How do I get over the apprehension of delegating to an older employee?

Question

I am a 24 year old retail asst. manager for a high volume travel center. I always sense the resentment of older employee's when I request a task of them, Male or Female.
Sometimes to avoid that feeling I will give the task to an employee close to my age or just do it myself. I know this is wrong and is probaly hurting my advancement in the company. Any good advice would be helpful. Thanks

Answer 1

Every supervisor has apprehensions when delegating both to older and younger people but there is respect for age and that makes it harder. But you are in your position for a reason. And the people who report to you have to respect that. There is a responsibility that you have to get respect and that takes time. But not giving them the tasks that you should, does not earn that respect.

Answer 2

Being 24 years old and the youngest person in my office, I've run into the same situation myself many times. I often did the same as you and just did the work myself and was usually totally stressed out by the time I got home. But after forcing myself to do it for a while, I noticed that the resentment lessened after awhile. I've started to feel like my co-workers think of me as less of an upstart kid to more of a peer. It's really helped in my relationships in the office to others. So, I understand completely that it's hard, but you've just got to force yourself to do it, and eventually, you'll reap the benefits.

Answer 3

You could hold a pow wow with your supervisor.
if s/he is younger than some employees, s/he should be able to convey his/her experience, even if s/he is older.
It is not a weakness to admit your youth and/or to ask for the input of all your employees.

A alternative may be to hold a meeting with the people under your supervision.
Explain that they may actually have more experience with the company and have the benefit of living longer.

"I am not here to over-ride your experience. Even though I am younger than some of you, I want to use your experience to strenghten the perfomance of everyone, especially myself.
When I ask one of you to take on a task, I know that you have the ability and experience to do it well.
I assure you that I rarely ask any of you do something that I cannot perform myself. More importantly, if I should ever find that I'm required to perform a task of which I'm not familiar, I will be the first to come to some of you for advice and ask for your assistence.

There are a number of tasks of which I'm responsible to perform myself. There are others which I do not have the time to perform and that's when I need the help of everyone here.

I hope that we can all work as a team to make everyones job easier and more efficient. I truly enjoy working here, and with all of you.

If anyone has any suggestions to make my job better, you are welcome to offer all your experience to me, and rest assured it will be welcomed and accepted in good faith.

I hope you all understand that my youth may lack the experience of some of you, but this company has placed me here, in my position, because they believe that I have the ability to learn and fulfil their expectations.

In order to accomplish that, I need and ask the assistence of all of you".

Hope this can be modified to help.

Answer 4

Congrats to your parents. They raised you to have respect for your elders. Good job!

Makes it hard, I know. But, you eventually get used to it. It takes awhile, though. I don't think there is really anything you can do in the meantime to make it easier on you. As you get older and get more experience and have spent more time with this particular group of individuals, it will get easier.

I was 23 and had an assistant that was in her 50's. It took awhile to get used to that and I don't think I was ever 100% ok with it. I ended up firing her, but it was because she spent 90% of her time at work outside smoking and not doing her work.

Answer 5

Treat them as an equal instead of telling them what to do try to coach the response you want out of them eg how would you do this , is there an easy way to do this, what do you think I should do about this?