DawnBringer3D Tips & Tricks, Personal News, Game Development

Age Racism in Choosing the Right Person

Overview

From time to time I see and hear about age racism when leaders need to select between people. I could almost say I  hate people who do this because this way they destroy so many good things for the organization and for the people who work for them… well people=organization, right? Why don’t some leaders get this fact?

The Classic Example

You don’t get the position because you are too young. Because your age makes the people think you are not experienced. In reality you could be teaching the one older than you.. and in the end you probably will and he gets all the credit. People are different, no one can define that kind of a age limit, and if someone does,  that is bullshit!

How To Do It

What you need to understand is that the way to really choose between people is to look at their references, and no, not just the name at which company they did work at. You need to look more deeper, in to what they really did. Another good addition would be to add a test. When I choose people for different positions I compare their references and try to find out how they have improved themselves during the last year. If there is two people to choose from: one with not so much work experience, but a lot of talent and improving. And, one with loads of work experience, but nothing to show he has improved. I would choose the first one, because he is still improving and I can help him to keep it up.

People who think they have learned everything are not good for any company, they do not drive the company forwards, the world is changing all the time and you need to keep up with it or your organization cannot take it when does change. These people, are usually those who use age racism, why? Because they want to get people similar like them to work for them, people who don’t challenge the status quo, e.g. “I do not need any young guys running around here and asking questions. I need people who do things.”. Those young guys running around will probably get you through the change, why? Because they challenge you to change.

In reality you of course think about if the selected one would fit in to the team and other things. But, you should not solely base your selection on one thing like age, culture or anything like that. Be smart and think about what is good for your organization, not only what is good for you – there is a  big difference. Get ouf of your comfort zone.

Training Leaders

I thought I should release one sample chapter from my up coming eBook. So here it goes, I hope you enjoy.

Overview

Let’s first go through a one fact: no one is born as a leader. It is ridiculous to think that somebody is born with some skill set, no they aren’t. Being a leader is a profession as all others, you’ll need to learn the tips & tricks of the trade before you are a good one.

Now, the problem in training leaders is that there really isn’t any very well defined process to do that, and it would be really hard to do that, because organizations are different – or more to the point, people are different. And, different people require different leadership skills.

My Short Story

From my experience training a leader requires throwing the person in to the ‘flames’, in middle of the action. Over a year ago I had to go this through. I was given a responsibility to lead a team that had loads of problems: communication didn’t work out, processes lacked… all the classic symptoms of a start-up team. But, let’s not go deeper in to what caused those problems.

I didn’t really know much about leading a team nor anything else related to management. It was really scary time as I did not have any support from anybody. I didn’t have the trust or respect of the team. Now this is about as hard as it gets to start: no support, no experience. But, I started executing: trying new processes and ways to do things, at the same time trying to take the team more and more in to the process of creating new ways to do things.

During the process I basically threw everything old away. What happened was that I understood what good was in the old ways as the team was complaining that we were missing some things that worked before. So I continued trying new processes and adopting the ones that worked, but at the same time I reflected against the past to understand what good ways had already been in place. It took about a year to gain the trust and respect of the team.

Points To Learn From My Short Story

• Throw the leader in middle of the action
• Give him the responsibility and power to change things. He must learn that all of his actions have consequences. This helps him to at least learn change management, people management, and communication skills.
• Upper management support
  • Someone must be regularly supporting new leader and challenging his actions. I didn’t have anyone to challenge me so I had to throw everything away and learn from the hard way. If someone is challenging and teaching the new leader you are able to avoid some of the problems during the transition. Remember that upper management is there to only support him, not to make the real actions for him.

Conclusion

And in the end, everything comes down to point that people only learn by doing, but also with the help of other people. You might have heard about team learning, well, that is exactly what the support in this case is all about, it is a team: the new leader and the upper management.

Great Tip For Life

I forgot to post this great quote that I found from Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition:

“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” – Uknown

This is the way I do it. Don’t worry about the failing, it is the best way to learn.