how to motivate youth
Dr. David Yeager
UT Austin Professor of Development Psychology
Author of best-seller ‘10 to 25
In Conversation with Charles Yao
CHARLES YAO: Yes, and also the one time half your wall slid open when you pulled open the wrong book. So you had to stop doing that...
Just as a starting premise, the book is a volley into the culture to say that adults that are in charge of people 10 to 25 fundamentally get a lot of stuff wrong. What is the general notion of people this age, and what are you trying to correct for?
DAVID YEAGER: It's called 10 to 25 because developmentally, that spans the moment puberty strikes, until adults in our society tend to take on an adult-like role where they have serious expectations and status. There's a biological onset of this period, but a socio-cultural offset, and so the the barrier for 25 is permeable, but it's a good heuristic.
One of the first things people get wrong is they think that 10 year olds have absolutely nothing to do with 25 year olds, right? You look at a kid who is barely starting puberty versus someone who could have been in the military for seven years, they look very different. But in fact, a lot of the neurobiology around what what kind of captures motivation and what young people are looking for, what they want to experience, is surprisingly similar.
Once you know that, then it opens up this huge world for adults who feel lost and confused to draw ideas from. All of a sudden, things that work for 11 year olds become relevant to a manager of a 22 year old, and vice versa. So it's both a kind of scientific window, but it's also a hopeful window, because it allows us to learn much more rapidly.
CHARLES YAO: To get back to some of the prevailing notions that adults might have of young people that you go great lengths to - kind of counterintuitively - say are wrong, what are some of those notions?
DAVID YEAGER: I talked to a lot of managers, and they feel like Gen Z or young people today are entitled to things that normally in previous generations you had to earn. You had to spend 10 to 15 years busting your chops, earning your stripes, and 22 year-olds want to walk in and get all that stuff right away.
Another thing is the idea of feeling like they can have it all at an early age. That they can have a fun, high paying job where they also work from home, and have endless vacations, and where they're constantly getting accolades and told that they did a great job, right? That’s the expectation. And bosses are like, “No, I hired you because I have work to do. What are you talking about? I'm happy if you stay because I'm paying you. And took a while to recruit you, but do your job.”
So I think there's this perception that the young people just lost their minds, and they live in a fantasy world that's nothing like the world that the older generation had to build with their bare hands. And young people are tired of hearing that, and so they think the older generation is out of touch and unrealistic. That they are stupid for putting up with with with with such bad working conditions for so long, and there's this - what I call a generational divide.
CHARLES YAO: At the core of your argument is that there are two things motivating young people. Psychologically, if you understand those things, you can unlock and bridge this major generational divide.
DAVID YEAGER: I think the evidence is pretty clear at this point that a major driver of motivation and attention for young people is the experience of having attained status and being respected by others. Specifically status in the eyes of people whose opinions you care about. One of the best feelings you might have in your entire life is when you were uncertain of your place in the world, you did an awesome job, and someone whose opinion you really, really cared about, made it clear to you that you lived up to the expectations, right?
One feeling that almost never leaves people is the feeling when you were vulnerable, uncertain of your status, not knowing who you were, where you were supposed to belong, and someone who had power over you made you feel like a nothing. Treated you like you either don't matter, like you're an idiot, like your contributions weren't valued or unjustly accused you of something you didn't do.
It's not that different from being in a relationship, not knowing if you want to continue the relationship, and then your partner does something kind of annoying. You're like, “Oh my god, I can't live with this person the rest of my life”. But if you're certain that you love that person, you're just like, “Oh, my partner has this weird quirk. It's kind of annoying, but I'm ready to move on.” Something small means something dramatically different. If you're in a state of uncertainty with your status.
CHARLES YAO: So young people are like subtext machines continually trawling through that text... Is there an example from the many years of research and real coporations you’ve gone in to where the [conflict] at the core was a young person’s yearning for status, and it was mis-read by the older person?
DAVID YEAGER: I think that the quintessential moment in a young person's day is performance feedback on how they're doing. I've seen junior associates at law firms who turn in their first brief after they went to Georgetown Law, and they turn in a brief for the client, and the partner says, “this is awful”. I’ve seen 22 year-old teachers getting observed by the principal for the first time, and the principal's just standing in the back, kind of taking notes quietly and nodding. And the teacher's like, “Oh my god, do they think I'm terrible at this job?” The question the young person is asking is, “Does this person who has power over me think I'm fundamentally incompetent at this job?”
They’re reading between the lines [on] everything. If there's too long of a silence, if there's too much criticism, if there's not enough affirmation, they're interpreting all that. The supervisor, meanwhile, is often thinking, “I don't have to give you feedback. I'm going out of my way to do this like this is a gift to you. I'm judged on by doing my real job. Managing is it's not even my real job.”
That puts the the supervisor into what we call the mentor's dilemma, which is that on the one hand, if you're hyper critical, you could push the young person away and then they're not going to be as good of an independent worker. But if you withhold your feedback and you're just nice all the time, well then they're never going to improve.
CHARLES YAO: When you’re talking about mentorship, a lot of people just use that world colloquially. It’s an older person charged with taking care of and educating a young person. You’re very specific about what mentorship means and what mentors are, so what’s the definition you have?
DAVID YEAGER: No one thinks they're a mentor. Maybe if you're in Big Brothers, Big Sisters, then a couple hours a week you think you're a mentor, but it's very rare for a parent to think “I'm a mentor of my child”. I keep them from running in the street and dying, I feed them, but I'm not a mentor.
Certainly, people find mentors, but people are not dying to add unpaid responsibilities to their professional lives, and that's what mentoring is. Same thing with with teachers; Teachers love telling the story about the one student they got into Harvard or Princeton, but they're already doing a lot. They're really accountable for their test scores, so they're not so mentoring is a nice-to-have, not a have-to-have.
What I learned is that when you study great leaders, bosses, professors, managers, parents, coaches, they're philosophically a mentor. What that means is that they align their actions with the long term well being of the young person in their development, their actions and their resources. It's not every Tuesday for three years having coffee with a junior person. It's, “okay in this conversation, my goal is not to solve your problem for you, but to help you have the resources you need to meet very high expectations.”
CHARLES YAO: One generally understood definition of mentorship is that you turn the young person into a junior version of you. Your version of mentoring - I think you use the word ‘Alliance’ - there's a certain amount of autonomy given to the young person.
DAVID YEAGER: What we’re talking about with alliance is two independent entities who find shared goals that are mutually beneficial. A great mentor ends up with young people who are independent, think three steps ahead, want to do the right thing - even when no one's looking - and end up being way more self-sufficient.
CHARLES YAO: When we’re talking about wise feedback as an intrument to buoy people up, it’s actually great for marginalized people in the context of education and workforces. Why is that?
DAVID YEAGER: The heart of the mentors dilemma for the young person is a concern about the tenuous nature of their status and respect. That concern comes about simply because of the age and power disparity between old and young. Now add marginalized group identities. You're also from a group that has been denied access to education, to workplace to real estate markets. You're from a group that's continues to be stereotyped, to face discrimination, to maybe experience hate in many ways. That's an extra reason to wonder if negative treatment, like critical feedback on your performance at work, is coming from a more malicious place.
One of my graduate students, Melanie Gonzalez, was the only the second black PhD student ever to graduate from UT in psychology. She graduated two years ago, and one of the things she always said to the rest of the department, is it's much better to be overstated than understood. What she meant by that is she's sitting there as the only black student in the graduate program the second ever, and when a professor's not impressed by her question in class or she's giving a research presentation and people are trashing it, it's reasonable for her to think everyone's thinking “black people can't cut it here”, right? That's the most reasonable response for her.
So her advice always was be overstated. Make it clear to me in that moment when I'm presenting in front of a room of 30 tenured professors, that this feedback is because you think my work can meet a high standard. Otherwise, I'm going to assume that you're giving it because you think I shouldn't be in this room. That's why I really am excited about these ideas and the mentor mindset. It’s something that's good for everybody, not a niche audience. It's especially good for equity, but it's also something that leaders can do, even if they don't care about equity. I know that sounds harsh, but I live in Texas, a lot of people just don't care and the fact that they're anti equity. So I want something where anyone in any position of power, regardless of your liberal leaning, can do something for equity in our culture and mentor mindset is one of those