Every week, The Management Lab lands in the inboxes of new managers, 0-5 years, across Africa who are figuring out leadership in real time; without a manual, without a mentor, and often without anyone telling them the truth about what the role actually demands.
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Dear Reader ,
One of the most recurring questions I get when I speak to managers is this: how do you manage someone older than you?
And very often in the same breath, sometimes even before the question is fully out, comes everything else. How difficult they are. How much they challenge the team dynamic. How they seem to resist direction. How the whole thing feels like walking on eggshells.
Now I want to be clear, I do not dismiss those experiences. They are real. They are lived. And for many new managers, an older team member has genuinely been one of the harder parts of the role.
But here is what I also know.
Having an older person on your team is only as complicated as your approach to leading them. And today's newsletter is about simplifying that equation for you.
Because I can imagine the feeling.
You get promoted. You take a look at your team and you realise that at least one of them has been working longer than you have been alive. Or at minimum, significantly longer than you have been in this industry.
They have grey in their hair, war stories and scars you cannot match, lol, institutional knowledge that is not in any document, and, if you are being honest, an energy that makes you wonder whether they think you deserve to be leading them at all.
This is one of the most common and least discussed challenges in new management. And it is one that catches most first-time managers completely off guard.
Why, because nobody prepares you for the moment you have to give performance feedback to someone your mother's age.
So let us talk about it.
The First Thing You Need To Stop Doing.
Before we get into the how, we need to address the habit that undermines most new managers before they even begin.
Making assumptions.
Assumptions that the age gap is a problem for them, not just for you.
Assumptions that they are going to be difficult. Resentful. Dismissive. That they are quietly counting down to retirement and have no interest in being led by someone they see as inexperienced.
Maybe some of those things will turn out to be true. But you do not know that yet.
And walking into a working relationship with those assumptions already embedded in your approach will guarantee the exact dynamic you were trying to avoid. People, regardless of age, can feel when they are being managed with suspicion rather than intention; and they respond accordingly.
To succeed with them, you'll need to set aside everything you have heard, assumed, or feared, and walk in with one intention: to understand.
Not to impress, not to prove a point, not to assert authority you have not yet earned in their eyes, but to understand.
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That single reframe changes how you show up, building the foundation everything else to come.
So what's the way forward? How do you manage older people successfully?
One: Leverage Their Strengths; Deliberately and Visibly.
Older team members are, in most cases, more experienced team members; and experience, when it is respected and put to good use is one of the most valuable assets a team can have.
The mistake most new managers make is treating experienced older team members as a challenge to manage around rather than a resource to lead well.
They keep them at arm's length. Give them peripheral work. Avoid engaging them on the things that matter because the dynamic feels uncomfortable. And in doing so they create exactly the resentment and disengagement they were trying to prevent.
Here is what to do instead.
Figure out what they are genuinely good at; not what they used to be good at, not what they are supposed to be good at based on their title or tenure, but what they are actually, demonstrably excellent at the moment
Then, and this is the important part, use it. Intentionally and visibly.
Put their expertise to work in ways that serve the team. Give them the problems that benefit from their experience. Let them lead in the areas where they have earned the right to lead. Acknowledge their contribution publicly when it delivers results.
This is not flattery. It is not management by exception. It is smart leadership.
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Because when an experienced team member feels like a valued asset, like someone whose knowledge and judgment are genuinely respected, they become one of the most powerful advocates for your leadership that you will ever have.
And when they feel like a liability to be managed around, they become exactly that.
Two: Build a Genuine Relationship; Not a Managed One.
This is a principle that applies to every manager with every team member. But it is especially important, and especially easy to get wrong when there is a significant age gap between you and the person you are leading.
Here is why it goes wrong.
Most of us find it easier to build relationships with people who feel like us. Same age. Same stage of life. Same cultural references. Same professional vocabulary.
Relationships with people outside our peer group require more intentional effort, more curiosity, and more willingness to show up; so new managers who are already anxious about managing someone older, often default to keeping things transactional. Professional. Correct. But not warm.
Here's where I remind you that transactional relationships produce transactional performance.
You don't need to share your life story, you do not need to pretend the age gap does not exist, and this is absolutely not a call to abandon the appropriate professional boundaries that come with your role.
But you do need to show that you see this person as a human being not just a resource. That you are interested in what matters to them, not just in what they produce.
Ask about their experience. Ask what they have seen work in this team. Ask what they wish people understood about their work. Listen, genuinely, without an agenda, to what they tell you.
That is not weakness, it is the relational foundation that makes everything else, including accountability, possible.
Because here is what most managers miss.
You don't gain authority by a title, It is granted by the people being led, and older team members, particularly in African workplaces where experience commands respect, grant authority to managers who demonstrate genuine respect first.
Earn it relationally. Everything else follows.
Third: Do Not Avoid Difficult Conversation.
That's where you earn your stripes.
In high-context cultures, and this is particularly true across Africa the fear of being perceived as disrespectful to someone older can paralyse a new manager completely.
As a result, the feedback that needs to be given sits unsaid, the standard that needs to be held gets quietly lowered, the behaviour that needs to be addressed is overlooked because the manager cannot find a way to address it that does not feel like a breach of cultural propriety.
This is understandable but it is also unsustainable.
Because every standard you fail to hold, regardless of who is on the other side of the conversation, costs you credibility, and over time it costs your team the results they deserve.
The difficult conversation is not optional. It is where your authority as a manager is actually established.
The question is not whether to have it. The question is how to have it in a way that is direct without being dismissive, clear without being cruel, and honest without being disrespectful.
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Here is a framework can help you deliver a structured and effective feedback, that works particularly well in this context.
The SBI Framework (Situation, Behaviour, Impact.)
Situation: Describe the specific context. When and where did this occur? For example "In Tuesday's client meeting..."
Behaviour: Describe the specific behaviour you observed. Not your interpretation of it. Not your assumption about the intention behind it. What you actually saw or heard.
For example "...when you interrupted the client's question before they had finished speaking..."
Impact: Describe the concrete impact that behaviour had on the client, the team, the work, or the outcome.
For instanced "...it created an impression of impatience that the client commented on afterwards, and it affected the tone of the rest of the meeting."
Three steps. Factual. Specific. Focused entirely on the behaviour and its impact, not on the person's character, intention, or age.
The SBI framework works because it removes the personal attack from the conversation. There is no accusation. No generalisation. No judgement of who the person is. Just a clear, specific account of what happened and why it matters.
And when you deliver it with the genuine relational warmth that comes from a relationship you have already invested in, when you can say with authenticity that this conversation is coming from a place of care for the team and respect for the individual, it lands differently.
Not always comfortably. But effectively.
The Truth About Managing Older Team Members.
Older team members can be one of the biggest assets your team has ever had.
Their experience. Their institutional memory. Their professional networks. Their ability to read a situation that a less experienced person might misread entirely. Their capacity to mentor others on your team in ways that do not require your involvement at all; are not small things.
But unlocking all of that requires one thing from you as a manager. The willingness to lead them well.
Which means setting aside your assumptions, leveraging their strengths deliberately, building relationships that are genuine rather than managed, and having the conversations, including the difficult ones, that every member of your team deserves to have with a manager who cares about their growth.
Age is not the obstacle. The obstacle is the story you are telling yourself about what age means.
Change the story. And watch what becomes possible.
Still learning
Eyitemi
Founder, The Management Lab