Are You Making Career Decisions for Your People Without Asking Them?

What Does Age Really Tell You About Someone’s Career?

Not as much as we sometimes think.

Someone who's 27 may be looking for stability, responsibility and a business they can stay with for the next twenty years.

Someone who's 58 may be ready for the biggest professional challenge of their career.

Someone who's 65 may be thinking about reducing their hours. Or they may have absolutely no intention of slowing down.

Age gives us some context about a person's life and experience. It doesn't tell us what they want next.

Yet in businesses, and particularly family businesses, it's surprisingly easy to make small decisions based on what we assume someone at a particular stage of life will want.

"She's probably not interested in taking on more responsibility now."

"He's young. He'll probably leave eventually."

"Dad's getting older. We really need him to start stepping back."

"She's only 30. There's plenty of time before she's ready to run the business."

None of those thoughts necessarily comes from a bad place. Often, we're trying to plan ahead, protect someone from additional pressure or make sensible decisions for the business.

The problem starts when the assumption replaces the conversation.

Generational Stereotypes Aren't Always Obvious

When we talk about generational stereotypes in the workplace, it's easy to imagine obvious comments about Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials or Gen Z. In practice, it's usually much quieter than that. It can appear in who gets offered training.

Who gets considered for a promotion.

Who is given responsibility for a new system.

Who is included in succession discussions.

Who gets asked what they want their role to look like three years from now.

And sometimes, who doesn't get asked at all.

A long-serving employee might not be included in training for a new piece of technology because the business assumes they won't be interested.

A younger employee may continue doing relatively junior work long after they've demonstrated that they're capable of more.

A family member may be quietly positioned as the successor because they're at the "right" age, while nobody has properly explored whether they actually want the role.

These decisions can be perfectly well intentioned. They're also decisions worth examining.

Five Generations at Work Means Five Generations of Assumptions

Today's workplace can include people from five generations working alongside one another, bringing very different experiences, expectations and perspectives. That diversity can be valuable. But it can also tempt us to explain people's behaviour through their generation.

The older employee who doesn't immediately adopt a new system becomes resistant to technology.

The younger employee who questions an established process becomes impatient.

The experienced manager who wants flexibility is winding down.

The ambitious younger family member is in too much of a hurry.

The generational label gives us a convenient explanation. But it may not be the right one.

Sometimes someone isn't resistant to a new system. They simply haven't been shown why the change matters or given adequate training.

Sometimes a younger employee isn't impatient. They can genuinely see an inefficient process that's been accepted for years because that's how we've always done it.

And sometimes someone approaching what we traditionally think of as retirement age is nowhere near ready to retire.

The individual matters more than the stereotype.

Family Businesses Have Another Layer

This becomes particularly important in family businesses because age isn't just connected to career.

It's connected to family position, history and succession.

A daughter can be a 38-year-old senior manager with fifteen years of experience and still be viewed by her parents as the next generation who isn't quite ready.

A founder can reach their 60s and suddenly find everyone talking about succession when they're still excited about the business and have ideas they want to pursue.

A son may be assumed to want the managing director role because he's spent his entire career in the family business.

Nobody has actually asked him whether that's the future he wants.

This is where family and business roles become tangled.

We know someone so well personally that we can start believing we know what they want professionally.

Sometimes we're right.

Sometimes we're not.

And the consequences of getting it wrong can be significant.

Don't Write Someone Else's Career Story for Them

There's an important distinction here.

The answer isn't to pretend age doesn't exist.

Life stage matters. Experience matters. Energy, family commitments, financial circumstances and retirement plans can all affect what someone wants from their work.

But we shouldn't decide what those things mean for someone before we've spoken to them.

Instead of:

"You're getting closer to retirement, so we'll start transitioning your clients."

Try:

"How do you see the next five years? What would you like your role to look like?"

Instead of:

"She's still too young to manage that."

Ask:

"What capabilities does this role require, and which of those has she demonstrated?"

Instead of:

"There's no point spending money training him now."

Ask:

"Is this skill relevant to his role, and does he want to develop it?"

They're small changes in language, but they lead to very different conversations.

A Simple Way to Remove the Guesswork: Ask, Assess, Align

When age or generation starts creeping into a decision about someone's future, I prefer three steps.

1. Ask

Start with the person.

What do they actually want? Where do they see themselves in the next few years? Do they want greater responsibility? Less responsibility? Different work? Leadership? Flexibility? New skills?

Don't assume the answer from their birth year, tenure or position in the family.

2. Assess

Then separate aspiration from capability.

Someone wanting a leadership role doesn't automatically mean they're ready for it. Equally, someone being younger than previous leaders doesn't mean they're not.

Look at the role itself.

What skills does it require? What decisions will this person need to make? What relationships will they manage? What knowledge do they need? Where are the genuine development gaps?

Now you're assessing readiness rather than age.

3. Align

Finally, look for the intersection between what the person wants and what the business needs.

Sometimes they line up beautifully. Sometimes they don't.

That's useful information too.

The goal isn't to give everyone whatever role they ask for. It's to create enough clarity that career decisions are based on real conversations and evidence rather than assumptions.

This Is Where Structure Helps

One reason generational assumptions creep into family businesses is that many decisions are still being made informally.

There may not be a clear job description.

Decision-making authority may have evolved rather than been deliberately assigned.

Nobody has documented what someone needs to demonstrate before progressing into the next role.

So judgement fills the gap.

This is where Scaffold™, one of our Macro Momentum models, becomes useful.

Clear roles, responsibilities, decision rights and communication structures give a family business something more reliable to work with.

Instead of asking whether someone feels ready, you can look at what the role requires.

Instead of deciding someone has probably had enough, you can have a conversation about what they actually want.

Instead of telling the next generation to wait their turn, you can show them what they need to demonstrate before taking the next step.

Structure doesn't remove judgement.

It gives you better information on which to base it.

Succession Is Where This Matters Most

Succession planning is often discussed as though age automatically determines the timetable.

At a certain age, the older generation should start stepping back.

At another age, the next generation should be ready to step forward.

Real family businesses rarely work that neatly.

One founder may want to leave at 58.

Another may still be deeply engaged at 72.

One next-generation family member may be capable of leadership at 32.

Another may reach 45 and decide that leading the family business isn't what they want at all.

None of those scenarios is inherently right or wrong. What matters is that the business understands what people want, what they're capable of and what the organisation needs.

That's a much stronger basis for succession than the date on someone's birth certificate.

The Conversation Is More Important Than the Label

A multigenerational business doesn't need everyone to think the same way.

In fact, some of its greatest strengths can come from people seeing the business differently.

Experience brings context.

Fresh perspectives challenge established habits.

Long-term employees hold institutional knowledge that may never have been documented.

Newer team members may question systems everyone else stopped noticing years ago.

The opportunity isn't to erase those differences.

It's to stop assuming we already understand someone because we know which generation they belong to.

Before deciding someone is too young, too old, ready to slow down, unlikely to stay, resistant to change or hungry for promotion, ask them.

You may discover that the person you've been planning around has a very different plan of their own.

And that's information you want to know before making decisions about the future of your business.

What Should You Ask Your Team?

Start with a few straightforward questions:

• What would you like your role to look like in the next two to three years?

• What would you like to do more of?

• Is there anything you'd like to do less of?

• What skills would you like to develop?

• Are there responsibilities you'd like to work towards?

• What are we assuming about your future here that we should actually be asking you about?

That last question may produce the most interesting answer.

Because age can tell you how many birthdays someone has had. It can't tell you whether they're ambitious, tired, curious, ready for leadership, planning retirement, eager to learn or looking for their next challenge.

For that, you still have to ask.

Building a Family Business Around People, Not Assumptions

At Macro Momentum, we work with family businesses to create clearer roles, responsibilities and structures around the people already inside the business.

That includes the conversations that can be difficult to have when family relationships, career expectations and succession become intertwined.

The aim isn't to remove age or experience from the conversation. Both can matter.

It's to make sure neither becomes a substitute for understanding the person sitting in front of you.

Before you plan someone's next chapter for them, ask them what they want it to be.