#148 Teen Career Development: From Overwhelm to Confidence with Lisa Marker Robbins Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins 01:06

Well, hello, my friends and welcome to a special solo episode of College and Career Clarity. I don’t do these often because I really enjoy rich conversations with others working to support teens and their parents. But sometimes it just makes sense for me to do it, and this week, it is in celebration of National Career Development Week. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. It is so near and dear to me that over the summer, I sold a business that I had built over 25 years, so I was making a good living at it. It was sellable. I was having fun doing it, but I just felt a calling to better fully, fully support teens and young adults, 16 to 25 year olds and figuring out that all important first step into the world of work after graduation, and so that’s why we’re here. So it just makes sense that I do a solo episode for National Career Development Week, and we’ll be back next week with more fantastic guests. I really want to discuss and define career development and why it’s so important. You see every time I tell a teenager that they will go to school 16,000 hours from kindergarten to 12th grade, and yes, I see every one of those hours on their face when they give me a very painful expression, parents, teachers, those that work in the schools, go say that to a teenager right now and let me know what their comment is. Back to you, but the reality is, they will work 82,000 hours if they work from after graduation all the way up until age 65 you can do the math on how we get there, but that’s the average is 82,000 hours. So it’s really important for us, I believe, to support students in defining what comes next for them, career development. See, it’s not a one and done. This isn’t something that we’re going to do in high school or college one time. It’s a life long process of managing how we learn, work, our leisure time and our transitions to achieve that desired future that aligns with our interest, our values, our skills, our aptitudes, believe me, there’s some things that I find very interesting that I lack the aptitude to do, and our hardwired personality so that all of us, whether we’re teenagers, figuring out what comes after Graduation, or we’re adults, we’re parents, are making informed decisions. You know, career development, as I already said, it’s not a one and done. I have continued to develop myself. There are things that I’ve done since COVID, to gain new skills, to better serve in my role, and even do micro pivots to reinvent my roles. So it’s really important that we take two views of this. Number one, that it’s a long game, it is a marathon, not a sprint. But more importantly, that we start early, even in middle school, ninth grade, actually even younger. Many schools now have a K through 12 kindergarten through 12th grade career department. It’s not a college and career department. It’s a career department, because the reality is not everybody’s going to go to college, and there are things that can be done, even in elementary school that you’re just. Ripping out lifelong lessons, inspiration, creating a new norm, so that by the time we get to sophomore year of college, or, sorry, sophomore year of high school, which actually is where I firmly believe we need to get serious about this if we haven’t done anything before sophomore year, that is a year that is go time. But if you started early, or you’re blessed to be in a school, private or public who takes us very seriously, and they’re doing things even in elementary and middle school, then you’re very lucky, and it will just be flexing a muscle and going deeper with a muscle that we’ve already been building. Now, if you’re wondering why I say sophomore year is time to get serious and what might be too early and what might be too late, I have a little quiz for you. Everybody likes a good quiz. You can go over to flourish coaching co.com forward slash quiz, and take the quiz, just so you can kind of see where your student lands with that. And you know, it’s a lot of fun. And people ask me all the time, is it too late here? I’m gonna, I’m gonna just give you this. It’s never too late, but there is an ideal time to start, because when we do so, there are many benefits that your teens are going to get. And I’m going to give you some tools to help them that you can use at home, all on your own, free things in just a minute. But here’s what these tools will bring for you. The benefits of career development is, first of all, increased self awareness. You know, Cornell did a study in 2010 of top CEOs. And while they expected that their study would reveal either where they went to college or socioeconomic factors in their background as what the most successful people had they actually found that it was self awareness. So self awareness will not be lost on any of us. It is a super power, and by starting early with career development and doubling down on this while kids are still in school, no matter what their path is, CEO or something else, they will benefit greatly. It also when you double down at the right time, allows your student to make informed decisions during school and after graduation, including classes that they may take. You know, we’re doing this episode in November, and when everybody comes back from winter break in January, your students will be selecting their courses for the following year. Yep, you’ll be at the halfway point of this school year, and they’re supposed to already make decisions about what comes next. And quite frankly, if you have a college bound kiddo, the colleges want to know what they’re taking senior year, and some of them are interested in their grades in those classes. Some are not. But what they’re taking matters, and we want to make the most of it. You’re also going to have students who have better academic performance because they’ve got some clarity and they’re setting goals. You know, one of the things that parents say to me off all the time is, well, my kids unmotivated in this area, I can’t get them to do anything, and parents, as well as students, are feeling a lot of anxiety over that. But I want to let you in on a little secret. Your kid’s probably not unmotivated. They’re just overwhelmed. See overwhelmed masks itself as unmotivated, so when you’re frustrated with your kiddos, because, believe me, I’ve raised some kiddos myself. All of our kids now are 23 to 33 at the time of this recording, and they’re all out of our house. But it can be hard, it can be anxiety provoking, not just for your kiddo, but for parents, when they feel that their kid’s not being cooperative, instead of looking at them as being difficult, I’m going to ask you to take a shift for a second and wonder, is it possible that they’re just overwhelmed and they can’t even imagine the first step, let alone what comes after graduation. And maybe it’s your job to help support them. Not do it for them, but to help support them, because as they begin to get out of that overwhelm and take these important next steps, they’re also going to begin to gain critical thinking and problem skills that are problem solving skills that are going to help them for the rest of their lives, you know. And the reality is, when they start to get interested and find some passions, and believe me, I don’t think that you have to be passionate about something to find your way. I. I out. I also have seen with the among the 4000 students that I’ve worked with, that passion sometimes just grows with proficiency. But once we get things like internships and mentorships for our teens that come out of doing the career development work, our kiddos are going to have adult voices in their head from someone other than us. I mean, can I hear it from you that have raised or are raising a kiddo that they would rather hear the exact same message from somebody else than they would from you? I remember when my son, Caleb, who is a teacher now, he’s 23 when he was making a decision during high school about a program that he wanted to that he wanted to pursue in high school, and he came to me and all excitedly walked in the door that night, after school that evening, and said, Oh my gosh,

Lisa Marker Robbins 11:03

I figured out what program I want, and I’m like, really, oh, let me know, because he had been very resistant to all of my suggestions and had his own ideas when he wanted to do and I thought, well, it’s his own path. I’m gonna help him and support him in figuring this out. And he excitedly. I couldn’t really legitimately wait to hear what he said, Because he left the house that morning with resistance to my ideas and really not a clue of what he wanted to do, but some of his own ideas. And what did he do? He said exactly the program that I had suggested to him, and I had that moment where I was thinking, like, Are you kidding me? I mean, have you felt that way as well? And then I heard that it was a teacher who inspired him to do that. And you know what? I thought, hey, he’s got a mentor there, and that person went on to be a mentor for him for two solid years, and helped him make a wise and informed decision. And I’m not saying it’s wise, because it was my idea, but it aligned with who he was, who I saw him as, but he wasn’t open to it until he had mentorship through other adults that could support him, and so I zipped it. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t say like you remember, that’s what I said to you over the weekend when you’re talking about this, and he had a very successful journey in that program. Now I know that not only are teenagers overwhelming, just the idea of supporting your teen can feel like you’ve got obstacles. Those obstacles could be lack of resources, not knowing how yourself. I remember a parent who we were supporting said to me, my daughter came to me and said, You know, I thought I wanted to do I forget what it was, fill in the blank, and as I learned more about it, I know for sure that’s not for me. And Sarah said to me, I didn’t know how to support her, because I don’t know all of the careers that are out there. I don’t know I am not an expert in this. So you’re also not alone in being overwhelmed. I also know that some of you believe, or you’re being told by others that students kids can’t know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. I want to bust that myth right now, any decision that somebody makes is not a forever decision. It is a an informed decision right now on a first step, but when those first steps into the world of work are rooted in the truth of values that your teen has proficiencies, aptitudes and align with their hardwired personality. Instead of doing major swings, 180s on you, they will be doing micro pivots. I have had a history of doing nine micro pivots in my professional career, but there is a common thread throughout all of them, and I’m not going to waste our time talking about them. Now, maybe I’ll do a live on them at some other time. Okay, beyond that, what other things might you be coming up against that I know we can best bust through? I think that kids, I know that kids have misconceptions about certain careers, and so it’s important to go at this with an open mind of what might be possible. And none of us is aware of what we don’t know. We don’t know what we don’t know, right? I’ll give you an example. A student that I we work with in our launch Career Clarity course recently said to me, I wonder about. Actuarial science. And I thought to myself, no kid says actuarial science without knowing someone who is in that field, because it’s just not something that a teenager would know about. So know that there are a lot of misconceptions we have. There are a lot of things that we don’t know that are out there, and that’s why import it’s important to start doing the work early. So let’s start. Let’s start talking about, how can we do some of this work early? First of all, check out what your teens school offers if you work in a school. Talk about what are we doing, what are we offering teens? I see some schools that have robust internships, experiential learner learning. There are schools that bring our launch, Career Clarity course in or have other tools that they use. There are, I saw a local high school, to me, private school, had a college Majors Fair. It wasn’t to go to learn about the colleges. It was to go and learn about the majors at local colleges, to focus on the career side and the major side of things. So first of all, tap your easiest low hanging fruit, which would be your student school. A favorite website of mine, and it’s free, is at B L B as in boy, B L, S as in sam.gov forward slash, K 12. Forward slash. Now what is that? That is a Bureau of Labor and Statistics. They have a fantastic Occupational Outlook Handbook, but they have specific resources for everyone involved with teenagers. They have student resources. They have resources for teachers and career and college counselors and so they have DIY things that you could do, and there’s things that the school can do. So you can check that out@bls.gov forward slash, K 12. Okay, what else? Experiential learning is amazing. Two of my favorite types are job shadowing and informational interviews. I actually inside launch Career Clarity, teach about six different types of experiential learning opportunities, but those are two that are easily defined for you. Make a lot of sense and parents, it is not wrong of you to be a resource in helping your teen connect with other adults to land job shadows, just get in the room, even if it means I’m going to go get the lunch, I’m going to clean up the office, I’m going to file papers. By even doing that you’re seeing a job in action, turn down no opportunity to get in the room or to do informational interviews 30 minutes, just talking to somebody about their job. Those are some really, really practical first steps. I also have a complimentary video that we give out to families. It’s really about how to guide your teen without risking that they’re backing themselves into a corner or that either of you are going to have regrets. You can get that free video at flourish coaching co.com, forward slash video, and I’m going to put that link in the show notes as well. You know Jen Milligan. She is a friend, so an acquaintance, more I won’t call her a friend. She’s more of an acquaintance. And we were at a work conference together down in Nashville, and I remember talking to her, and across her face was anguish, because she was telling me the story of her daughter who was in the middle of her junior year, and mom was having mom guilt, because she was feeling like that they had messed up, and it was all ready too late. So do you remember what I said before my friends, it’s never too late. So I gave her some reassurance that it’s not too late, but they might need to get moving. And then I shared with them the framework and the information that I’m giving to you in that complimentary video at flourish coaching co.com forward slash video. It’s also in the show notes. And when she came away and learned the right framework, she said a few things. She said she actually was able to get out of her teens way. And I ran into her, this was a quarterly conference we were going to in Nashville. So when I saw her about six months later, she reported back that she was able to give her daughter really agency and get out of her way. And they had stopped fighting and arguing. So as much I won’t say at all, because wouldn’t that be a dream world with teenagers? And she felt like, hey, now we have a path to get to the finish line on time. So she was reassured that it wasn’t too late. Now there are some decisions. Options that our teens are going to make or have to make, where there are very real deadlines, and if they don’t make those decisions at the right time and do the work ahead of time, it could be some it could be too late for some options. That is the truth about colleges that admit students directly to majors. Sometimes they only admit first time freshmen who are applying, you know, during or after their senior year of high school, and the doors closed afterwards. So that’s something that we delve into deeper in the video. Is how that works. So there are some options that are off the table if you wait too long for sure, but for most of you, it’s not too late. You can do this.

Lisa Marker Robbins 20:45

So what I want for you to focus on is on this National Career Development weeks is for your student to have a structured roadmap that’s going to result in greater confidence on all the decisions that they’re making about what comes after graduation and parents in this National Career Development Week, the outcome I want you to focus on, for you is reduced stress and nagging Once your child starts to engage and you’re going to have an increasing return on The investment of time or money that you’re going to dedicate to supporting your teen and their aspirations. So my friends, Happy National Career Development Week. This is important work that we’re doing to support the next generation and the ripple that they are going to go out and make in this world. It is bright. Don’t let anybody tell you any differently, and I will see you next week. You.