Ploymint

By now you’ve heard the big news: millennials are the largest generation in the American workforce. It used to be our parents, the baby boomers, but now it’s us. The official inversion milestone took place early last year, according to the Pew Research Center. And while a good portion of millennials are still taking their first steps off the ground and onto the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder, some of us have already pulled up a seat at the adult’s table. And that means that millennials are becoming bosses, and some of the people we manage are as old as our parents. Yikes.

This is a common obstacle for plenty of professionally ascendant millennials. How do you manage someone that’s older than you and has potentially been on the job longer than you?

I’ve been in this position myself when I worked as the Managing Editor for a small website about philanthropy and supervised about a dozen freelance writers (and a couple staffers). The age gap was particularly pronounced due to the industry—the world of non-profits and philanthropic giving is lousy with older folks after all—and I found myself figuratively puffing out my chest to fit in. Since most of the work was conducted remotely, I often adopted an out-of-character professionalism in email and on the phone. When I’d meet someone in person for the first time it wasn’t unusual to hear, “How old are you?” or some polite form of the very impolite question, “How’d you get this job?” They weren’t malicious comments, but they were condescending, and it took some extra work—or at least energy—to get over that awkward an unspoken hump that whispers, “Yes, I am your boss.”

This, of course, isn’t the only challenge in being a millennial manager, but for a now at least, it seems the most pressing.

You don’t have to be Doogie Howser, M.D. to feel a bit awkward as a young person wielding power in the office, and you’re more likely to end up supervising someone a decade older than you than someone twice your age. (I’m probably too young to be referencing Doogie Howser but I’m trying to act a bit older here after all.) And yet, there’s growing evidence that a generational shift in leadership is bogging down some workplaces.

According to a recent survey conducted by Future Workplace, 83% of the 5,771 people polled reported instances of millennials managing older co-workers. The more telling stats are the follow-ups: 45% of the surveyed baby boomers and Gen X’ers reported feelings that millennials’ lack of supervisory experience had a potentially negative impact on company culture. And what’s worse, more than a third of polled millennials admitted that managing older employees was a legitimate difficulty.

So how do we get over this awkwardness? As the younger generation we have to own an important truth: we’re here to stay, and we’re getting these jobs for good reason. Baby boomers aren’t just aging out of the workforce because their retirement benefits are finally kicking in, many of them are also feeling increasingly uneasy about a technologically evolving workplace that accommodates faster-paced millennials and cuts out snail-paced olds.

Most of the toughest millennial management challenges can be combatted with a healthy-dose of confidence. Pinch yourself and issue a reminder to the woman in the mirror: you do belong here; you have proven yourself; you are a boss. All of that is to say that the older generations you’re now in charge of have plenty to learn from you, even if the inverse is still true as well.