Leadership for Older Adults

Aging With Purpose And Passion

Sandra A. Cusack, Wendy J. Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135062248
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This study tells the tale of two retirement organizations that reflect common leadership issues throughout the western world, issues that are emerging in many developing countries and have yet to be experienced in others. Wherever rapid population ageing is coupled with a view of old people as useless and a burden, challenging questions arise: how do we develop the resources and leadership potential of our ageing population? How do we turn old age from an expensive wasteland into a fertile period of growth and development?

PART

I

INTRODUCTION TO LEADERSHIP FOR OLDER ADULTS

As a prelude to creating effective leadership in any organization, the first part of this book sets the stage. Chapter 1 outlines the leadership challenge of this new age, describes what is new about it, and elucidates why developing leadership is more important now than ever. Ageist attitudes and assumptions are presented that limit late life potential and serve as formidable barriers to the emergence of seniors as leaders. Chapter 2 offers a historical perspective on leadership research and theory, insights into leadership skills and styles, and an approach to leadership that works most effectively in retirement organizations. To facilitate the emergence of effective leadership, one must begin with a deep understanding of the organization—how leadership currently works, who has the power, how is it shared, and, most important, what are the nonproductive attitudes and assumptions about leadership that are barriers to be overcome? A framework for understanding organizational culture is outlined in Chapter 3.

1

CHAPTER

Leadership Challenge of a New Age

To recapture spirit, we need to relearn how to lead with soul. How to breathe new zest and buoyancy into life. Leading with soul returns us to ancient spiritual basics—reclaiming the enduring human capacity that gives our lives passion and purpose.

—Bolman & Deal, 1995, p. 6

This New Age

The time has come to review and renew the meaning of old age. During the 20th century, medical science has succeeded in extending the human life span by more than 20 years, but in many ways society has failed to ascribe a legitimate social function to those added years. In the 1960s and 1970s, social demographers ominously predicted the graying of America. Viewing older people generally as disengaged, dependent, noncontributing members of society, they forewarned of the inevitable increase in society’s burden of caring for catastrophic numbers of elderly people. Gerontology was developed and established as a science and a profession.

The predicted burgeoning of the aging population is becoming a fact of life around the world. With a membership of 33 million people, the American Association of Retired People (AARP) is the single largest voluntary organization in the United States (Pratt, 1995). Since its inception in 1986 with a membership of 16 people, the Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP) has grown at an astonishing rate, unmatched by any other Canadian association (CARP membership topped 300,000 in 1997). And organizations representing older people are growing in many parts of the world. Vitez estimated in 1997 that “in 25 years, in nearly every country in the Northern Hemisphere—Russia, China, all of Europe, the United States, and Canada—one in every five people will be older that sixty” (p. 1). Dr. Robert Butler of the NIA says, “We haven’t found any biological reason not to live to 110…. This added lifespan is not just extra time to kill; it represents potentially vital, productive years in which older people can either contribute to their society or drain its resources” (Vitez, 1997, p. 1)

In America, life expectancy has increased by 28 years from an average of 47 years in 1900 to 75.5 and 78.9 for women in the 1990s. The change in life expectancy in this century is greater than the change in life expectancy during the previous 2000 years (Lamdin & Frugate, 1997). The numbers aren’t surprising, but the people often are. No one anticipated or prepared for the emerging face of old age.

While the numbers were growing, a second and much quieter revolution was taking place. The face of age was changing—a new breed of Homo sapiens was emerging. Those who really came to know them individually found that older people were much more than they anticipated. Anyone who really listened to their stories marveled at their courage, their creativity, their passion, their deep understanding of human nature and the meaning of life. Older people who were “ordinary”—neither wealthy nor elite and often uneducated—seemed somehow exceptional and extraordinary.

Long-held attitudes and assumptions about old age and old people linger, left over from a reality that no longer exists. Blinded by ageist expectations, people fail to see the richness and diversity of older people and seldom nurture the infinite possibilities they present. No wonder so many retirees talk about feeling “invisible”: no one sees them as people, but as old people. In other words, the mask of old age renders the real person invisible.

Not only do the ageist stereotypes die hard, they serve as self-fulfilling prophecies for most older people. People learn how to grow old by watching others grow old, severely limiting the possibilities for growth and productivity. The challenge is to reconstruct the meaning of old age, to view the aging of society as the unprecedented triumph that it is, and to envision possibilities for growth and productivity unprecedented and unrecorded in human history. As the younger generation would say, it is time to do a reality check and get an attitude. Not an easy task.

A New Old Age

The subject of old age has always been fraught with ambivalence. Most people have compassion for old people but shrink from the image of an aging self. Everyone loves “grandma,” but few aspire to be like her.

Ageism is insidious in many societies, subtle and pervasive, affecting not just senior citizens but all members of society. Yet rarely is it recognized and addressed. Getting beyond simple negative or positive stereotypes requires a fundamental shift from viewing older people as the problem, to seeing them as those most capable of helping younger generations to understand real problems and develop creative solutions.

What are these dramatic changes in society? What are the most salient characteristics of older people today? What are the most pressing needs of society? And what are the needs of older people? Who should be served first—people or society? Must we always choose? There is a better way to serve the real needs (i.e., the desires and aspirations) of this new breed of older person and in the process to serve the most pressing needs of a changing society. First, the reality check. Let’s begin with what, on the surface, appears to be the good news.

The Good News

The mass aging of our society (and others throughout the world) may well be the most extraordinary evolutionary event of all time. During 99% of the time that humans have walked this planet, average life expectancy has been under 18 years. We have never before had a mass population of older people. Until very recently, most people did not age, they died relatively young. During the past century something tsunamic began. As a result of dramatic advances, most of us will age. We are witnessing the birth of a 21st century “gerontocracy” (Dychtwald, 1997, p. 11).

In his address to the American Society on Aging (1994), Dychtwald characterized the changes and challenges in many ways. He described social reality in terms of changing social policy:

• New directions in healthcare policy, increasing emphasis on health promotion.

• Reduced social services, increasing role of the caregiver.

He described the most salient characteristics of the aging population as follows:

• The number of older people has increased, and the proportion of women is higher.

• Older people are healthier and better educated.

• The wealthiest people are over 50 years of age, and money is no problem.

• The baby boomers turn 50 in 1996, and no one wants to grow old.

This is Dychwald’s reality, and these are the challenges. The growing population of healthier and better educated older people (most of them women) will require opportunities for higher education and involvement in volunteer roles and work opportunities when family responsibilities diminish. Because of reduced healthcare and social service entitlements, everyone must assume greater responsibility for their own health and for providing social support and care to others. This group generally has the money and the education to take care of their own needs, and because many do not want to grow old, they will seek high-tech options to help them stay young forever.

Dychtwald further suggests that aging must be viewed as a continuum. The four boxes of life—you learn, you work, you rest, you die—no longer apply. People will need to retrain and retool at any age, and they will need opportunities for self-expression and enjoyment at any age. However, the danger in viewing aging as a continuum is that it implies a maintenance of the status quo, with no possibility for evolution or progression. Age seems irrelevant except as something to be overcome. And given that the wealthiest people are over 50 years of age and money is no problem, the current cohort of older adults would seem to have the means and resources to overcome their own aging. The hidden assumption and the political agenda in many developed and developing countries around the world is that they will also assume society’s burden of caring, economically and in kind, for the even more dramatically growing number of frail elderly people.

The good news reflects a new positive stereotype of aging—the glossy tabloid image that serves no one’s best interests in the long run. Herein lies the rationale for reducing subsidies and entitlements for health, education, and social services for senior citizens. In both the United States and Canada, entitlements and subsidies have come increasingly under attack.

The Bad News: Issues of Entitlement and the Erosion of Subsidies

Butler suggests that

we’re in an extraordinarily uncomfortable, even mean-spirited period of our history. The social protections we have are beginning to be frayed, and we are seeing extraordinary and harsh attacks upon children, unwed mothers, women, especially older women. (as cited in Aging Today, 1995, p. 4)

To suggest that the wealthiest people in America are more than 50 years old is no rationale for the removal of entitlements. The wealthiest people have always been over 50, and today is no exception. Furthermore, this group is anomalous, and developing social policy based on an anomalous generation will certainly have dire consequences for future generations, who will be less affluent. More to the point, people who are over 50 are rarely wealthy. Money is a problem for many older people, particularly older women who, despite their marginality and vulnerability, are expected to assume an even greater share of family caregiving responsibilities than they have in the past.

These can be dangerous times, when benevolent entitlements and subsidies to minority groups and seniors are being minimized through “claw-backs.” Entitlements and subsidies to seniors are increasingly targeted and blamed for the deficit and are further jeopardized by the general view that older adults are wealthy. In the Bulletin of the AARP, Carlson (1994) warns, “Older Americans may see the ‘wide-spread support’ for Social Security in America begin to erode. Entitlement programs have been unfairly blamed for our nation’s deficit.” (p. 4). Headlines in a 1995 newspaper of the American Society on Aging (Retsinas) were also ominous: “Clouds gather over social security.” The newspaper elaborated,

The optimism of only one year ago had dissipated… Although the several hundred experts—economists, actuaries, political scientists and government bureaucrats—seemed to agree that the sky is not falling, they were concerned that clouds now blot the horizon. (p. 1)

Meanwhile, the same dark clouds were drifting over senior citizens north of the border. The headlines in the newsletter of CARP (1994) read, “[Federal government] chipping at the age tax credit” and went on to warn,

Increasingly, seniors who have provided for their own retirement are being made to pay a larger share of the government’s fiscal shortfall, whether by pension clawbacks, cutbacks in health and other services, or selective tax increases—and this is a trend that is bound to continue because the deficit problem is far from over. (p. 14)

And this ethos is being played out in various ways throughout communities across the country. The coordinator of a seniors’ center speaks of a prevailing ideology that can be felt in his community:

Often an idea starts in the business community, then translates into the public sector. A local hardware store has recently taken away reduced rates for seniors, and the public sector has begun to remove subsidies for seniors. There is a myth that says seniors have lots of money and they don’t need subsidies for recreation and education.

The trend toward cutting subsidies, eliminating staff, and severely reducing grant opportunities to seniors groups and organizations is widespread.

Canadian social gerontologist Ellen Gee summarized the demographics of an aging society as consisting of two realities reflecting the two faces of aging: (1) increasing numbers of people in the over-85 group, resulting in the increased burden of care, and (2) increasing numbers of healthy, able older adults (Gee & Gutman, 1995). She challenges policymakers to resist reductionist policies that pit seniors and younger people against each other in the competition for scarce resources. She recommends a more proactive approach to reintegrating older people into the wider society. What is needed is a change in attitude toward older people and their productive capabilities and a change in the attitudes and values of older people themselves, many of whom have come to view early retirement—that is disengagement or early departure from the workplace—as a right. She concludes that

we will fare better in our attempts to mesh social policy and population aging if we focus our attention on [issues of empowerment], and cease attempts to either tinker with existing p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Introduction to Leadership for Older Adults
• Part II: Portraits of Leaders and Leadership in Action
• Part III: The Practice of Leadership
• References
• Index