I never heard the statement in our household, “When I retire…..”

I can hear my grandmother saying, “You come from hardy stock.”

My choice of continuing in my career is not just a mindset that I have learned but a need for myself. I have more to do, learn, share, and bring to any role. I feel like I am just arriving at the best time in my career. A time when I have a foundation of experience, tools, resources, and relationships to leverage. I think the secret is not to develop any set biases or rigidity of thought. The capability of emotional intelligence is a real asset to being vital as one grows older. To have the self-awareness to know what you know and know what you don’t know is a great gift. To have developed the self-control to navigate any situation with a calm, nonjudgmental, open approach makes for great decision making. Someone once said, “You can’t put a price on experience.”

My confidence is in a good place and my competence is always growing. I have learned to balance it all with humility and not ego. I think that it is an old bias that the more senior of us assume a posture of “knowing it all.” The world and work are changing so rapidly that no one can know the answers to the challenges presented to us. It will take the collective genius and the perspectives of all of us to find a good path into the future. That there is real benefit to a multi-generational workforce.

This was affirmed by data collected by AARP and shared in an article authored by Ramona Schindelheim highlighting a conference panel.

“Older workers bring work experience and strong employability skills to the workplace. In fact, older workers have performed the same as, or better, than their younger counterparts on seven of 10 most important employability skills. Younger brains are faster, older brains have more context and judgment. In short, the 50+ workforce bring the experience and employability skills that employers need.”

AARP research shows an age-diverse workforce gives companies a competitive advantage in the following ways:

• • Stronger pipeline of talent providing continuity, stability, and retention of intellectual capital.
  • Multi-generational teams perform better.
  • Best way to service age-diverse market is with age-diverse workforce.
  • Age-diverse workforce provide greater diversity of ideas, knowledge, and skill sets.  
  • 7 out of 10 workers in the U.S. enjoy working with people from other generations.
  • Older workers appreciate the creativity of younger workers and younger workers appreciate the value of older workers’ experience, institutional knowledge and wisdom.

I am not making a case for a particular generation. I just find myself in a new place, with new choices and yet another transition in life to make. I join the army of those wanting to discover new roles and ways of working. “Put me in coach.”

As I move, not towards the finish line of my career but the starting gate of a new phase of my career, I look around to find role-models for individuals who have navigated the same paths ahead of me. This has been a habit of mine my entire life. To find individuals who are running the race of life in a way that I admire and paced ahead of me.

Early in my choice to build a business I sought out female entrepreneurs to watch. I have always kept a list of most admired leaders who inspire my constant dedication to working to be my best for everyone. I watch my peer consultants and coaches redesign their practices when national disasters or economic downturns challenged the marketplace. For every role and responsibility, I have assumed I have found role models who — like a light — guide my progress. I don’t tend to compete against others but against that highest standard of behavior that is needed for the role and situation.

I don’t have to look far or wide to find the pacesetters around me who can ‘light’ my path into unretirement.

Jackie Lowe-Steveson, coach and equine facilitator, who you would struggle to assign an age to was an early adapter in the field of equine leadership and learning. Jackie brings her cumulative wisdom and that of the natural world, a herd of horses (the oldest living mammal on the planet), a pack of dogs, her husband and partner Herb’s gifts, and years of experience to her work. When at the ranch doing the work of self-discovery, age is irrelevant to the horses and to nature. Time almost stops as it moves so slowly in a space where busy doesn’t compute. Both Jackie and Herb have encouraged me to stop worrying about everyone else’s transition and to focus on my own – as I am in the thick of it. (I’d rather be supporting someone else than wading into the waters of change myself.) Their encouragement has caused me to look within myself and around myself. I find role models for my future in all shapes, forms, ages, genders, and approaches.

A colleague from my past reached out to me via LinkedIn (which didn’t exist when we first met over thirty years ago.) He wanted to share with me that he had come out of retirement to provide leadership to a non-profit organization on whose board he was a member. He is committed to the organization’s mission, there was a need to respond to market changes and lead a transition, and he responded to the calling with enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that it is impossible not to join him in the quest to support this non-profit in the next phase of its development and future.

This blog I write is edited by Randy Martin, with whom I have worked for most of my career as a business owner, consultant, author, speaker, and coach. We met as young pups in business at Cleveland’s Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE). This watering hole was essential to my survival as a young entrepreneur and many of the relationships made over thirty-five years ago are still essential to my life and work today. We have traveled the roads of business survival, change, growth, and challenge together. No surprise that neither of us want to get off the carousel or leave the other behind. We have supported each other through all the life’s hurdles and have discovered that it is better together.

For me, the world of work has changed so greatly that one doesn’t feel like age is an obstacle. If it weren’t for my hair color, my attire is no different than that of other generations. I work from my home, from my phone, from a laptop anywhere there is Wi-Fi, and from an office. I commute to where I need to go. There are no barriers to the types of industries I can work within. Social norms have faded greatly, and age is not a determinant of fitting in any longer. Yippee!

And every where I look there are role-models.

• What is your story? Who are your role models?

As I cross what felt like a threshold — turning 65 years old — now feels like a self-imposed line. Maybe I don’t need to label it or explain it any further but rather just get out into the world and do some more good.

Thoughts?

Leslie

“Old age is like everything else.
To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

(see my last blog)
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