Four Key Roles Elders Offer Their Organizations

If you’re curious about how to groom your wisdom to be a “modern elder,” join me Feb 26-March 1 in Santa Fe at one of my “Chip’s Wisdom Weekends”: https://www.meawisdom.com/workshop/chips-wisdom-weekend-become-an-impactful-modern-elder/

When nearly a half-dozen MEA alums send me the same article in the same week, I know I need to take notice. Thanks to those of you who sent me this new MIT Sloan Management Review article by Canadian business academics David Hannah and Jeffrey Yip with the title of today’s blog post. 

It’s been more than eight years since we introduced the term “modern elder” to the world with our midlife wisdom school and my book “Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.” I wrote blog posts about reclaiming the word “elder” much like we did “yankee,” “black,” “redneck,” and “queer” and to distinguish between “elder” (a relative term) and “elderly” (the last 5-10 years of your life). But, I have to say we’ve only had middling success as every week at the Modern Elder Academy we hear a common refrain, “Love the program, hate the name,” although it is true that a vocal minority loves the name and idea of a “modern elder who’s as curious as they are wise.

So, you can imagine my glee when I read this article and saw two esteemed academics bringing the word “elder” into the workplace. They suggest that universities have emeritus positions, so why don’t companies? And, I’ve said that companies are losing institutional wisdom every day when someone retires or is let go later in their career. The question we ought to ask in our 50s and 60s isn’t “how will you spend your retirement,” but instead “how will you invest your wisdom?”

When Nelson Mandela founded the Elders, he knew that these global leaders could offer wisdom and principled leadership on global issues, not bound by the incentives of political office. He went on to write, “They do not have careers to build, elections to win, constituencies to please. They can talk to anyone they please and are free to follow paths they deem right, even if hugely unpopular.”

The academics suggests that there are four types of valuable workplace elders:

• Steward, who preserves organizational continuity and protects against organizational amnesia
• Ambassador, who extends influence both within the company and beyond the walls 
• Futurist, who bridges experience and innovation, seeing both the value of past and future 
• Catalyst, who: enables change across external boundaries by potentially changing an industry

I realize that when Airbnb’s founders hired me as their mentor which quickly morphed into being the full-time Head of Global Hospitality and, two months later, the title “and Strategy” was added, they were looking for me to perform each of these roles but the Steward. But, we had no language for this other than the fact that co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky would occasionally call me Airbnb’s Secretary of State (the “Ambassador”). Many of the constituencies getting disrupted by the company were more like me (older, established) than like the founders (younger, tech- and design-obsessed), whether that be a city Mayor, a hotel union boss, or corporate travel manager.

Here are the 7 concrete ways the academics suggest that organizations embrace elder roles, along with my own personal experience at Airbnb which started 13 years ago. 

1. Consider what kind of eldership roles are needed. This is an important consideration because  if you have a Steward elder but need a Catalyst, you may not get the results you’re looking for. Fortunately, at Airbnb, I was able to paint with a wide paintbrush because my pattern recognition could immediately determine what the company needed and that was constantly evolving as Airbnb doubled in size each year. 
2. Formalize pathways for older workers’ transitions within the organization. This is more appropriate for those who are established elders already within the company. I’ve written about how Procter & Gamble created a Mastery program for seasoned leaders to share their wisdom in a structured way.
3. Involve elders in areas of strategic importance. The fact that the founders elevated me to the head of Strategy after a couple months in the business meant that they could see my “crystalized intelligence” brain was able to connect the dots moving forward by asking questions like, “What do we want this company to look like in three years and what seeds do we need to start planting now in order to become that company?” Often, younger leaders are more focused on what’s right in front of them.
4. Establish councils that join seasoned professionals with younger leaders. We created a Wisdom@Airbnb Employee Resource Group for older workers (when I joined the company, only two of us were older than 45) that allied with younger folks to explore how we could share wisdom and knowledge across the generations. Many bigger companies create Intergen ERG’s. 
5. Design mentorship programs to pair elders with emerging leaders. I’ve written quite a bit about my perspective that there are two kinds of mentors: Librarians and Confidantes. Given that I had more than 100 mentees over the course of my seven and a half years at Airbnb, it was essential to be able to distinguish which kind of mentor the mentee was looking for. You can only be a Confidante to a small group of mentees at once since it’s a more comprehensive role.
6. Be prepared to navigate tensions. When an elder is miscast in their role (the company needs a Steward, not a Catalyst), tensions can arise and it’s essential to make sure that the elder’s role can evolve, but beware of the elder who thinks they’re great at all four roles. The only time I was consistently at odds with senior leadership was when I warned about the risk of losing the soul of the company by growing too fast. Soul vs. scale is a classic area for potential tension. 
7. Periodically evaluate the effectiveness of eldership roles. As is true for any leadership position, you constantly need to ask whether this set-up is working, but be patient. An elder can have an “invisible productivity” that makes everyone around them even better, so the kind of productivity an older worker offers may be slow in coming but more lasting. 

There you have it. The academic world is now embracing the world “elder” in the workplace. Now, what are we going to do to create the kind of intergenerational collaboration that the world has never seen?

-Chip