The average age of an NFL player is 26 years old. So while there are outliers like Tom Brady, who is playing at an elite level still at 45, the old saying mostly holds true, 'the worst thing you can give an athlete is a birthday card'! Professionals with such a physical toll on their bodies, like a professional football or basketball player, are easy to explain when there is a rapid decline in physical performance. Yet, it's not just athletes that peak early, it may apply to creatives like artists and musicians. Prince and Paul McCartney may be classic examples. Both wrote two of their biggest songs (Purple Rain and Yesterday) when they were 25 years old. Though they each continued to write and release music far past those youthful years, even they couldn't overcome the critique that anything released after 30, was just a misguided attempt at trying to replicate the genius of their earlier work.
For the normal person working in the corporate world, we assume our paths are quite the opposite. We're led to believe that each year of paid experience is another notch on a belt; we boast our time in chair as it raises our level of professional expertise, compensation, and reputation. Yet if that's the case, why do so many seemingly talented and tenured people struggle to sustain success or contentment? It may have to do with what science has uncovered as two unique states of intelligence: Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. If they are to be true, then it's not just athletes or creatives that should fear birthdays; we're on that list as well.
Fluid Intelligence is our natural ability to creatively reason, analyze and problem solve. With a foundation built in young adulthood, it peaks in our 20's. It's no wonder that startups, corporate internships, think tanks and others which feed off of quick form artistic innovation, are ideal places for those in their prime years of Fluid Intelligence. They are perfected suited for that type of intellect. From the outside (from those with some aged years in them) it's easy to assume that this is just the uninhibited confidence of youth. Rather, this natural evolutionary state of our mind peaks early, but then rapidly declines in our 30's and 40's. Fluid intelligence is a blip on a radar, gone as soon as it was here.
The hurdle is that for most of us, this comes as a surprise. We only see symptoms of change in our life and our work, lacking awareness of why our performance may be changing. In frustration, we ask ourselves:
With a lack of convincing answers to these questions, it's no wonder that many struggle through midlife crisis.
Fortunately, Crystallized Intelligence awaits us on the other side, where it sorts through our inventory of experience, segmenting knowledge gained into controlled doses of easy application for the problems of today. As Harvard Professor and PhD, Arthur C. Brooks' describes it in his article in The Atlantic, Crystallized Intelligence is wisdom.
As Baby Boomers and GenX-ers can attest, the first two thirds of careers can possess a momentum that feels unstoppable.The rate at which our ideas and skills are affirmed through the form of rising the corporate ladder can be impressive. As many have experienced firsthand though, all that comes up, must come down. In 2020 alone, 30MM Baby Boomers were forced into early retirement. Defensively, we want to think this is discrimination for discrimination's sake. 'I make too much money...my age is a bad look for a young company...I must just be pork in the C-Suite'. Is there truth in those statements? Sure. Almost any company will take almost any measure to save a buck, cut the fat, improve the image. That's the garbage of Corporate America and we'll be hard-pressed to see those measures corrected anytime soon.
Also important to consider though is the possibility that the Peter Principle isn't that far off. For those not aware, the Peter Principle is concept in which professionals are promoted only to "a level of respective incompetence": Meaning, people are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, primarily because the skills that made them successful in their previous role, don't necessarily translate to the next.
If you're someone that's struggling in their existing role, and you've advanced to that position based on what you accomplished previously, your ego may equate the idea that you are a victim of the Peter Principle, to four letter words.
Consider this though:
What if the roles we're promoted to, which we thought were affirmation of one skill and the next, are actually misaligned to our current strengths, based on our evolved intelligence (from fluid to crystallized)?
Regardless, the reality is that as we get older, there's going to be more opportunity for you to be either be exposed as incompetent or disposed of as irrelevant. Those are harsh words but they're true. You may think, 'I'm young. this doesn't apply to me. I'm not a baby boomer, I'm not even a gen x-er.'
Think again, if we're just talking about agism, did you know that when LBJ introduced the Age Discrimination Act, the starting age of which it applied was 40. The oldest millennials are now in their 40s; their time has come as well.
So whether it's the Peter Principle, effects of fluid and crystallized intelligence, or just agism, anyone over 40 will tell you that the environment, the attitude, the respect, the stress or the satisfaction in work; after 40, things happen in your career that are not anticipated.
At whatever time it happens, the screeching halt brought on by compensation, promotion, or worse, relevance ceilings that are faced during these times, can be violent. In this forced pause, there is opportunity for introspection that when combined with the brain's crystalized state, can quickly refocus energy, emotion and knowledge towards what matters most.
We live in a society that glorifies materialism . We're quick to set our goals based on the stages which equate to status achievement, awards, or buying power:
We say these things in our minds and then work the goal backwards, thinking of what accomplishments we need to check off in the boxes for qualification. Yet, as many of us learn, on-paper qualification is rarely the same as the skill needed to succeed in each role or to contribute to the larger organizational goals. It's why NFL teams will pay millions of dollars for veteran backups. Though their on-field ability may be subpar compared to the younger talent, there is a recognized value in experience and 'locker room presence'. We can, and should apply a similar mentality to the stages of our careers, where our goals are more aligned with the natural progression of Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence.
I once heard that our careers should be segmented as the following:
Each requires simple questions back to ourselves:
Simple questions but they may take decades to answer. Yet if we set our goals based on how we answer those question, I believe we will yield far greater reward than just an ego driven or peter principle based promotion which we may ultimately fail at or we achieve a salary that could be cut out from beneath us without a moment's notice and as we sit, considering that next career move, not truly knowing what we're good at, or what we want.
Think Big, Act Small
We all think we deserve something: title, money, happiness. We say we've earned it. But it's wisdom that we've earned, and it's the only thing that can't be taken away from us. So where our youth allows us to think big, our age, empowers us to act small, in the small but meaningful areas of work and life that can only be guided by wisdom. It would be in our best interest, personally and professionally, to then consciously consider what wisdom we've earned (and because we are capitalists) exploit it (in a good way). Our strengths will change. Knowing them, communicating them, and applying them in the right setting is the key to your managing your professional decline.
To summarize:
Whether you're building your next team and looking for a different type of diversity, or you're setting your own goals for the next ten years, or you're in the midst of a surprise career setback (reset), remember:
It takes acknowledgement of both to be where you want to be.
-sam
If you want to talk more about your goals, connect with me