Tag Archives: career development

Part 2 of 3: The Diversity of Aging – Intersection with LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Diversity

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Older gay couples

Again, this blog is loaded with many useful and interesting links which I hope you will explore! (Bolded underlined)

In Part 1 of this series (link) I provided a general introduction to the topic of aging and shared some personal experiences I recently had which inspired me to write this series of blogs. Now I will write parts 2 and 3 in conjunction with the two core areas of my consulting practice – part 2 in relation to LGBT diversity and part 3 in relation to career development.

I appreciate the work of SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders) which provided many of the below points.
First, some general facts about the aging LGBT population:
1. It is increasing rapidly and with the shift in culture, more older LGBT people are “coming out.” Recent estimates suggest that there are over 1.5M LGBT people over 65 in the USA and that will double by the year 2030.
2. A higher percentage of LGBT elders face financial hardships due to job benefit and social security inequities, and fewer family members to help care for them.
3. LGBT elders deal with a significantly higher rate of mental and physical health disparities. 39% of LGBT elders have contemplated suicide and 53% feel isolated from others (over double the general population)
4. Many LGBT elderly people face discrimination and stigma in the lives for our country’s systems that support the aging.

Many of these issues are even amplified for the aging transgender population. Many of these issues arise from the fact that many of today’s aging services providers are ill-equipped to provide competent and nondiscriminatory services to address the unique needs to transgender elders, and some health issues remain from barriers faced to receiving quality health care earlier in their life spans.

However, I see some encouraging signs that there is much more focus now on the intersection of aging and LGBT, and this emphasis must continue to development. There are growing resources for LGBT elders and their allies through organizations such as:
• SAGE (link)– Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Elders. They also have many local chapters associated with local LGBT Centers.
• AARP (link) – An Ally for Real Possibilities. If you do a search on their website search engine on LGBT – you will find that they produce a large number of their resources for the LGBT constituency.
Other hopeful signs I have seen recently include:
• The Carol Woods Retirement Community here in my own state of North Carolina, is a welcoming progressive community which even placed an ad recently in The Front Page, North Carolina’s LGBT bi-weekly paper.
• There was a full page ad in a recent Gay and Lesbian Review (bi-monthly magazine) for Fountaingrove Lodge, a new retirement community in California exclusively for the LGBT retirement community.

Also, the US Supreme Court Decision we have all been waiting on regarding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) could have a huge impact on this discussion.

And I will close with a link to two more articles in the April 26 – May 9, 2013 issue of Qnotes – one titled “Focus on LGBT Aging Grows” and a second article focusing on the LGBT Senior Housing becoming a hot topic among advocates.

Look for part 3 about the link to career development and succession planning in July!

Essential Career Development: How HR Can Lead the Way to a Renewed Economy via Passionately Engaged Employees

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What a provocative title for the February TSHM (Triangle Society for Human Resource Management, one of the local SHRM chapters I belong to) monthly meeting! Since my innovative career road mapping processes for organizations is one of my core consulting offerings, and since I wrote my last blog (link) about protecting an organization’s largest investment (people) via career planning, I knew I had to attend this session.

The speaker was Karen Tax (link to her business website), who after spending 15 years as a software engineer, returned to school to get her masters in Organizational

Karen Tax, Founder of Karen Tax and Associates, providing consulting and coaching services

Karen Tax, Founder of Karen Tax and Associates, providing consulting and coaching services

Development and then changed her career direction. She has spent her last 12 years as a self-employed coach and consultant, including launching a successful online career development community called “IAM Career SMART!” ™.

From the session I realized that Karen’s approach is very different from my career mapping process, but with her focus on connecting corporate career leadership to individual learning and coaching, our work is quite synergistic. Here are the key learnings I took away from this February 28th session:

• That employee productivity, which can lead to organizational success and a renewed economy, is at its maximum when employees are truly passionately engaged. The results we should be aiming for in terms of passionate employees are people who are empowered, entrepreneurial, authentic and leaders. And yes, leaders are needed at all levels of an organization.

• The biggest issue keeping employees from being passionately engaged is fear, which fosters risk aversion, mediocrity, status quo, disengagement, stress, limited thinking, health issues, impatience, rigidity and powerlessness.

• The antidote to fear is a corporate and HR strategy that is based on values, strengths, motivations and passions. By focusing on a love-based model instead of fear, we each can become our essential best.

• Real change or shifts in our way of thinking can inspire possibilities, ignite passions and change behaviors from the inside out. This can then connect our employee’s best within themselves to our organizational goals, resulting in maximum individual and corporate performance.

So what is the bottom line in what I took away? A critical component that HR needs to provide within a career development framework is to help each employee connect their passions to the organizational goals such that both the employee and the organization truly achieve their best.