Q: Age, ageism and reverse ageism

Hi there. In my blog, I usually share my insight and knowledge into certain topics in the hope of explaining them to my readers - but then there are some posts about topics which interest or puzzle me, but I certainly don't have all the answers. Now this is going to be the latter today and in fact, I'm going to be doing a series of posts on issues that I don't really have all the answers to and would love to hear back from you guys. I'd love to hear what you have to say about these topics which do confuse and confound me. So today, let's start with a tricky issue: age, ageism and reverse ageism. Now my regular readers will know that I'm 42. Okay? I'm a bald, middle-aged man and this is a funny age to be at in my career - you see, all my life, I had been quite used to working for people older than me or at least people who are around the same age. But as I get older and older, the chances of me working with someone younger than me increases. So when I was 24, everyone was much older than me in the work place but now that I'm 42, I'm increasingly meeting people who are younger than me and in some cases, a lot younger. I'm not quite sure how to deal with this.

I don't know if you guys do this, but when I meet someone younger than me, I would usually check if they are doing well and I would like to be doing at least as well as them, if not better. Now I'm not doing too badly for myself financially, but there's always someone out there who's going to be better than you no matter how good you are. I am collaborating with some people who are younger than me and I have some mixed feelings. You see, my first reaction at first when I realized how young they are was to doubt their credibility - like good grief, for how many years have you been working? Aren't you somewhat inexperienced? Are you the kind of person who will go out on a Thursday night, get drunk and then be useless in the office on a Friday because you're just too hungover? Yes, this is the kind of very ageist assumptions I would make of someone who was younger than me and I hate to say this, but there's no smoke without fire. Sometimes I can't help but feel that I don't have that much in common with young people these days and that age gap is probably the source of my prejudice. But am I being terribly unfair in making such ageist assumptions then? Am I perhaps somewhat insecure as well - could that be fueling my unwillingness to work with someone so much younger? Or is it just ageism?

When I work with older people, you have the excuse to take a step back and say, "okay, how do we solve this problem boss? You're the older, more experienced and wiser one here, please tell us what to do." Then I can just sit back, relax and await instructions from the oldest and most senior person around. My chairman is 69 years old and he's certainly old enough to be my father, so it's quite easy to have that kind of relationship with him at work. But when you're the oldest person in the room, people tend to do that to you. And if someone younger takes the lead, you might feel upset, like, "hey I'm older and more experienced, why didn't you ask me for my opinion? Why aren't I the one handling this?" There's either the stress of having to take charge of difficult situations or the social anxiety of not being recognized as the top dog in that situation. Either way, I find it quite stressful working with younger people - one of the business partners I engage with is 31 and I once made a mistake with one of the proposals I had presented him. It was my fault, I rushed through it and prepared a lousy proposal and he called me out on it - somehow, because he's younger than me, I felt a sense of shame that I would have not really felt had it been someone like my 69 year old chairman doing the same thing to me. I just felt it was so wrong of me as the older guy to be caught making a mistake like that by someone younger than me.

Is this new? Hell no, not for me at least. I guess it depends on how competitive you are. I remember this moment during podium training at the 1993 SEA Games and one of my tumbling combinations were two whip backs into a back handspring into a full twist. I landed it and thought, hey, that was brilliant. Then this little Malaysian girl who must've been like 11 or 12 did the same entry: two whip backs, back handspring into a double twist, which was so much more difficult than what I did. Hands down, she out tumbled me, she was the better gymnast and I was just glad that I didn't have to compete against her (men only compete against men, women only compete against women). And then she just shot me this glance, she didn't say a word but the look on her face said, "anything you can do, I can do better". And of course, there was that whole Malaysia vs Singapore rivalry added into the mix. I was 17 and she was so much younger, oh that moment of frustration and just shame, to have a little girl like that make you look crap during podium training. I don't know if I was reading too much into a brief glance when our eyes met for just about one second or so, but boy that sure made me feel very uncomfortable. I guess this desire to perform better than people who are younger than us has always been a part of our lives, whether or not we are conscious about it. The idea of working with someone who is younger and more successful/capable/knowledgeable/richer etc than me makes me feel uncomfortable and insecure by that same token.

So do I feel intimidated by people who are younger and more successful than me? Well, honestly, I do, yes of course I do. It's exactly what happened with that young Malaysian gymnast, simply being reminded that someone who is so much younger than you has achieved so much more can make one feel very insecure - it makes you realize that you haven't been working hard enough and that you should be achieving so much more. I suppose that's part of the reason why I put so much effort into mentoring this younger guy who approached me for help with his career (which I have talked about in a number of posts since meeting him in May this year): he looks up to me, he is respectful and what do I get out of helping him? He massages my ego in knowing that I am able to help him in his career, that's all I get out of it and that goodwill is enough to make me want to help. On the other hand, I really don't want to end up like my father. Good grief. Some people learn useful things from their fathers, with my father, it is often the thought of "I don't want to end up like him" that motivates me to become a better person. My father has a blind spot: he ignores people who are doing better than him and only compares himself to people who are doing worse than him. He has quite a few siblings and those who are very rich are somehow forgotten - like he would never talk about them, but he would bitch about those in his extended family who are poor. And I'm like, yeah how would you feel if your richer family members talked about you in that same manner? But that's exactly how some people cope with the insecurity of being with more successful people.

I am fascinated by prodigies who have achieved great successes in their fields whilst still extremely young - take Tanmay Bakshi for example, this Canadian teenager is so smart that he was hired at the age of 14 by IBM as an AI expert. People like that are stunning and there is so much we could learn from someone like that and it would be such an interesting experience just to work with someone like that. Would I feel intimidated in the presence of someone so much younger and clearly more intelligent than me? Of course, but then again, I'd like to think that I have enough humility to be able to cope with such a situation. And whilst Tanmay Bakshi is quite an extreme example, there are plenty of young people who have done some pretty stunning things in the financial services industry before they were 30, or even 25. The key reason is because things are changing so quickly in the world of banking today - the kinds of products that people were investing in 20 years ago are completely obsolete and if you take something like Cryptocurrency for example, Bitcoins were only created in 2008 and their popularity and value only really rose in November 2013. So it really doesn't matter if you're 25 or 65 years old when it comes to Cryptocurrency because most people have only been using it for less than ten years and so even if you do have years of experience dealing with something else in the financial services industry, new trends like Cryptocurrencies will level the playing field as your other previous experience is somewhat or even totally irrelevant today and the same can be said about most industries from engineering to IT.

In fact ageism can quite easily go the other way of course - think about how young people would roll their eyes if they come across an older person who simply doesn't understand modern technology. I remember my sister trying to explain some of the features of his mobile phone to my dad and oh boy, all I can say is that she is a lot more patient than I ever will be. Thus I am only too conscious about having a phone that most young people would look at with that look. "Oh look you have an iPhone 5, how cute - that brings back memories of when I used to have one of those when I was little." Oh ageism can quite easily be directed at older people in the workplace, if you're older, people are going to think you get tired more easily, that you go to bed before ten at night, that you're out of touch with the latest trends in technology, that you have absolutely no idea what is going on in popular culture and that you have absolutely nothing in common with young people today. So even if you do watch the latest movies, wear the most trendy designer clothing, go clubbing, frequently attend music festivals, run marathons and have all the biggest hits currently in the charts on your phone, you're almost expected to challenge all those ageist stereotypes to convince young people that even though you may old enough to be their parents, you actually have a lot more in common with them as the age gap really isn't that significant. The assumption that most people will make about older people is that they will always feel a lot more comfortable with the things that they had become familiar with when they were younger and find it hard to adapt to the changes in the modern world - whether or not this assumption is valid varies on a case by case basis, there's no smoke without fire: otherwise this stereotype wouldn't exist in the first place. But yes, I know this is something I am up against as I get older.

So right now, I am brokering a deal between two parties and good grief, they're both about 30 and I feel like the old mother hen making sure the contracts are properly prepared whilst they are racing ahead trying to close the deal. I like being considered experienced, being the 'safe pair of hands' to handle a big project like that but on the other hand, I hate feeling like I'm the oldest person in the room. Maybe there's a part of me that is just in denial about being middle aged and I'm not sure if we ever really get used to being just plain 'old'. Here's the thing about growing old: it's sometimes so easy to forget just how old you are, something can just trigger a memory of something you did when you were 18 or 21 years old and you remember very clearly, as if it was yesterday and you think, hey it wasn't that long ago that I was young! I get this a lot with the music from my teenage years. But of course, that memory could be of an event that happened over 20 years ago and it only feels 'recent' because somehow, your brain has managed to capture all the sights, sounds and feelings of that particular event in your memory bank. And for me, I suppose part of my discomfort with growing old is based on my own ageism towards older people. I hate the idea of people looking at me and seeing an old(er) man, perhaps that's why I try hard to project an image of a person who is trendy, active and sporty on my Instagram. Though sometimes I wonder if I am trying just a bit too hard, maybe I should just come to terms with my age?

There you go, that's it from me on this topic. How do you feel about the issue of age and ageism? Have you worked with people a lot younger than you? Or if you're young, are you inherently ageist towards older people? And if you're around my age, how do you feel trapped in the middle like that? Furthermore, do you feel old or young - what is your mental age? Please leave a comment below, share your feelings about the issue of age and ageing. Many thanks for reading.