When I was 35, I got assigned to a project at McKinsey where my manager was a 28-year-old. He did not have an MBA and had joined straight after undergrad (from Princeton).
I was worried that he would be immature and we may have a difficult relationship. Instead, he turned out to be one of the best managers I have had.
And here is why.
1. He did not expect me to make slides EXACTLY the way he would do it. As long as the document conveyed the message clearly and directly, he was cool with it.
2. He focused more on the message than the formatting. In fact, I was a lot more focused on the formatting and the look and feel of the document, than he was.
3. He trusted you, as long as you delivered. No micro-management, no second guessing.
4. He was decisive. In that project, the data was ambiguous and it was hard to draw a clear conclusion. So when I told him, we brainstormed a bit, and then, he took a call despite all the ambiguity.
5. He had no airs. You absolutely couldn’t tell whether his father was a barista at Starbucks or a Fortune 500 CEO (it was the latter).
My apprehensions about him could not have been more way off.
Clearly, being young or old has less to do with maturity and wisdom than we imagine.
Wisdom comes from mindset and openness to learn, not from gray hair.
– Rajan