DALLAS – Visitors to Starwood Montessori School in Frisco, Texas, might mistake 27-year-old Anita Khandpur for one of its energetic, young teachers.
But her youthful appearance belies her credentials. Khandpur is the entrepreneur who founded the school five years ago and now directs its 40-member staff and 300 students.
“The hardest thing about working with so many people and being so young is that you always need to prove yourself,” she said. “In my mind, I’m 40.”
An axiom of business has been that authority comes with age. But that’s changing.
Employees too young for wrinkles or midlife bulges are joining the management ranks and supervising workers who may have been born decades before them.
Demographics and cost-cutting are at the heart of the role reversal.
As the first of 76 million baby boomers leave the work force, either because they retire or are laid off in favor of younger and cheaper employees, businesses are beginning to stem the brain drain by grooming younger workers for management.
Other boomers have no plans to settle into rocking chairs and are launching second careers. When they do, they may find themselves reporting to someone as young as their children.
“Demographic changes are the biggest employee-relations issue today, and generational issues are very high on the list,” said Keith Greene, a spokesman for the Society for Human Resource Management.
Experts say workplace conflict is almost unavoidable.
“It’s going to be hard for older workers to adjust,” said Alex Ramsey, president of LodeStar Universal, a Dallas-based management consulting company. “They truck along for years. Then suddenly, someone younger is over them. They worry they’ll be tossed aside.”
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Younger bosses may feel frustrated and anxious.
Many young people are entering the work force with high expectations about how quickly they will reach the top of an organization.
Flush with ambition and opportunities, some start their own businesses. Others job-hop until they get the promotion they believe they deserve.
When they reach the corner office, they worry older workers won’t take them seriously, Ramsey said.
Yet few companies are coaching younger bosses on managing older workers, says Mel Fugate, an assistant professor of management at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.
“They’re horribly behind on this,” he said.
Fugate teaches professional MBA students in their late 20s and early 30s who are already supervising older workers. He also speaks from personal experience, having been a manager in his 20s.
“Working for someone younger will become quite common,” he said. “The trends are clear.”
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Experts say some companies shy away from the topic out of concern they’ll appear to be discriminating based on age. Other businesses don’t see a need yet for formal training programs.
Terry Howard, Texas Instruments’ diversity director, said that he sees “more evidence” of younger bosses managing older workers but that it’s not a pressing issue at the company.
Employees bring up generational issues only in casual conversations, he said.
Still, a cottage industry of generational consultants is betting just the opposite.
“This is as white hot as a business topic can get,” said Chuck Underwood, president of the Generational Imperative, which counsels companies on managing age differences.
For the first time, he says, four generations are active and critical to the American work force – the Silent Generation (ages 60 to 72), baby boomers (ages 40 to 59), Generation Xers (ages 25 to 39) and Millennials (24 and under).
Each brings its own values to the job that employers need to recognize and account for, he said.
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“It’s imperative that companies understand these generational differences so they can be bridged,” Underwood said. “Businesses that get it will flourish – those that don’t will flounder.”
Generational consultant Claire Raines expects sparks to fly as more boomers begin working for thirtysomething bosses.
She says boomers define themselves by their work and tend to put in long hours. Generation Xers, by contrast, want a better balance between work and the rest of their lives. When they arrive on the job, it’s not the time put in that matters, she said. It’s the results.
“Generation X bosses won’t be impressed by boomers’ long hours – they’ll be looking at what their employees produce,” Raines said. “Meanwhile, boomers won’t understand why their younger bosses are leaving the office at 5 o’clock.”
On the other hand, she said she expects Millennials to have no difficulty supervising boomers when they reach the management ranks in the next decade.
“Both generations have positive attitudes – they should get along just fine,” Raines said.
Many young bosses suggest that acknowledging the age gap forthrightly and embracing older employees’ experience are crucial to supervising older workers.
“Mutual trust and respect is key,” said James Appleton, 27, executive vice president of the Dallas office of Mad River Post, a national video post-production company. He manages a staff of nine producers and assistants, most of whom are older than he is.
“They have to trust that I’ll listen to their suggestions and try to make calculated decisions accordingly,” he said. “And I have to respect that they’re experts in their field.”
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Khandpur, who has a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in education, says her advice for young bosses boils down to two simple tips: Get your credentials and know what you’re talking about.
“Doing those two things will move the conversation past age pretty quickly,” she said.
It worked when Manuela Behm, 47, applied for a teaching job at the Montessori school. She says she was startled to learn that her boss would be 20 years younger.
“When I met Anita for my interview, I said to myself, “I’m going to be led by a child!”‘ Behm said. “But after listening to her, I concluded she was very mature for her age.”
Judy Stark, a 62-year-old employee at the State Bank in Carrollton, Texas, says older workers with younger bosses sometimes develop a chip on their shoulders.
“Their defeatist attitude then turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she said. “They’d be better off if they just had an optimistic outlook about work.”
Stark says she enjoys working for and with younger employers because it keeps her on her toes. At the same time, she says, she feels as though she’s teaching them.
“I’ve had a lifetime of experiences with people, and that helps in dealing with customers,” she said.
Underwood says the best way out of this generational thicket is for both young and old to avoid stereotypes about age and understand each can learn from the other.
Khandpur recalls how a 60-year-old former assistant consoled her after a hard day.
“Does life get any easier?” Khandpur asked, her head in her hands.
“She said, “Anita, life doesn’t get any easier. You just learn how to handle it better.”‘
“And she was so right.”
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(c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News.
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PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): WRK-GENXBOSS
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AP-NY-07-12-05 0616EDT
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