“There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later." - Mignon McLaughlin

Today, I find myself thinking about how working for people different from me has been rewarding, challenging and usually valuable. These differences have come in many forms. I have worked  for people of different ages, genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, motivations, personalities and values. Almost always, these differences have enriched my work experience and sometimes they have enriched my life. Rarely, I have found differences to be a significant challenge.

One thing that has become clear to me as I’ve worked for, and with, a diverse variety of people is that the values I learned growing up are supported by my experience. I was raised to believe that all people share the same basic human qualities and have an equal potential to make valuable contributions to the work, and the world, that we share. My experience supports this belief. Differences in our gender, age, ethnicity, culture, religious and other values, and personalities make little or no difference to the potential we have to make valuable contributions. The greatest difference is in the impact of our choices and attitudes regarding our commitment to the work we share.

During most of my career, IT has been a field where men are over represented and older white men were over represented in many roles. Women and members of many ethnic groups remain underrepresented today. Early in my career, I worked for a woman whose patience as I learned about the field, and willingness to provide me new opportunities as I learned, were important to my finding a direction that allowed me to grow.  After this position, I worked for a series of other white men older than myself, and most of them helped me grow and improve the value of my contributions by generously giving me their time, perspectives and advice. A few of these bosses were less influential for me. They provided solid supervision but did less to help me grow.

Not many years later, I had the second female boss in my career. I grew up surrounded by strong, intelligent women in my family, and the experience of working for this strong, intelligent woman helped confirm for me that women were every bit as capable as men in leading and managing. I appreciated some differences in her perspective and approach to our work and she continued to offer me the opportunities to grow through new challenges and development opportunities. I’ve worked for a number of women during my career and I’ve come to believe that the differences between the ideas, values, styles and, approaches of the different bosses I’ve had are much greater than any difference I could detect between men and women as managers and leaders.

One man was very important to helping me form an approach to my work, and working with others, that serves me well more than three decades since I first worked for him. He saw potential in me and recruited me to take on new challenges. He became more than a boss and I consider him my first real mentor. This man set goals for me that stretched my capabilities and trusted me with greater responsibilities even when failure could result in a significant impact on the services we provided. He also offered me with training and development opportunities that prepared me for this role.

I’ll never forget the morning when I reported to him after hours of late night work responding to a serious problem.  He read my incident report, pointed out the place where my choices began leading to a resolution of the problem, and told me the other choice I had at that point could have left major services unavailable for hours or days. Then he simply stood, reached out across his desk, shook my hand and congratulated me on my good work. His ability to see potential in others, train, trust, and give credit to them for their work had a major impact on me. He also started me down the path to volunteering, but that’s another story. I’m sure I will write more about that, him, and mentoring in the future.

In the early 2000’s I had my first opportunity to work for a younger boss and since then I have usually worked for men younger than me. These experiences have taught me that age per se has little to do with the ability to manage and lead. Some of my younger bosses have been excellent and others only fair. Their success had little to do with their age and more to do with their willingness to listen, to act, and to change direction when conditions called for adjustments in their initial direction. Again, the differences between my managers in general have been much greater than those between younger and older managers.

About five years ago, I had my first opportunity to work for a boss who was younger, female and a person of color.  This proved to be another of the most effective and valuable experiences I have had working for anyone. She challenged me like I have never been challenged before, and that was not always comfortable. She also listened, and communicated, very effectively. We are two very different people and we learned a lot about each other, and how to work together successfully. She was the boss and yet it felt that what mattered was what we could accomplish together for the university. I know from our time working together that her experiences reaching a position of great authority as a woman, and as a person of color, presented her with challenges like nothing I have ever experienced. I learned a great deal from her and came to respect and like her as a person. She is a great leader and further reinforced for me that our differences can help us succeed together.

Differences in age, gender, and ethnicity seem insignificant in my experience. I believe that differences in our personalities and individual strengths are more significant and provide greater opportunities for synergy or dysfunction. My experiences working with bosses with different personalities have represented much greater differences in the results, and work environment, they created. The best bosses I’ve had, like those mentioned above, have had the ability to bring out the best in people with different strengths and to help them work together, and to learn from each other, with respect.  The worst bosses, and I’m glad these have been few, have either failed to see the potential value of these differences, or been unable to bring diverse personalities together effectively. Despite their best intentions, the teams they lead struggled and suffered from lower morale and productivity. I plan a post on building teams with diverse strengths and personalities later in this series.

In the process of my career, I also met a man who had many personality characteristics that were essentially the opposite of mine and I learned that the two of us worked very well together in a volunteer leadership team we served on together. He was senior to me in that team and his approach was one of engaged collaboration. Our strengths complimented each other and I found that working with him lead to much better results than I could achieve on my own, or by working with people more similar to me. In time, this man has become one of my dearest friends. I’ve come to appreciate more completely over the passing years just what a wonderful gift it has been to have someone in my life who is different in some important, and wonderful ways, while sharing many common interests and values with me. With respect and communication, our different personalities can be one of our greatest sources of strength.

As I wrap up today’s blog post, I would point out one difference that I think may come with younger bosses. They have come to their leadership positions in a world that has evolved from the one that I experienced early in my career and they are shaped by their experience of this changing environment. I have reached a point in my career where everyone in more senior positions is younger than I am and it is unlikely I will work for an older boss again. I think there is great potential associated with the new ideas and experiences my younger bosses bring to bear on our work.  I look forward to learning from them and to offering my ideas and experience with confidence that we can find strength and opportunities in our different perspectives.

I hope these thoughts about working for different bosses are interesting and useful.  I’d welcome your comments about your own experiences. I’ll write in a future post about what it’s been like to be the boss!