Ep 187: Essential Skills for Successful Teens

Mark Herschberg joins us to talk about the kinds of skills they
don’t teach in school, like negotiation, planning, compromise and
collaboration! We’re discussing how teens can develop these
skills to find career success.


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Full show notes


What makes a person successful in the real world? Is it their
technical knowledge, their accounting abilities, or anything else
they might learn in school? 





While these qualifications  are important, there are other
skills which are just as essential to personal and professional
success: things like teamwork, negotiating, and planning! Without
these abilities, your teen could be the greatest math whiz of all
time…but find themselves unable to communicate or collaborate
enough to bring their innovations into the world.





If kids aren’t learning skills like this in school, how can we
teach them to be strategic and savvy adults? Turns out, we as
parents can set examples about compromise and negotiation that
kids take with them into adult life!  With the right
conversations, we can encourage them to become leaders,
developing the confidence and collaborative abilities they’ll
need to cultivate the career of their dreams.





To understand how we can set up our kids for success, we’re
talking to Mark Herschberg, author of The Career Toolkit:
Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You. Originally
an engineer and chief technology officer, Mark has spent much of
his career launching and developing new ventures at startups,
fortune 500s and academia! His MIT Undergraduate Practice
Opportunities Program is often referred to as MIT’s “career
success accelerator”. Mark is the perfect person to tell us
exactly how teens can  thrive in the professional world!





In our interview, Mark and I are discussing some of the most
important qualities teens need to find success, and how they can
cultivate these abilities. We’re also talking about how teens can
take notes on their failures or success to inform their future
endeavors, and how parents can become better negotiators to reach
compromises with teens–without either side sacrificing their
interests.



Essential Skills for Successful Teens


As Mark was navigating his own career as a young adult, he found
that there were certain skills that were necessary for
success–skills he didn’t learn in class. These abilities were not
only desirable to those striving to be leaders, but to anyone
with goals and dreams within the professional world! Mark
realized that if he could cultivate skills like confidence,
collaboration and teamwork, he’d be able to launch his career in
a major way. 





In the episode, Mark uses the ability to negotiate as an example.
When our teens find themselves at their first professional
job,  they may simply settle for whatever salary they are
initially offered. But if they attempt to negotiate, there could
be some seriously awesome benefits, says Mark. Even if they just
negotiate an extra thousand dollars annually, they could rack up
forty thousand over forty years ... .or, more importantly, learn
a lesson about how to negotiate, making them a bit better at it
for when they’re hired the next time!





Mark explains that essential skills like these are not taught in
high school or college. Instead, they’re discovered either by
simply doing or through peer learning. If you want your teen to
get a head start, Mark suggests creating a peer group to foster
peer learning. In this community of young people, teens can
dissect a book, podcast, or video centering on self-improvement
every week. By speaking and listening to one another, they’ll
gain perspective about how to change their own lives, and learn
things they may have otherwise overlooked!





Another way Mark believes kids can learn is by self-reflection.
Examining our past success can help us be successful again in the
future–and the same goes for avoiding failures!





The Power of Self Reflection


In his experiences working in tech, Mark has often found that
projects tend to go off the rails, leading those involved to
complete a “post mortem” and find out just what happened. In
these situations, collaborators realize that things started to go
badly only a few weeks in, but no one stopped to reflect long
enough to do anything about it. This causes a lack of
communication, only for the whole project to go up in flames.





Mark recommends that we encourage teens to practice self
reflection as they go through life, so that they don’t end up in
this situation! For a teen routinely struggling to score well on
the SAT, looking at the specific sections that challenged them
and engaging in focused practice might allow them to improve the
next time around. He explains that systems like the military and
medical science often do this, calling it an “after access
report.” If teens and parents can do this in their own lives,
Mark believes they’ll cultivate a greater rate of success!





When a failed project is collaborative, it’s human nature to
point fingers and assign blame for why things went wrong. If only
our coworker wasn’t so incompetent, everything would have been
fine! But Mark points out that although this is a common human
tendency, sometimes we have to realize that there might be other
reasons why they never responded to our email or turned in their
report on time, like a sick family member, or a miscommunication!
If teens are going to be successful in their careers, they’ll
have to learn to be flexible when working with others.





When it comes to communication and collaboration, compromise is
essential! In the episode, Mark is sharing how we can be better
at compromising with teens without sacrificing what we want…while
also showing them through example how to work well with others!





Why Compromise is Critical


As parents, we tend to dig in our heels and take a strong
position–teens can’t have a phone until they’re a certain age,
can’t go to the party they so desperately want to attend, can’t
stay out past midnight. And when teens argue, it’s so tempting to
throw them a “because I said so” But this isn’t going to set a
very good example, says Mark. When kids enter the professional
world, “because I said so” isn’t exactly the best way to
communicate their intentions! Plus, it will only frustrate teens
as it makes us seem like we’re just bossy and care more about
control than teens happiness!





To set a better example and get teens to actually listen, Mark
suggests expressing your intentions instead of taking a position
right away. If you communicate what you want and your teen does
the same, the two of you might be able to find a middle ground
that works for both of you…as well as reach a greater
understanding about what the other person is striving for! If you
want your kid home before you go to bed but they want to stay out
extra late, extending curfew by an hour could help both of you
achieve your goals! Mark explains that compromises like this one
are much more effective than “because I said so.”





In the episode, Mark talks about how parents can set a good
example by making compromises. Good examples and role models can
be an incredible way for teens to start developing important
skills like teamwork a...