Setting the Stage and Generativity One

Option Three—Retiring from a Position of Formal Accountability

This is one of the two traditional options. The woman who has spent all of her life in a large corporate setting finally gets a chance to breathe fresh air. She does not want to spend any more time in a stress-filled environment. While she might want to do some volunteer work, she avoids taking on administrative responsibilities and sitting on interminable committees. Instead, she seeks active work with children or helps to build a home through Habitat for Humanity or sings in the local community chorus.

This career path is often associated with the experience of women hitting the “glass ceiling.” They move up through an organization, being given career advancements because of their knowledge, skills and hard work. Then they hit the organization’s ceiling with regard to the highest position that a woman is “allowed” to hold. This is an invisible (“glass”) ceiling that can never be formally acknowledged, but the ambitious woman knows the ceiling when she hits it. It is not unusual at that point for the woman to leave her organization and formally retire (or start her own business — Option One).

It is even more likely that the male retiree seeks something that requires no formal accountability. This is especially the case when a man has lived out a life fulfilling traditional societal expectations about the male as bread winner and “leader of the band.”  While there may not have been a glass ceiling awaiting this man as he moved up through the organization, there were often long days and nights of work, stressful meetings, and insensitive and often “stupid” bosses with whom he had to contend. Thank goodness for retirement!

Career Option Four—Avocational Dabbling

The ultimate escape from accountability is to become an avocational junky, doing a bit of everything “just for the hell of it!” We take up photography or act in a community play, not because we ever expect to be any good at this work, but because it is a challenge and a joy. In official psychologize this is called “autotelic” (self-gratifying) behavior. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) describes this as the search for “flow” (the experience of being completely present in a moment that provides both challenge and support).

The original meaning of the word “amateur” was not about someone who is bad at performing some skilled task—instead, it was about deciding to engage in a particular activity as a pastime—just for the love of doing it (the word “amateur” being derived from the Latin word amator or “lover”).

Career Option Five—Remaining as Leader

As in the case of career Option Two, the mature adult remains active in the role of Generativity Two. He continues to be an active leader in his organization. This leadership can take on many forms and may require a shift in the leader’s functions. The leader might remain in an active management role, showing up to work each day and continuing to provide direct supervision and keeping “his hands in the business.” Alternatively, he can move up to a position of “chair of the board” or an emeritus position that still allows the leader to influence policy and strategy without having to “roll up his sleeves” every day.

This second variation on career Option Five is strongly reinforced in many traditional Asian cultures. The mature male leader is expected to move outside the active role of manager when he has reached his fifties or at least his sixties. By that time, he is expected to have either retired (Option Three or Six) or become an advisor or overseer (“chairman of the board” or some comparable position). It is considered a sign of failure for an older male to remain actively involved as a manager in his own organization.

While the active leader may be discounted in some cultures, he is also the protagonists in some wonderfully touching novels and movies about the senior citizen who conducts his one last battle. Think of the final scene in Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot or the near final scene in Robin and Marion when Sean Connery, as Robin Hood, and Robert Shaw, as the Sheriff of Nottingham, engage in their final battle. Or, for that matter, think of Sean Connery playing the aging Indiana Jones.