Africa boasts of a population of 1.2billion, of which those aged below 18 are 50%. In addition, millennials make up approximately 30% of our population. That means approximately 80% of the African population is below the age of 38. Projecting ahead, our population is set to double to 2.5billion by 2050. The implication of this trend is that we will increasingly see a younger workforce. Furthermore, we will see more incidents of “young” people managing older subordinates.
Therein lies a challenge for young leaders: Our culture is rich in elder-dominance, whereby older people are to be accorded respect by virtue of their age, and are not to be questioned. How do these young people then assert their leadership in business? Further, many young lack confidence about their leadership capability as they feel they do not have legitimate authority to lead. Many young feel that they do not have sufficient war stories to earn their stripes.
We are living in a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous: our leaders of tomorrow will have to navigate these increasingly choppy waters to ensure that their businesses thrive. Critical to being able to get their businesses to thrive is being able to optimally manage their people, older subordinates included.
Young leaders tend to struggle in this area because of the psychology of attraction: one tends to feel more comfortable around people who are like them. Having to lead older subordinates throws them out of their comfort zones. In this zone of discomfort, young leaders often second-guess themselves with thoughts like, “They will resist my leadership and assume that I do not have the experience to do the job. They will not support my ideas”.
This internal rhetoric is often not based on truth. Instead often they are unfounded assumptions young leaders hold about how others perceive them. These cripple their confidence and hinder their ability to lead, as “What you focus on grows, what you think about expands, and what you dwell upon determines your destiny.” (Robin Sharma)
Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” Young leaders will lose the game of leading older staff perpetually if they do so in an authoritative style. Many are unable to play well because they are oblivious to the rules of their game. Instead they are attempting to copy a match they watched the elder generation play instead of learning the rules of their game.
The game of authoritative leadership, where the leader has absolute authoritarian control, is predicated on that authority being derived from the leader’s superior knowledge, as a result of his/her experience and/or age. So a young leader with less experience than older subordinates will struggle: It’s like a young junior military officer trying to lead experienced personnel: The experienced troops will laugh at him and not take him seriously.
To be able to win the game, young leaders need to lead in a collaborative style, where they lead by example, listen to and learn from older subordinates, building trust and mutual respect.
Multigenerational workforces are critical as age-diverse organisations are able to foster creativity and innovation, key tenets required to survive the choppy disruptive waters we will continue to face in our business environments.
