HOW TO COPE WITH MID-CAREER STRESS

Training for people in mid—career should give them an ex-
posure to new skills and ideas, but only enough to make them
appreciate how they can be used. By this time, they are often
managers of people with these skills, not specialists themselves.
This exposure should help remove some of the personal threat
and anxiety that has been caused by their lack of knowledge.
more importantly, the person should learn more about the
processes of mid-career change to help understand what is going
on inside him. l—le should be encouraged to face up to feelings
of restlessness and insecurity, to re-examine his values and life
— goals, and to set new ones or recommit himself to old ones. Life
planning and career planning exercises have been devised which
are extremely helpful for people in mid-career. In fact, an
organization, Forty-Plus, provides professional assistance on mid-
career processes to individuals and organizations on precisely
these problems.
` The mid-career employee should also be trained to help devel-
op younger employees in the service of his own growth as well
as the younger person’s. By working closely with younger people, ·
he keeps himself up-to—date, fresh, and energetic. Because he
has enough experience to identify more with the organization and
to be more aware of the "big picture" he is also in an ideal position
to serve as a link between the young person and the rest of_the
organization. One of the psychological needs of middle age is
to build something lasting, something that will be a permanent
contribution to one’s organization or profession. The development `
of a future generation of leaders could be a significant lasting
and highly satisfying contribution. By pooling the resources of
its young and middle-aged employees, the organization can literal-
ly combine the forces responsible for yesterday‘s and tomorrow’s
successes.
Another way of dealing with the anxiety experienced by some
people at mid-career is to deal with the problem of obsolescence.
One way as we have mentioned, is to send people back to school
for seminars, workshops, courses, degree programs, and other
forms of "retreading." But a better approach is to prevent obsoles-
cence from occuring in the first place. This can be done by glving

the person assignments throughout his career which force him
to develop new skills and learn about new developments in the
professional field. The job itself probably has more impact on the
person than most off—the—job activities which are billed as protes-
sional development experiences. lf the person is assigned to a
job on which he is working with recent graduates, mutual learning
and a trading of experience for new ideas may occur. lf the job
requires use of computer operations, the person will learn more
about the computer than in a special two—day seminar. We tend
to think of job transfer into new areas as something that only
happens to new employees. If transfers were expected to continue
V throughout the career, as is true in many organizations, more use
could be made of the learning potential in new jobs and new
people, and obsolescence could be reduced.
In a comparison of adaptive and nonadaptive mid—career man-
agers, Morrison found more exploratory behavior (i.e., self
and career inquiry) among the adaptive group. It is not clear
whether the adaptive managers have not "completed" the explor-
atory stage in their careers (which, theoretically, should occur
in the early twenties), or if they have "recycled" and are now
reexamining their careers. morrison’s hunch is that "people never
‘finish’ exploration once and for all today as much as they did
possibly two decades ago"
Kaufman’s review identified three additional personal
characteristics associated with low obsolescence: high intellectual
ability, high seIf—motivation, and personal flexibility (lack of rigidi-
ty). Similar findings are reported by Shearer and Stege.
The first may be hard to do much about for most people, but
self—motivation and flexibility can probably be developed. On the `
organization’s part, effective personnel policies, such as selection
for long—range needs, good assessment and testing, and career
counseling, are recommended by Kaufman for resisting obsoles-
cence. Key factors in the organizational environment are: chal-
lenging initial jobs, periodic job changes, work climates containing
communications, rewards for performance, participative leader-
ship, and matrix structures. Kaufman concludes that common `
remedies for mid—career problems, such as dual ladders and con-
tinuing education, tend to be ineffective, although integrating
continuing education with demands for innovation from the work
itself is useful. Dubin reports similar conclusions regarding
effective means of mid—career updating. Please visit us for more quality information at one of the best job search engines on the internet