There’s No Minimum Age for Competence

Young. Female. Successful. Three traits that, taken individually, shouldn’t surprise anyone. But when combined, they still raise eyebrows surprisingly often in the business world. Entrepreneur Stella Pollak, who sees herself as an inspiration to a new generation of business leaders, explains what’s behind this phenomenon..

Competence is often associated with certain attributes. A typical example is the remark: “But you’re still pretty young for that.” I know this phrase well. It’s usually meant as a compliment, yet it reveals quite a lot about how we still view competence. As if it had a minimum age requirement. As if you first had to accumulate a certain number of years of professional experience before your own opinion carries any weight. And as if success in a young woman were still just a little bit more surprising.

You don’t get competence as a birthday present

But the crucial question isn’t: How old is someone? It’s: What can this person do? Of course, experience is valuable. But experience and age aren’t the same thing. Someone who has been working for 20 years has accumulated 20 years of professional experience. Whether that automatically translates to 20 years of personal growth is another question. You can do the same things the same way for a very long time. And you can learn an enormous amount in just a few years if you take on responsibility, make decisions, make mistakes, and then have to deal with the consequences.

I started my own business when I was 18. Not because I already knew everything back then. Quite the opposite. But because I got started before I felt ready for everything. That, to me, is the crucial difference: Competence doesn’t come from knowledge alone. It comes from doing. It comes from decisions that work. And, above all, from those that don’t.

When you take on responsibility, you inevitably gain experience. Not always the pleasant kind. Sometimes it’s precisely those decisions—the ones where, in hindsight, you wonder what you were thinking—that teach you the most.

Young women—too many rules

Young women don’t need a new user manual. With young women, there’s an extra layer to consider. Be confident, but not arrogant. Be ambitious, but not overly determined. Be successful, but please be as modest about it as possible. Stand your ground, but don’t come across as dominant. Show what you can do, but definitely not too much of it. That’s quite a lot of rules for people who really just want to do their jobs. Maybe that’s why we should stop constantly telling young women how they need to present themselves in order to be taken seriously.

A woman doesn’t have to act older to be more competent. She doesn’t have to put on a tougher facade. And she doesn’t have to downplay her success just so others feel more comfortable with it. I don’t want to be successful “for my age” or “for a young woman.” I want to be judged by what I do. Actually, that should go without saying.

Being prepared is overrated

We’ve gotten into the habit of believing that before a big decision, there comes a moment when we say, “Now I’m ready.” I’ve come to see this as a pretty persistent myth. Ready to go into business for myself. Ready for a leadership position. Ready for the next step in my career. Ready to bring an idea to life.

But when exactly is this “ready” supposed to be? When you know enough? When no one has any doubts anymore? When there’s a guarantee that nothing can go wrong? We might have to wait quite a long time for that. Courage doesn’t mean rushing in blindly and hoping everything will turn out all right. Courage means making a decision even though you can’t foresee every consequence, and then taking responsibility for it. That’s exactly where growth happens. Not every decision will be the right one. Nor does it have to be. If you’re never wrong, you may simply not have made enough decisions on your own.

Competence—rethought

“That’s how we’ve always done it” is not a valid argument. Being young can be a significant advantage in business: You haven’t known some of the rules long enough to mistake them for laws of nature. Why do we actually do it this way? Does it still work? Is there a better way? Would we really start out the same way again today? Questions like these are uncomfortable. And that’s a good thing. Innovation doesn’t happen when the next generation copies as closely as possible what the previous generation did. Change usually begins when someone is bold enough to ask a question that no one has asked in a long time.

That doesn’t mean young people automatically have better ideas. Of course not. But age doesn’t protect against bad decisions any more than youth prevents good ones. A strong idea doesn’t become better just because a 55-year-old voices it. And it doesn’t become worse just because it comes from a 25-year-old.

Simply successful

Young, female, successful—at some point, that should just be boring. Maybe that’s what real progress would look like: when “young, female, successful” is no longer a special story at all. No exception. No surprise. No “even though she’s so young.” No “impressive for a woman.” Just successful.

Because competence isn’t determined by the year you were born, nor by your gender. It shows itself when decisions have to be made. When something goes wrong. When responsibility becomes uncomfortable. When Plan A doesn’t work and someone still has to come up with a Plan B. Can you make decisions even when you don’t know everything? Can you admit when you were wrong? Can you learn from your mistakes? Can you take responsibility when things get tough? And do you have the courage to follow your own path, even if others don’t understand it yet? That’s what interests me. We can look up your year of birth in your passport. But competence is something you have to demonstrate.