It is also important to note that perceived failure as a parent or the inability to successfully launch or maintain a project can crush our sense of Personal Worth. While other people might praise our persistence in remaining loyal to a disturbed teenager, we might feel like we have failed. While our business might have lasted for ten years or our band produced two albums, we feel “lousy” about our performance as a business owner or band leader. A sense of Personal Worth is often quite fragile and easily shattered when the first mode of generativity serves as a foundation for this determination of Worth.
Providing Mentorship
Second, there is the generativity that comes with caring about young men and women who are not part of our immediate or extended family. This type of generativity often is engaged when we are older and in a position of some power or influence in an organization. We care for the next generation of leaders or the next generation of craftsmen and artisans in our field. We often are generative in this second way through our role as mentors. A sense of Collective Worth often accompanies this second mode of generativity. The second mode also tends to be more robust as a source of Worth than the first mode, for we often have multiple chances to successfully mentor other people, while we usually only have one chance to succeed as a parent or only a few chances to succeed in initiating and maintaining a project. We can assist other people in many different ways. However, we tend to get frozen in a specific style of parenting or project management.
When playing this Generativity Two role, we run interference for younger people or for those who look up to us. We collaborate with them on projects, such as writing a book together with a newcomer in the field. We serve as role models that new people in our company emulate through job performance, personal values, and even lifestyle. We serve as mentors when we listen carefully to younger people talk about their problems and accomplishments. We serve as mentors when we encourage our protégés to take risks or to push beyond initial achievements. We sponsor younger people by inviting them into our world, our exclusive club, or inner group.
There are innovative ways in which this second mode of generativity is expressed. For example, we know several insightful leaders in American higher education who make effective use of senior-level executives who are on leave of absence from their corporations. They teach for a term or two in the college’s business school or liberal arts program, and many of these executives are in late midlife. They thrive in educational and training settings that allow them to teach and reflect on the learning they have accumulated over the years. (Bland and Bergquist, 1998)
Often, our generative interests in collaboration and teaching are melded into a single plan. We co-teach with someone younger or less experienced. We invite a younger colleague to join with us in consulting another organization or within our own organization. These can be some of the most enjoyable and gratifying encounters that we will experience. It doesn’t matter if it’s teaching about woodwork with a younger colleague at a local community center, coaching boys and girls on a Little League team, coordinating a technical training program for line supervisors in a company, or conducting weekly case conferences with new associates in a law firm.
