Ageism is a bias and a choice

I found a beautiful post today by Marni Stevenson who says, “Despite how society might view me and women of my age group as 'middle-aged', we still have dance moves, an abundance of energy and so many ideas to share with the world.” She exemplifies her great ideas while referring to actresses Andie McDowell and Dame Helen Mirren.

Beautiful post! Age is a number! I started my PhD at the age of 50 in my fourth language French. I succeeded and embarked upon a whole new career as an academic in communication, organization, and leadership, focusing particularly on leadership development lately, for the last 10 years. Now, I am working as a leadership developer in private sector, in this great company #Telenor with great #D&I values and practices. My boss saw past my age and saw my value in my diversity; multicultural, multilingual, multidisciplinary, long experience from many sectors and positions, and almost 60 and all other things that make me unique and who I am.

We are all unique. If we are allowed to see our diversity and feel proud of who we are, if we are seen as the unique individuals we are and be treated with respect, care and dignity, we can become happy societies and happy organizations. But bias is everywhere and #ageism is perhaps the most common bias we meet, because we all get old regardless of our sex, race, disability, sexual orientation etc. Ageism is indeed within us all like all our biases are. If you have a brain, you have a bias. According to WHO, ageism refers to the stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) towards others or oneself based on age. They say:

“Ageism affects everyone. Children as young as 4 years old become aware of their culture’s age stereotypes. From that age onwards they internalize and use these stereotypes to guide their feelings and behavior towards people of different ages. They also draw on culture’s age stereotypes to perceive and understand themselves, which can result in self-directed ageism at any age. Ageism intersects and exacerbates other forms of disadvantage including those related to sex, race and disability.”

So, if you think, I am a white woman or man, heterosexual, good looking, good education, privileged background in all forms, I enjoy life without being exposed to any sort of bias or discrimination, you are wrong. As you age, you will be referred to as the “old chap”, “coffin-dodger”, or 15+ slang words there exist for instance in English for an old man. Women will be called “old bat”, “biddy”, or 30+ slang words there exist for an old woman. We will all end up in the nursing home and become the “old person”, play bingo, wear diapers, and die if we don’t accidentally die young and beautiful.

But what does old mean? It is such a relative term. Are you old or you act old? Are you resisting your age and try to look younger than you are and ridicule yourself? I hear there is a reality series called "Hotter than My Daughter" where the daughter is embarrassed by the way her mother dresses and acts. It sounds sad. Personally, I am a great fan of people like Meryl and Clint who work and contribute to the world of culture and are true role models. I like the way they carry their age and admire them when they dress with style. I saw a great photo where Meryl is using a sexy jumpsuit in a TV show. Why not? Dame Helen Mirren is playing a retired MI6 assassin who still take contracts on the side of her B&B in the movie Red. She was seen as “still smoking hot” in the media. There is no reason why a woman or man should start to wear baggy, gray clothes, and try to make her-/himself invisible.

I still wear beautiful clothes that I bought for 20 years ago because they were timeless, classic, high quality pieces and I will wear them until I wear a body bag as?Marni Stevenson?says.?I color my hair because it makes me feel better, but have no ambitions about Botox etc. I am quite happy with all my wrinkles but dissatisfied with some sneaking arthrosis that makes me feel I am getting old, but I normally don’t think of my age unless I am reminded by some young child on the streets of Turkey calling me “Auntie” that is a common way of addressing old women, or my GP in Norway who says “you are not young anymore, slow down a bit”, or the painful suspicion of having been discriminated in a recruitment process because of my age.

#Ageism?is one of the most common biases inside us and out there and it can be experienced as the harshest discrimination towards all of us. It hurts! It hurts our self-esteem. In the workplace, the young and aspiring may see the older colleagues as slow, not possessing all the digital skills that they mean to have under their skin as digital natives. They can even feel resentment towards older colleagues who are lagging behind for some reason as guardians of status quo resisting change. Older employees can label the young ones as career chasing, offensive or even aggressive (especially if they are female). There are sometimes very challenging intergenerational conflicts in organizations. How unnecessary, sad and counterproductive this is when they could rather see each other as complementary resources and celebrate their diversity!

If we look at our work life now, we will find an incredible age diversity. There are older Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) who passed through childhood with TV as main source of information. There is Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) and Generation Xennials (born 1977-1983) who had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood. Millennials (born 1981-1996) were born into the age of Internet, web 1.0 and the amount of information they have access to has been limitless giving them a huge advantage. Generation Z or iGen (born 1997 or after) are the first to grow up with smartphones and social media and enjoy the web 2.0, the connectivity and ubiquity. There is also the generation Alpha (born 2010 or after) who is to join the workforce in some years, but they are already the smartphone and gaming experts and see their parents and anybody older than them as old, static and in their way.

The other day when I was talking with a senior manager during a leadership development program, he said to me he hoped that we would be teaching his generation how to effectively communicate with the new generation. The gap is huge between his generation (a baby boomer) and Gen Z. He is so right. Born between 1996 and 2012, Gen Z employees were raised alongside the internet and social media. This influences their values, preferences, priorities, and concerns as well as their responses and how they respond to what is going on in their immediate and larger environments compared with older colleagues from the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations.?It is said that “In summary, a typical Gen Zer is a self-driver who deeply cares about others, strives for a diverse community, is highly collaborative and social, values flexibility, relevance, authenticity and non-hierarchical leadership, and, while dismayed about inherited issues like climate change, has a pragmatic attitude about the work that has to be done to address those issues.” (see?What to know about Gen Z | Stanford News ). With Google at their fingertips, Gen Z are instant fact-checkers, and they value transparency and honesty. They want to feel that these are shared values at the workplace too. They also expect that their job is meaningful, and their employer communicate with them meaningfully. For them, actions speak louder than words and they are not tolerant when managers don’t walk the talk. They have grown up with cancel culture and they can job hop if they feel that they have a value conflict. They expect to have strong, empathetic leaders who focus on the issues that matter to them – diversity, inclusivity, belonging, sustainability, and equality. It is said that “For those who are now experiencing Gen Zers in the workplace, my advice is to recognize that these new colleagues are used to working collaboratively and flexibly, with an eye to being efficient in getting the job done. They are pragmatic and value direct communication, authenticity and relevance. They also value self-care. They may be more likely than older people were when they were the age of the Gen Zers to question rules and authority because they are so used to finding what they need on their own.” (ibid).

Without the intergenerational dialog, each generation of employees are underestimating the older generation as to their capabilities and their digital skills, while ignoring their rich experience. At the same time, each generation have the bias towards the younger generation for their lack of life experience. We all do ageism, against ourselves and others while we should rather see any age as valuable, and we should include everybody regardless of their age, where they can make a difference. Today, there are old and wise CEOs who would like to listen particularly to the Generation Z representatives and there are organizations that assign Boomers as mentors to their Millennials or Gen Zs and everybody wins. We all can be in each other’s mirrors and remind each other that we all get old, like in this song from Ronnie Wood:

I may not like to be rushed (?)

And I don't like to be hurt (cursed? purged?)

And you I don't like to be turned into anything

Why don't you keep my phone number in mind

Why don't you keep my phone number in mind

For I'll be right there in your mirror

When we get old

And we all get old

We all get old regardless of our skin color, physical capacities, gender and sexual orientation and we all can be discriminated in the job market because of our age. Sometimes we are too old, sometimes we are too young. In Norway we say, "50 and Finished" (femti og ferdig). When the state says that the retirement age will be 70 and we can work until 73, I wonder how unemployed people who passed 50 and meet?#agediscrimination?out there will survive economically and psychologically in a job market looking for the young and energetic workers. It is hard to experience ageism and feel that one has become invisible.

In reality, many people at their 50s and 60s are at their best age with a wealth of?#experience, plenty of?#energy, lots of?#time?and great?#motivation?for doing an extremely good job because they don't want to be perceived as "old and soon obsolete" in this highly accelerated world which demands a constant renewal of job skills. At the same time, they possess timeless?#leadershipskills?and?#mentoringcapacity?that haven't changed since the Great Alexander and Mentor, son of Alkimos. Experience and the gut feeling cannot be underestimated in a fast-changing world drowning in data, starved for information.

Today's workforce is likely to contain a higher proportion of older workers because of factors such as increased life expectancy and raising of the state pension age, which means that many people will need, and want to continue working. Many people want to work even beyond the pension age and successfully transition to voluntary work or independent consulting work. As long as older employees have an open mind, are willing to learn new skills, there are life-long learning opportunities. A growth mindset coupled with an arsenal of timeless skills, experiences, insights are treasures for organizations.

Aging can be beautiful if we can embrace getting old. As long as our brain functions and we learn and share, we stay "young". But, governments and organizations in work life need to do their piece to contribute to embracing?#agediversity?with wise policies, promotion of right attitudes and practices that will ensure an age diverse work environment where everybody contributes. We all need to feel useful and valued. That keeps us young. According to the AGE Platform Europe (Belgium) ”we know that lifelong learning in older age contributes to healthy ageing and particularly contributes to mental health and self-esteem”. They work actively to remove the age limits in voluntary work as many older persons with good health see it as meaningful to work even they have passed their seventies.

So, let's be like Meryl, Helen and Andie and show the world that age is a number and?#ageism?is outdated. These hard-working brilliant stars act in movies where their role nowadays is to play a person roughly their age. They don't try to take all sorts of plastic surgery to stay against the nature and pretend being younger. They go with the flow, and they are highly valued by their recruiters/casting managers for who they are.

But, the point is not just being like Meryl, Andie and Helen, but also like the casting managers. Dear recruiters out there, check your?#ageism?bias next time you get a CV of someone past 50 or 60 or seems too young, not yet 30 etc. Dear HR people out there, don't let someone program a nasty algorithm into your recruitment system that will sort and discard CV's based on age. At workplaces, dear leaders who do succession planning, stand against the ageism bias, value your senior staff as well as the very young ones and give them a chance; they may take you through the hard times with their unique experience and/or unique new skills. The best teams are diverse teams. Together we are strong.?

#unconsciousbias?#ageinclusion?#work?#experience?#ageism?#recruitment