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Key points
- Other people may see us as older than we see ourselves.
- You have to be realistic (not pessimistic) about your prospects.
- Listen to feedback, but don’t let criticisms impact your self esteem.
- Every stage of life offers opportunities for personal growth and learning.
Jerry was 59 when he was passed over for promotion. The position of Vice President, which everyone thought he would get, went instead to a 42-year-old who had recently been hired.
When Jerry came to see me, he was angry, but also concerned that maybe he should quit before they just fired him. “They’re sending me a message,” he said. “They’re telling me I’m old and unloved.” I saw Jerry off and on for a few months after that and, while he was still pondering whether to quit, they finally let him go. They said something about his “inability to appeal to an emerging demographic”—HR-speak for looking older than the target customer.
To Jerry, it sounded calculated but stupid. After that, instead of discussing his potential departure, Jerry and I began talking about how he could recover from feeling suddenly old.
Jerry had been a top sales manager at a large sports equipment manufacturer. His division sold over $200 million a year, mostly to soccer and hockey enthusiasts around the world. He went to a lot of games, and pitched the teams’ purchasing agents on everything from uniforms to nets, balls, and pucks. He visited stores that sold his firm’s products; he arranged celebrity appearances when they met their sales goals.
He told everyone he had the greatest job in the world. But then they fired him. If their stated theory is to be believed, he had aged out of the 15-39 demographic that constituted the most likely retail purchaser. Equipment sales were all about image and, apparently, he didn’t fit the image.
So, the question was how Jerry could resist buying into this image, allowing it to become a life sentence. Already, he had started to half-believe it. He told me he was now ill-at-ease with his buddies, mostly guys at the firm who were somewhat younger. He wondered whether he looked older than he thought he did. He felt embarrassed by getting the boot, and grumbled “Maybe I’m starting to slump.”
Often, when we’re (unceremoniously) made aware of our (advancing) age, we imagine the worst. We think we’re old in every way—physically, socially, professionally —when we might just have aged out in a few people’s estimation for one narrow purpose. I suggested to Jerry that while the firm had done a number on him, and clearly knocked him sideways, he shouldn’t let that destroy his sense of himself. “You can pick up the pieces,” I said. “In fact, most of the pieces are still standing.” The important thing was how he felt about himself, not how other people—with ulterior motives—said that they felt.
I asked what he knew he had going for him. He was in excellent shape. He had experience. Emotionally, he was on solid ground with a wife and two grown kids. What he needed was something to do. He had posted a resume on a few job boards but, so far, no response. “It’s always better to contact people who know you, who know what you can do,” I said. He had to develop a pitch to remind people of how good he was. He needed to follow up, unabashedly. As we get older, we can’t be shy. It wastes time. Besides, we’ve earned the right to present ourselves as self-confident. People will expect it —and wonder if we don’t.
But beyond telling people what he’d done, Jerry had to set himself apart. I asked how he was unique. As we get older, we can showcase skills that are not just situational. Our skills become instinctive, ready for deployment in any number of settings. They’re malleable and transferable; they reflect a learned flexibility. I suggested that even beyond his friends, he might go to trade shows, start chatting up the company reps, and let them know he could supercharge their product lines (even if they’re electronics or food, rather than sports equipment). One of the first things we have to learn as an older job-seeker is how to sell ourselves. “Help people to imagine what you can do for them,” I said.
My strategy (okay, my pep talk) went over well. But Jerry wondered, “How can I convince myself before I convince someone else?” On the surface, at least, he had a point. If we can’t believe in ourselves, if we can’t see ourselves as effective, then it’s hard to project self-confidence.
But still. I thought he was giving too much weight to what other people did. “You can’t try to second guess those guys at your company,” I said. “They thought you were too old to represent a product designed for 20-year-olds —so what?” The fact is that he didn’t even deal with 20-year-olds but with team managers and retailers. So, who knows what his colleagues were thinking, or even whether they were thinking? Best just to ignore them and get on with restarting his career.
As I’ve spoken with people who fear that they’ve become old, I’ve realized how vulnerable we are to other people’s sometimes wanton, scattershot, and unthinking barbs. Because these people have inflicted so much pain, we grant them commensurate powers of perception that they don’t necessarily have. We let them tell us who we are. But in fact, we have to make up our own minds about who we are, and then act accordingly. I told Jerry that he made a good impression and had a lot of transferable skills. He just had to make the most of that.
I suggested that he join a networking group for executives laid off on account of age. I thought, if he heard enough employers’ excuses for firing “old” employees, all those excuses would start sounding jargony (like Jerry’s incapacity with “an emerging demographic”). They wouldn’t sound real. They wouldn’t seem to fit the experienced, intelligent people who had been saddled with them. In other words, Jerry would see examples of people, more or less like himself, who didn’t fit the image that a few other people thought they projected.
Healthy aging is, in part, about developing immunity to other people’s narrow conceptions of us based on chronological age. If we feel competent, then we need to act it. We need to go out and convince people that they’re not “taking a chance” on us but, rather, making a good investment.
