Our children. So much potential. Just as it was for us parents, the teen years are awkward at best. Research estimates suggest no more than 10% of those ages 15 to 18 have latched on to a career interest. And some percent of that 10% will successfully pursue and achieve that original career without any deviations. But over 95% will shift their thinking as they gain more insights through successes and failures. If you think like most parents, that is normal and to be expected. Very few teens have been exposed to the world of work enough to make a good career decision. Even the decision to pursue or not pursue post-secondary education is prematurely decided based on social pressures and stereotypes. As parents, we frequently make behavioral observations and assumptions about our children’s specific career or postsecondary education options. For the child, a focus on more immediate growth and development is typical. Expecting teens to focus on long-term career options will usually produce a blank stare. Not that they aren’t interested. It is more about the ‘how’. And for both the parent and teen, neither has an answer for the ‘how’. To smugly say “it is in God’s hands” or “it took me a while to figure it out, I’m sure my kid will figure it out as well” is handcuffing that child and significantly limiting their potential.
Investigating and researching career options as a teen isn’t an exercise to enable a competitive advantage – it is a powerful exercise that empowers the teen to recognize their potential, experience independent thinking and learn how to research key elements for big decisions.
I designed Career Coaching for Students to help teens navigate and learn how to make big decisions. Yes, the focus of the program is self-awareness (talent) and career exploration. And ironically the goal isn’t to make a career decision. The goal of the program is to give the teen a strategy and tools to navigate as they approach adulthood.
To simplify Career Coaching for Students’ approach, we take a three-stage approach to encouraging every teen to embrace their talents and explore post-secondary paths based on highly valid and reliable talent assessments and proven research strategies.
Stage 1 — Self-Awareness: We leverage assessments to identify the ‘why’ (personal motivators/driving forces) and ‘how’ (behavioral style) of a person’s talents. These two areas provide incredible insights that help the teen narrow the entire world of work into high-potential career areas. The narrowing will still produce a number of career options. (FAQ: Do the assessments dictate a career path? Answer: Absolutely not.) But what makes a high-potential vs low-potential career option? It has everything to do with two experiences: job satisfaction and stress. The amount of job satisfaction correlates to the alignment of the job’s rewards/culture and the person’s top motivators. The amount of stress can be measured based on the alignment between the person’s natural behavioral style and the job’s behavioral demands. We all adapt to perform our work. Those that are naturally aligned behaviorally to the job’s behavioral requirements experience much less stress which provides more energy to performing the work. Those that must adapt their behavioral style to perform the core parts of their job will experience more stress. The greater the need to adapt behaviorally, the greater the stress. Job satisfaction and stress have noting to do with intelligence or IQ. And as an important side note, academic achievement (or lack of) in middle school or high school has no correlation to success.
We have received feedback from many parents that prior to our program their child was at best very average when it came to grades. As one parent stated, “After attending the Career Coaching for Students program, it was as if someone switch on a light in my kids brain.”. Another parent reported that their child received the program as a senior in high school. They graduated with very average grades (below the 50%ile). They went on to college and were on the Dean’ Honor Roll for the first 3 semesters (feedback was received just as the 3rd semester had wrapped up). Another parent stated “Our child was gifted and had many opportunities, college choices and career interests. Their issue was that they had too many interests. How do you make sense of it all and choose a college major and career direction? This program put everything in logical perspective and enabled our child to have a focus that they chose and was highly excited about.”
Stage 2 – Research High-Potential Career Options: Narrowing and focusing investigative research makes the entire journey more efficient, saving time and money in both the near- and long-term. As parents, with a more narrow focus, you can strike up conversations that guide your child in future thinking that is more engaging. As the teen researches areas of interest, it is important to let the due diligence process work. You might hear your child suggest something that you don’t see ever happening. Don’t react. Simply be a part of the exploratory adventure with your child. Let go of your knowledge, experience and biases for this stage. Take on a ‘learning mindset’ instead of a ‘judging mindset’. Try talking about types of work, travel and hobbies that they think of for their life now and what they see themselves doing in the future. We have a proprietary process to help your child evaluate different high-potential areas of interest. This step requires personal drive and self-starting ability. Your child was born with these traits. Allow them time to rediscover these traits. Also trust our process to help in that area as well. Doing the research for them is not helpful.
Stage 3 – Map a Strategy for Learning More, Evaluating and Choosing Educational Strategies and Making a Career Decision: As we said at the beginning, Career Coaching for Students doesn’t have a goal of ‘making a career decision’. To be clear, some teens get there before they graduate high school but that isn’t the goal. Developing a strategy and following a plan of action is the goal. If that happens, every teen will be focused in a great career direction and will know how to maneuver and adjust their plans based on continual environment feedback.
We know that parents of teens experience emotional challenges between push and persuade. There can certainly be some persuasion needed at age 16 and up, but the concept of giving them a loving “push” to adulthood is a very wise and proven best approach:
Mentoring, not managing;
Directing, not doing;
Supporting, not stressing.
Whether it’s more education or another path to achieving career aspirations, your loving push will give them the confidence to take on the life that God has planned for them.
For more information about Career Coaching for Students go here: https://successdiscoveries.com/career-coaching-for-students/
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Student Career Exploration and Planning Blog 