Forget the growth mindset. Think Preserve!

I know this is a bold statement, but it’s really helpful when you want to sustain the employability of your older workforce. 

We are so focused on growth and development that we are actually creating an environment that is not supportive for our older workforce. And to be clear on definitions here, I am talking about everybody above 45. The sad fact is that above 45 you are considered to be part of the elder workforce. When you just reached 47 or so, no one is going to say that you are part of that segment, not even you yourself. But it’s a simple fact of life. Now what you really need is another mindset, not one based on growth or development, but on the preservation of resources. 

Your future employability is based on a number of dimensions. The first dimension is your expertise in your field, are you still in touch with state-of-the-art developments? The second one is your capacity to anticipate changes in your organization and optimize your own skills, attitude and behavior. The third one is determined by how flexible you can adopt to changes in society, in the labor market. Can you switch careers? The fourth dimension is your sensitivity to changes in the way in which you participate and perform in different social contexts. Last but not least, the fifth dimension, is the way in which you find a balance between your own goals and that of the organizations that you work for. Getting ‘dizzy’ from these dimensions? Let’s have a closer look at this fifth dimension; this balance in goals. We’ll explore this a little further starting with what is called a “closed time perspective”. 

When you are young you have an open time perspective. Many things can happen in your life and you don’t know what will evolve. Death or retirement are not on your mind. But once you get older your time perspective tends to become closed. The father of a good friend of mine refers to this closed perspective as the “tapeline” perspective on life. You don’t know how much time you have, you don’t know where you are on the tapeline, but for sure that tapeline is not getting longer. (Great excuse to have just one more beer, by the way). 

This closed time perspective is a reality for many people. Most likely more than 50% of your workforce has a closed time perspective on their employment. Meaning that the goals they what to achieve are more in line with that perspective: on average, more short term and more oriented towards deepening existing social relations. Now this is the place where we need to strike a new balance between employee and organizational goals.

Now imagine what an open, growth and development mindset is doing for them. We know from research that it’s difficult for younger managers to give directions to older subordinates, to the effect that they receive less attention and less feedback and subsequently start to perform less. Having a growth and development mindset, strongly linked to personal ambition and responsibility, is not going to be helpful here. Maintaining a growth mindset in a situation like this is the perfect recipe for a self-fulfilling prophesy of stereotypical attributes of your older workforce: they clearly don’t want to grow, don’t take personal responsibility, etc., so something must be wrong with them. When all they are interested in is in preventing loss of their resources (capabilities, energy, vitality, self-image, etc.)

Giving up a growth mindset doesn’t mean that your organization won’t grow. It means it will only grow once you realize that you need to keep these people on board and not alienate them. 

So, if you are wondering in which direction your older workforce needs to grow, or what kind of individual development one of your older employees needs to go through, bring yourself to a halt, and ask yourself the simple question: “What is it that we need to preserve, and what would be short terms goals for that?”. Remember you can always pick up your original growth mindset later on. You can trust the growth that evolves from recognizing your fellow human being.