While it never won any Oscars, the film “The Intern” reminded us that experience never gets old. Robert DeNiro plays a 70-year-old retiree who wants to spice his life up by applying to be the “Senior Intern” to a CEO, Anne Hathaway, who is half his age. She initially doesn’t want to hire him because he’s “a little too observant,” but he does join her and what we see over the course of the film is that he morphs from intern to mentor. And, the inspiring relationship between Robert’s and Anne’s characters is beautiful.
My experience at Airbnb was just the opposite, but shares some parallels. Brian Chesky (and his co-founders) is almost half my age and hired me to be his in-house leadership and hospitality mentor in early 2013 when most people had never heard of this little tech start-up. Within a few weeks, I realized that I needed to be as much an intern as a mentor because I’d never worked in a tech company and I often felt like both the wisest and dumbest person in the room. The founders ultimately said I was as curious as I was wise which earned me the title, “modern elder.”
I coined the term “mentern” in my book “Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder” to capture the fact that with almost half of Americans working for a younger boss and five generations in the workplace for the first time, we need to operate as mutual mentors like never before. The physics of knowledge and wisdom used to flow from old to young, but it now flows in both directions. While I could offer my Airbnb colleagues EQ (Emotional Intelligence), they could offer me DQ (Digital Intelligence) and we were all better off for it.
As I spent more time exploring the topic of intergenerational collaboration, I got to know the guru on this subject Marc Freedman, who started Encore.org that is now known as CoGenerate.org. He’s my modern elder as I’ve learned so much from him about how we can create a society and workplaces that value one of the most important forms of diversity, age diversity.
I’m proud that Marc joined me on my MIDLIFE CHRYSALIS podcast last week and that we’ll be co-leading a Santa Fe workshop November 10-15 called How to be a World-Class “Mentern”: Mastering the Skills of Mutual Mentorship (this week’s episode with Rob Bell goes live this morning). This workshop is perfect for anyone asking the following questions:
- How can I feel relevant again in a workplace full of people younger than me?
- How can I distill my wisdom and share it in a way that younger folks will value it?
- How can I develop a new sense of purpose by feeling like I’m having an impact?
- How can I renew my sense of curiosity and openness to learning something new?
- What programs exist that foster more intergenerational collaboration?
Here’s a recent PBS NewsHour short video on Marc Freedman’s organization CoGenerate, and how it brings the generations together to co-create the future. Finally, for those of you who want to host a dinner party with multiple generations talking about relationships, purpose, society challenges, and more, check out MEA’s Generations Over Dinner program as thousands of people globally have experienced the magic of convening 3, 4, or even 7 generations at the dinner table.
-Chip
P.S. Last week, I posted a piece on the coming explosion of Golden Girls Housing and, as evidenced by this Linkedin thread, it went viral. What a gift that 2 days later, I met Sophie and Helen in Mendocino County who co-created a communal housing community on 18 acres of land in the mountains 33 years ago with 12 people (mix of men and women). They’re both having their birthdays this week with Sophie being 89 and Helen turning 96 and, while all of their original companions (except one who only lives there part-time) have passed on, there’s a whole new generation of Boomers and Xers who live with them and there are lots of kids and grandkids. These “old-growth” humans, living amidst “old-growth” redwoods are a reminder than creating community as we age is so essential.
