Wisdom is our most underrated attribute and it thrives in diverse environments where we learn more.
By Rubin van Niekerk
Being the youngest of four siblings, I got quite frustrated with lagging behind which is a normal feeling amongst youngest siblings. As a hyper self-critical child, I fretted over my perceived weaknesses and aberrations from what was considered normal. We were a very musical family and all of us played musical instruments which was most unusual for a blue-collar family who must have been considered a little eccentric. Sometimes we played board games, but my mother disapproved as she said our games interfered with our studies and musical practice. I learned that not everybody was overwhelmed by games, even if they stimulated you mentally and improved aspects of your IQ, EQ and SQ, just like learning any new skill does.
Not that I knew that of course. When you are young you learn new skills faster, like learning a new language, but as we age these skills takes longer to acquire and most people will gradually over time spend less time learning new skills. Our ability to develop massive intellectual potential when we are young is impressive, but that can also mean that we learn from people who may or may not have our best interests at heart. Our development of empathy is a natural process unless we have sociopathic or psychopathic mentors who will most likely leave some psychological scars which are hard to heal. Statistically only about 1% of the population fall into this category but because they love to manipulate others you will find a far higher percentage at schools, universities, religious institutions, politics, or any other area which provides a captive audience.
Be on guard if you have enough EQ to identify these smiling and charming people who are hardwired to manipulate as many people as possible. They will only bring you anger, sadness and regret but may unintentionally help you develop your intuitive intelligence that improves with age and rewards you with remarkable insights for life. At the age of eighteen when I started my university education, I managed to convince a local hospital with a psychiatric ward to employ me during my university vacations. The knowledge I gained during this period was incredible and exceeded the educational value of my university education, as I constantly did research that was not required academically.
The most touching experience I’ve had was to from time to time spend the last hours with dying patients where nothing else can be done for them apart from making them as comfortable as possible. If their symptoms got worse the full medical team would come to assist even though we all knew they were passing on. Sometimes they would become lucid and aware of everybody including other entities in the room. When this happened, they usually appeared contented and calm, even though the medical team would be highly stressed. These rare experiences taught me some wisdom at a young age and how vulnerable we all are. No matter what we have collected and saved we cannot take it with us.
Eventually my journey in life moved on and I was lucky enough to learn more about psychometric testing with great academically focussed mentors. Moving on to HR seemed a logical next step and I learned about salary surveys, Peromnes Grading systems, pension funds, budgeting, training, finance, and IR in my early twenties.
Wisdom is our most underrated attribute, and it thrives in diverse environments where we learn more. Sadly, we hear too often about knowledgeable older people who get retrenched for unconvincing reasons. They usually enjoy mentoring younger staff with less experience, which is incredibly valuable to companies. The first thing I learned in HR was about cost to company which increases as we age and that companies who need to shave costs naturally look at the most expensive costs to companies. It is quite common to see people getting retrenched and rehired as consultants without all the high-cost items like medical aid, pension funds and car allowances. A sensible cost-efficient option, I think. Ageing brings wisdom to almost all of us, but it often manifests early in life. In a stimulating environment most youngsters learn fast which endows them with skills and attributes that continues to grow. This gift also stimulates EQ which teaches us compassion and deeper insights as time marches on. During the past twenty years the most advanced HR teams guiding multinational companies have all came to the same conclusion, which is that the more you diversify your team the better the total outcome is for both the employees and the company.
Competitive companies require a diverse team of employees from a wide demographic profile if they wish to obtain peak performance. It is important to have a large age range amongst your employees and never underestimate the value of your older employees and gay employees who still tend to be underrated far too frequently. Another reality which is often ignored by unskilled HR professionals is that losing skills in companies usually require many years to replace.
Looking back, I realise I was way to young when I worked in HR as it requires a lot of experience, wisdom and a broad skill set to navigate such a complex ship. As I grew older, I was fortunate to find a regular chess partner that was a chess grand master that I never managed to beat, which taught me lessons in persistence, humility and trying to lose gracefully.
Many HR professionals thrive in environments where they can continue to learn about the complex evolving nature of personnel and highly pressurised companies much better. Top companies spend generous time and money on training and the sharing of skills within their hierarchical spheres.
Sadly, too many companies fail to understand that older staff should be highly valued more as they have the skill sets, conscientiousness, and self-discipline that most younger staff require to develop over a long time to the same level. Psychometry teaches us that when you look at tests like the 16 PF you can find people with those qualities which is Factor C (Emotional Stability) Factor G (Conscientiousness) and Factor Q 3 (Self Discipline). Obviously, any test should be interpreted fully to provide a true picture of the depth and complexity of the applicant. Even if you recruit staff based on the ideal profiles, people evolve with age and their profiles change. Highly group dependent staff may be mentored by negative senior staff which could do a lot of harm to the morale of younger impressionable employees. A company with older staff may have learned much about their potential mentorship value to younger staff. Valuing the human skillset of a company is an underrated skill but the one that has the most impact on the bottom line of a company. I believe all CEOs needs to have an intelligent crash course in HR to at least give them an idea whether their HR department knows what they are doing. High staff-turnover at your senior or middle management is a red light. Just as much as the loss of any skilled people being headhunted should raise the alarm. Training is expensive and inexperienced employees benefit from the advantage of the wisdom from older employees. During COVID we saw the loss of superior skillsets from many companies that will take years to repair.
Replacement of such a loss of expertise is difficult as these employees are usually headhunted
immediately, and it can take more than a decade to fix the disastrous error of HR departments who failed to prevent the talent loss. I was fortunate to study various older psychometric programmes like 16 PF, MMPI and various IQ tests as well as gloss over the modern computerised systems.
Most of the modern systems require very little analysis from the tester and the answers are sent digitally in a few minutes. I spent some time since 2020 to learn how to interpret some of these new systems that simply removed most of the complex analysis out of the tests. Good HR officers need a high degree of compassion and intuition and in the case where they have worked with long term personnel, they would not even require extensive testing as it is simply common sense. No test is 100% accurate at the measurement of intuition, EQ, or teamwork. When you plan into the future your knowledge of your personnel and the crossroads facing you, creates multiple variables that will complicate the outcome of your planned strategy.
Skilled staff deserve more credit and CEOs should spend more time to evaluate the challenging three-dimensional complexities of HR, human capital and future value whilst not hesitating to outsource sometimes as that would save their companies a lot of money.
