How to Prepare Young People for Work and Life
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
In first two years of interviews for Job Search Radio, I interviewed subject matter experts about job hunting and shared information to help you as a job hunter be more effective.
On this show, I interview Dr. Joanie B. Connell, author of Flying without a Helicopter: How to Prepare Young People for Work and Life, about how to prepare your sons and/or daughters for work (and life). It was an interview for me as the father of a soon to be high school student was very helpful. He is now 25 and doing extremely well. From the archives
Hi, this is Jeff Altman, the Big Game Hunter, and you are listening to Job Search Radio.
Almost every show I’ve done since launching almost two years ago has been designed to help you as a job hunter develop more effective skills and to learn the things that you need to know in order to be a more effective job hunter.
This show is different because it’s designed to speak to parents, to talk to parents about how to be more effective in helping your son or daughter launch as an employee, launch as a business owner. You know, launch. You know, get a job, start a business, what have you.
So my guest has written a book, and we’ll talk about the book, or the ideas in the book, really, over the course of the interview. So I hope you find it helpful in your life, and I hope you recommend it to others. And by the way, if you like the show, I hope you give it a review on iTunes and let people know that you really enjoy it. So hang in there, and let’s sing along.
Are you looking for a new job or interested in leveling up? Job Search Radio is your go-to resource for insider tips on job hunting and growing your career. Here’s your host, Jeff Altman.
So my guest on this show is Dr. Joanie B. Connell, the author of Flying Without a Helicopter: How to Prepare Young People for Work and Life. She’s an organizational consultant, a leadership coach, and she works with companies to develop and retain talent, as well. Whew! That’s a lot. Dr. Dr. Connell, Joanie, welcome to Job Search Radio. Great to have you on board.
Thanks, it’s great to be here.
Terrific. So, kids. What’s the matter with these kids today? And I’ll just simply say that from my experience, and I have a soon-to-be 15-year-old at home, they seem different than when I was growing up. How did this happen? What are they like? How do we How do we help them?
Well, yeah, that’s an interesting question, and, you know, I hear that a lot from parents. And I think part of the thing is that the parents need to look at how we’re parenting kids differently than we were parented. And we see a result as a result of our society and other fears that we have that we protect them a lot more, and we coddle them more. We try to boost their self-esteem, and we’re concerned about their future with the competition.
And so the kids are really structured and protected, and they don’t know how to do things by themselves as much as they used to. They don’t have the resilience, the independence, and some of these skills that that we have developed as kids.
So, the difference starts off—I remember this old episode on 60 Minutes where the most popular show in Britain at a particular time was this older woman who did taught dog training. And the issue wasn’t the dog; it was the owner. So I have a hunch— Yeah, well. I have a hunch the problem is the parents.
Yeah, if you want to say it that way. We call them problems as we see them, but we also look at it in terms of consequences. You know, any choice that you make and how you raise your kid is going to have consequences. And you just have to make the choice of which consequences you want to have.
Right? Is it better to protect them and keep them safe, then, and also have them disempowered and unable to do things by themselves? Or would you rather empower them and have a little bit of risk involved? So those are your choices.
And no one’s talking about putting kids in physical danger. Lord knows we’ve all heard too many instances and read too many and watched too many instances of kids who were hurt or worse. So I know you’re not talking about that.
So as a parent, or as a teen—maybe let’s just start with the parent side of this. How do you start changing your own behavior in order to help your child be ready for jobs, the future? And folks, where where I’m going with this interview is with the idea of if you’re the parent of a teen, you want to make sure that when they graduate from school, they’re ready. Yeah. That’s the approach that I’m looking at from here. How do we take care of ourselves or or change ourselves in order to help them?
Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. Well, first of all, you might want to think: Are you raising somebody that you would want to hire someday? Right? And are you giving them the skills that they would need to be somebody that you would want to hire and have work for you?
And a lot of times that people don’t. And we have different motivations for that, and it might be asking some hard questions to yourself. Why am I protecting? Why am I keeping them from going out and being independent? Is it that I have a lot of control needs? Is it that I have a lot of fear that may be irrational fear that’s garnered by the the media? It might be that you just have the need to be needed. I mean, we all love our children to need us.
And so there are a lot of reasons, and sometimes it’s hard to let go and hard to empower them because there’s a bit of a loss there in the process. And as It’s what’s best for the kid to be able to live on their own eventually, but it’s hard at the time for us.
So when I think of skills that are necessary, I’m going to start with real basic ones cuz I see that’s where we are in our family. It can be as simple as waking up on time to get to school. Yep. It can be as simple as learning how to manage your homework assignments. He’s a freshman in high school as we’re doing this show. Uh-huh. So, up until this point, he hasn’t really had to contend with a lot of timetables.
So, I’m painfully aware that he’s, you know, at this point is learning these skills. But how do you teach them? Do you allow him to miss the opening of school as part of the training process?
Well, you know, there are decisions that have to be made, and, you know, as I said, it’s consequences. If they’re minimal consequences, like I know, for example, I’ve done it with my daughter is that if she’s oversleeping, I get her up 5 minutes before we’re leaving and say, “We’re leaving in 5 minutes.” And, boy, does she run around the house like you wouldn’t believe, and she’s sweating as we leap in the car to leave the house. And the next day, she has her alarm set, and she actually gets up.
So that’s a minimal consequence to her, but if it’s missing a final exam, probably you want to do something else, right? Make a different decision that time. But there’s a lot of leeway in there, and making the decisions depending on the situation and the person involved is is another way of looking at it.
And it sounds like unless the consequences are dire in some way, what you’re going to suggest is that allowing them—I don’t want to call it fail, but to allow them the opportunity to make a mistake for which the consequences are not particularly expensive, as you will. Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And the way to do that is to be there as a coach and a guide rather than somebody who is doing it for them, so that you stand back and maybe at the outset you can also talk through them the kind of questions they need to be asking themselves to make these decisions. Like, you know, about getting up on time, you know, talking through: Well, how are you going to do that? What happens if you sleep through your alarm? You know, what what do you have to do today at school?
You know, get them to think about the consequences and why it’s important for them to get up. And, you know, then you can have them make these decisions, and they can make mistakes. And then when they come back and they have made the mistake, you can talk through them, “Well, what went wrong? You know, what would you have liked to happen? What were you expecting? You know, what what did you anticipate, or what were you failing to anticipate that caused this?”
And those are the kind of questions that’ll help them get better rather than just saying, “Okay, all right, you’re not ready. I’m just going to wake you up every morning.”
Is that what happened with your daughter? Is that how you wound up training the dog, as you will?
It’s really funny cuz we just actually got a new puppy, so this really hits home. But, yeah. No, she’s she’s made a lot of mistakes. You know, I’ve made mistakes, too. I wouldn’t call myself the perfect parent. I try to do what I can, and and I learn as well as we go through this.
Um, but, yeah, you know, and sometimes I have to take care and do things for her, and and other times I really have to be tough. And and sometimes I have to see her get hurt, you know, by, you know, other things going on socially or those kind of things, cuz I don’t want to go in there and like start calling her friends’ parents or taking care of her too much. She needs to learn.
So it’s it’s hard. It’s It’s not an easy process. But, yeah, that’s what I have done myself.
As As I’ve said many times, being a parent is the toughest job I’ve ever been involved with. Yeah, it is. I’ve done search for a lot of years, filled tons of positions, and coached many, but being a parent is the toughest job.
So, we’ll be back with more from Dr. Connell in just a moment, but first my job search insider tip for this show, which really is about pointing you back to an earlier episode that I did, probably about two shows ago, called “Better than Myers-Briggs.” I’m doing that because I think it’s a really worthwhile show to listen to in order to consider If you’re someone who’s considering a career change or a job change, it puts you in the position of learning about this one test called CoreMap that will help guide you into understanding the kind of environment that you can do better in. It’s not that you can’t do well in a different kind of environment, but it will talk with you about the the ideal environment for you and your personality make up. And the show talks about the test and how it works, and at the end of it, my guest, Bruce Chodosh, spends some time making an offer where he says email him, put the subject in the subject line, “Job Search Radio,” and he’ll take $100 off his $375 test. So I want to encourage you to do that. His email address is bruce@spectracomm—that’s s-p-e-c-t-r-a-c-o-m-m.com. Email him, mention Job Search Radio in the subject line, and as I said, $100 off the CoreMap exam.
So, let’s come back with more from Dr. Connell and pick up where we left off.
So, I chose to start off by talking about a teen because that’s my situation, and he’s relatively early, you know, first-year high school. So, we now let’s, say, talk about a later teen or maybe someone early in in college. How do you support them, or what sort of skills do you help them develop in order to ensure that by the time they graduate college, they’re actually ready?
Oh, that’s yeah, a really good question. Some of these skills are again are the same ones: developing independence and resilience and initiative to get out there and do it on their own. Another one that I work on a lot at that age is developing appropriate expectations, to start to learn what they’re going to be faced with when they graduate.
A lot of people have been raised sort of promising being promised this wonderful light at the end of the tunnel. They’ve gone through all this education and worked so hard, and they’re going to get the stream job. And when they get out there, they find that the job is actually the bottom rung of the ladder, and the managers expect them to do the grunt work, and there’s a big mismatch there.
Also in terms of life, you know, having to go out and support yourself and get insurance and get transportation, pay the electric bill and all that, it’s a lot of work to do. So setting up the expectations and then having them develop the skills to be independent and start to do some of this on their own is where they need to be at that age.
So when they start when you start thinking about developing independence in a college student, I’m going to This is a quirky one to bring up, but I think you mentioned it to me when we first spoke. Laundry? Do ya Yeah, let them bring the laundry home to you?
That’s actually the number-one problem I hear from parents, that kids go off to college and don’t know how to do laundry. And it’s It’s funny because it’s it does seem very basic, and, you know, simple things like that. When they’re teens in high school, thinking about what it’s like to live on their own, how to do laundry, how to clean, how to manage money—that’s another big one—and how to really manage a budget, even more importantly.
And, you know, how to feed yourself in a healthy way, and make sure you’re getting the the sleep and the exercise you need. So walking through those steps and thinking about what it takes, sometimes you have to backtrack a lot cuz once you’ve done something for 30 years or 10 years or whatever it is, it becomes so second nature, you don’t even know how to explain it. So you really have to go through the steps and remember back to when you were that age and the questions that they have, because trust me, when they’re that young, they don’t understand the simplest things about laundry.
Like even one kid I heard didn’t know how to get quarters for the laundry at school. She wanted her mom to give her quarters. And the mom says, “Well, can’t you just go to the bank and get quarters or something like that, rather than have her mom send them to her?” So thinking about this these little things and getting your kids ready to to out get out there and embark on their own lives really important.
It sound It sounds like a real social work scenario, where you’re really breaking down the behavioral characteristics that you need to instill in your son or daughter, and ensuring they have the experiences where they figure out that they can figure it out. Do I have that right?
Yeah, well, even at home before they go off, having them start to cook some of their own meals, or cook for the family even better, help get them being responsible for everybody. Having them have their own money. I always recommend that people have jobs that pay money, rather than just volunteer work or internships, so that they learn the value of money and what the how far it goes when you have to buy shampoo. You know, it it ends up not going as far as you expect it to. Being able to save till the end of the week when you want to go out, so you don’t spend it all.
Very basic things: cleaning up after themselves, taking out the trash, things like that. It It’s helpful for the whole family to have younger people doing the chores, but it also really helps them when they get out there because so it’s so overwhelming to go to college to begin with, and to once you get out of college to get a job and live on your own. Having some of these as second nature really helps get you one step ahead.
Now, we haven’t discussed some of the um, you know, not every child is developmentally appropriate for their age. So, for example, along the the spectrum of ADD or ADHD, sometimes children appear developmentally, I don’t want to say inappropriate, it’s not the wrong they’re not as advanced for their age as they might be, for lack of a better way to language it. Do you alter how you prepare them? Cuz after all, they may be I’ll use my son as an example. You know, he may be 14 now, but by the time he gets out, he’ll be 18. And maybe developmentally, he’s 17, just for the sake of argument. Right. Do you accelerate the program for him, or do you just, you know, let him be where he is at that time?
Well, yeah, it’s a great question. It’s always an individual scenario for each kid, each situation, each parent, and also what you can do. I mean, some people have the luxury of taking care of their kids, some parents don’t. They’re out there working long hours. So it really depends on the person, and it’s an individual choice and and decision-making process, and how you go through that.
In terms of people who are behind, there may be ways to empower them as well, and get them independent in the life skills, and still helping them out in some of these other ways. You know, maybe socially and working on communication and those kind of areas.
But still, there’s People are actually a lot more capable, and kids are so much more capable than we give them credit for. It’s amazing how much people can learn to do for themselves when they’re allowed to do it, and also put in a situation where it’s necessary to do it.
In college, do you encourage internships, full-time jobs I’m sorry, not full-time jobs, but part-time jobs while they’re in school that relate to what they do? What’s really best for I don’t want to say the typical student at that stage, but you know what I’m referring to.
Right. Well, you know, that’s that’s another individual thing, but I really highly recommend at least some part-time work in college, either during class time, you know, during the semester, or in the summers, or both. And in addition to any other opportunities that are really specific to the particular field that a person is interested in.
And now let me tell you why. And that is that having job experience no matter what it is, if it’s flipping burgers, if it’s mowing lawns, whatever it is, it teaches people a lot of responsibility, and that’s relevant to any job when you get out there. If you have shown that you’re reliable, and that you you know you show up on time, you get the work done that you said you you need to get done, you can be responsive to your supervisor, and be able to communicate with them, and all of these types of skills are really basic, but they’re so important to real-world work once you get out.
And those are the skills that a lot of the management now is complaining that kids don’t have when they get out there. And these are the kind of skills that you see when you want the five years experience and the college grad is saying, “How am I supposed to have five years experience when I’m just graduating college?” Well, these are some of the experience kind of issues that people are talking about, just learning how to navigate through the workplace.
It’s very true. And what I would also recommend, I think, and please can you know disagree if you feel it’s appropriate, have the student be in a situation where they’re asking their boss, you know, “Give me feedback whenever you see me doing something right or when I’m not doing something right. Don’t just wait until some arbitrary period of time that I’ve been working for you for a review.”
I’ve been seeing a study recently that millennials hate reviews, and it’s primarily because they feel like they’re being blindsided. And they have no idea where some of the criticism comes from when it does, because managers haven’t really communicated. So, one of the ways to counter that is by encouraging managers to do more and giving them feedback as is appropriate, you know, positive and, you know, constructive, shall we say. Does that fit in your thinking? Yep.
Yeah, yeah, getting feedback is really important. And the question is, though, are you ready to receive the feedback when you get it? And that’s another skill that’s huge. And that’s something that you can develop right away. That is being resilient.
And another complaint that managers are having, and I think a fear that they’re having working with some millennials because the millennials aren’t as used to getting criticism, even if it’s a constructive criticism. They’re used to getting A’s in school and really positive encouragement from home. So when they get to the workplace and they’re not doing what the manager expects, then they’re having a harder time receiving that.
So something to improve on now or brace yourself for is receiving feedback. And a simple way to do that is just to say thank you and process it after you get out of the meeting, and however you need to, but not resist it during the time, but just thank the person and then give it some thought later.
Yeah, I think thank you is one of the perfect responses rather than flipping out, which was one of the responses that statistically shows up in the showed up in the survey. Cursing was another one.
Well, now you know why managers don’t want to deliver feedback, right? Yeah.
Now, the good the good news is, I think every generation, beginning with mine—and I’m I’m one of those boomers that’s still working—was never expected to adjust well to the business world. Lord knows the boomers were all a bunch of hippies doing drugs in the 1960s and ’70s. And every generation that I’ve read about since, in one way or another, has had critical comments made about it and their inability to adjust to the world of work. Mhm. Somehow or other, we’ve all managed to do it. We’ve all wound up being able to make that adjustment, so there’s clearly hope for your millennial or is it Gen Z now? Is Is the new generation that that’s coming up?
Yep, that would probably be your son. He’s probably right on the edge there, between millennial and the Z generation.
Wild. Um, so in terms of getting them ready for work, how do you help them, or do you help them with class selection, with ensuring that they’re doing their coursework while they’re off at school, or do you, you know, let them go through it? And I’ll come back with a follow-up in just a moment.
Sure. Again, this is an individual scenario. Some people are more independent than others and able to make those choices. But as If you’re there as a coach rather than somebody doing it for them, it’s going to empower them to start to learn how to make these decisions. So as as a coach, you might think about this and talk to your child
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