Following up on yesterday’s post I thought it would be good to provide a graphic reminder.

Share it with any helicopter or snowplow parents you know, especially if they are looking back at you from the bathroom mirror.

Image credit: DC School HUB

——->

There’s been lots of talk and media coverage over the last few years about helicopter parenting.

That was then.

Over the last few years parents have raised the bar — or perhaps I should say lowered it.

They have become snowplows, which is even worse.

How bad is it?

At Stanford, said Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job. (…) Snowplow parents have it backward, Ms. Lythcott-Haims said: “The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.”

That goes hand-in-hand with my philosophy about coping vs. control.

Nor does end when they leave school.

In a new poll by The New York Times and Morning Consult of a nationally representative group of parents of children ages 18 to 28, three-quarters had made appointments for their adult children, like for doctor visits or haircuts, and the same share had reminded them of deadlines for school. Eleven percent said they would contact their child’s employer if their child had an issue.

Parents contacting managers isn’t new, I wrote about it way back in 2010.

Do you recall how the Boomers complained and blamed their parents generation for the world they were inheriting?

The world they are leaving their kids is in far worse shape, not to mention that they prevented those same kids from gaining the skills they need to deal with it.

Image credit: Les Chatfield and Stewart Kaye

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

I wrote this post four years ago; the problem wasn’t new then and its gotten progressively worse since.

People today, not just Millennials and not all Millenials, don’t communicate well. People at all ages and levels, including CEOs are poor commicators — and if you doubt that, take a look at Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s speech at the town hall meeting after the Amazon acquisition. Written communications aren’t much of an improvement, even ignoring grammar and spelling errors, they often have little clarity, flow, or even coherence.

Texting has resulted in still worse writing, especially as people disperse with details like capital letters that can totally change the meaning.

“Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.”

And thanks to the overall focus on STEM education you can expect it to get even worse.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Do you groan at the thought of having to hire and manage new-to-the-workforce people?

Do you wonder what’s wrong with today’s college graduates?

If so, remember two things.

1. The problems are not a product of your imagination.
2. You are not alone.

Multiple studies find the same problems I hear first-hand from managers.

“When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and problem solving.”  –special report by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace

“Problems with collaboration, interpersonal skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity, flexibility and professionalism.” –Mara Swan, the executive vice president of global strategy and talent at Manpower Group

What’s changed?

Helicopter parents, crowdsourced decisions, me/my world focus, and the constant noise that prevents thinking.

The result is that many new hires require remedial actions from already overloaded mangers that go well beyond the professional growth coaching that typifies the best managers.

Flickr image credit: evoo73

Sometimes people seem to forget that kids grow up and become adults.

Or they used to.

The responsibility for most of the problem can be laid at the feet of their parents and their helicopter approach to raising their offspring. Most ironically, they complain when job candidates sport the same attitudes as their own kids.

Other factors retarding adulthood include the escapism offered by today’s video games, especially for under-30 males, the lack of interpersonal skills driven by social media, along with social media’s unsubtle efforts to foster addiction in the name of profit.

And, of course, the largest factor being family and friends, whose emotional and financial support, enable a relatively comfortable living situation.

The difficulty today’s young adults are having in becoming actual adults was the impetus for (what else) a startup.

Rachel Weinstein, a psychotherapist, and Katie Brunelle, a former elementary school teacher and coach, responded by creating the Adulting School, a place for people to gain the skills they need to feel like an adult, from goal-setting and sheet-fitting to how to manage money or hang a picture.

Simon Senek, a British author and motivational speaker, also blames parents for the false expectations of so many Millennials, who never were given the chance to learn/live the process of achievement.

“Everything you want you can have instantaneously, except for job satisfaction and strength of relationships,” Senek argues. “There’s no app for that; they are slow, meandering, uncomfortable processes.”

Whatever you think about a school that teaches adults how to be adults the real question is: in what direction will the next generation go?

Image credit: the Adulting School

Sad. Sick. Stupid.

Those are are the words that best describe the effect of wealth on kids, especially in Palo Alto.

The Atlantic has a well-researched article delving into the extraordinarily high teen suicide rates for the children of the so-called meritocratic elite.

Suniya Luthar, professor at Arizona State University, has done a lot of research on the subject.

The rich middle- and high-school kids, Luthar and her collaborators have studied show higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse on average than poor kids, and much higher rates than the national norm. They report clinically significant depression or anxiety or delinquent behaviors at a rate two to three times the national average.

She tripped over the situation by accident when comparing an inner-city school with a nearby high-income, suburban, mostly white school.

The results were not what she expected. In the inner-city school, 86 percent of students received free or reduced-price lunches; in the suburban school, 1 percent did. Yet in the richer school, the proportion of kids who smoked, drank, or used hard drugs was significantly higher—as was the rate of serious anxiety and depression.

The rash of suicides has gotten a lot of parental attention, but mostly focused outward, instead of seeing it as a parenting crisis, but the kids know.

Martha Cabot put up a YouTube video that eventually logged more than 80,000 views, and comments from parents all over the country. Sitting in her bedroom in a T-shirt, with curls falling loose from her ponytail, she confirmed many parents’ worst fears about themselves. “The amount of stress on a student is ridiculous,” Martha said. “Students feel the constant need at our school of having to keep up with all the achievements.” She was recording the video mostly for parents, she explained, because apparently it took a suicide to get adults to pay attention.

Sadly, the parental attention is in the form of calls for data to evaluate, statistics to analyze and meetings/discussions with experts, as if it is an engineering problem as opposed to a human one.

The spike in teen suicides, along with the increase of suicides at elite colleges and among entrepreneurs, should sound an alarm — one that big data and all the stats in the world aren’t going to solve.

Our friends, colleagues and especially our children aren’t robots that can be reprogrammed at will.

In these days of assumed meritocracy, where children can be turned into anything, we admire them as displays of remarkable engineering, to be tweaked and fine-tuned into bilingual perfection. What we’ve lost, perhaps, is a sense that there may be things about them we can’t know or understand, and that that mysterious quality, separate from us, is what we should marvel at.

Read the entire article and send the link to every parent you know.

And for the rest of your life be the nonjudgmental, safe-to-talk-about-anything haven for every child with whom you come in contact.

Your actions could save a life.

Flickr image credit: Darin House

Do you groan at the thought of having to hire and manage new-to-the-workforce people?

Do you wonder what’s wrong with today’s college graduates?

If so, remember two things.

1. The problems are not a product of your imagination.
2. You are not alone.

Multiple studies find the same problems I hear first-hand from managers.

“When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and problem solving.”  –special report by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace

“Problems with collaboration, interpersonal skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity, flexibility and professionalism.” –Mara Swan, the executive vice president of global strategy and talent at Manpower Group

What’s changed?

Helicopter parents, crowdsourced decisions, me/my world focus, and the constant noise that prevents thinking.

The result is that many new hires require remedial actions from already overloaded mangers that go well beyond the professional growth coaching that typifies the best managers.

Flickr image credit: evoo73

Technically speaking the links I’ve been offering lately have been off subject and perhaps I should apologize to the purists among you (assuming there are any). But I honestly believe you can draw useful intelligence from off-subject information and experiences, both direct and vicarious, to apply to your professional life, while some just apply living in general. Today I’ll start with the most applicable and move outwards to the indirect.

It’s a well-known fact that the line you aren’t in moves fastest—or does it? New research shows that it’s not how long you actually wait, but how long you are idle that counts, which is why I always try to carry a book.

“Often the psychology of queuing is more important than the statistics of the wait itself,” notes the M.I.T. operations researcher Richard Larson, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on lines. Occupied time (walking to baggage claim) feels shorter than unoccupied time (standing at the carousel). Research on queuing has shown that, on average, people overestimate how long they’ve waited in a line by about 36 percent.

Understanding nonverbal communications means more than looking at the obvious clues, such as crossed arms; it means taking the 3 C’s into account.

One way of increasing your accuracy is applying the 3 C’s of Nonverbal Communication: context, clusters, and congruence.  Context includes what environment the situation is taking place in, the history between the people, and other factors such as each person’s role (for example- an interaction between a boss and employee).

Parenting and managing (or leading, if you prefer) have a lot in common, so I tend to read parenting articles.

A recent essay from a college professor who understands both sides of the coin when it comes to disengaging from a child-about-to-be-an-adult offers up insights that are just as useful to a manager struggling to delegate as to a parent who needs to let go.

Parents and children follow one another’s progress on Facebook. They post photos of the campus lobster bake on Instagram. They tweet. They text. They Tumbl.

There are times when I want to tell my students that if they want to learn anything at college, their first step should be defriending their parents. (…) Now that I am one myself, I finally know what it is parents are going through — not just letting go of a child but of an entire chapter of their lives.

Finally, The NYT has a feature called Room for Debate that poses a subject with experts on both sides adding their thoughts. Frequently the best stuff is found in the hundreds of comments. The most recent asked if “modern parents were rude… Or just doing what’s best for their children.” Lyss Stern, founder of Divalysscious Moms, a “luxury lifestyle company for urban mothers”, provided the most comic relief from a modern, totally self-absorbed mindset—almost a caricature of the subject.

“Yes, sometimes I did let my younger son run around Barney’s because I know he’d pitch a fit if I kept him in his stroller. But that doesn’t make me a bad mom.”

Sorry Lyss, according to 99% of the comments I read it does.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

An article about new research on what makes for good and bad parenting by Dr. Carol Dweck, a social and developmental psychologist at Stanford University, caught my eye, most importantly because it explains so clearly the problem with much of today’s workforce.

Starting around three decades ago it became the norm for parents to compliment kids for anything and everything and ‘help’ them with things that were a bit beyond their reach.

Turns out that has the opposite effect as the one desired.

This may seem counterintuitive, but praising children’s talents and abilities seems to rattle their confidence. Tackling more difficult puzzles carries the risk of losing one’s status as “smart” and deprives kids of the thrill of choosing to work simply for its own sake, regardless of outcomes.

It’s the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

Now look at the workplace needs of so many (not all) who came of age over the last 30 years.

While seeming confident, they often require far more in the way of instructions, feedback and kudos just doing their job. Initiative is frequently missing and risk looms large.

Prior research by Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, found similar results.

“…reasonably supporting a child’s autonomy and limiting interference results in better academic and emotional outcomes.”

The same is true in the workplace.

It’s so prevalent that it was the basis for Wally’s conversation with his PHB.

The upshot is that today’s managers are stuck providing “good parenting” management to new hires, because their hovercraft parents didn’t give them room to make mistakes or stand on their own two feet.

The real irony, however, is that many of the mangers who complain most vigorously are the ones who hover at home.

Flickr image credit: The Nothing Corporation

The links I’m sharing today are meant to be taken personally. They are about you and others in your world, so you may want to share them.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed you to a discussion that HBS professor Jim Heskett had initiated questioning the 24/7 style of today’s work. The forum is closed and Heskett has summarized the results based on comments that are well worth reading.

“There is a lot wrong with the way we work… (…) But ultimately the primary culprit is us.”

Following that came an essay on busyness to which I really related. Busy seems to be the new black, but you may want to consider varying your wardrobe.

They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Now take a look at why living optimistically (not touchy-feely everything is wonderful) has real health benefits and the follow-up real-world example.

“…optimism is not about being positive so much as it is about being motivated and persistent.”

Years ago I wrote Being “Special” Can Ruin Your Children’s Lives and then watched as Millennials graduated college and entered the workforce with no clue that there was more to it than showing up and trying. In a high school commencement speech the speaker told students that they were neither special nor exceptional, but that did not change their value (you can see the entire speech here).

I wonder if there is any room for the ordinary any more, for the child or teenager — or adult —…who will be a good citizen but won’t set the world on fire.

— we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement,” he told the students and parents. “We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”

Personally, I believe there is not only plenty of room, but also great need.

We are of enormous value in our own world as well as the world at large.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

You know the old saying, ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’; for kids it’s more like ‘damned when they do and damned when others don’t’.

Kids stand less chance of developing into strong, balanced, ethical adults now than in past decades; not just in the US, but globally—they are heading for mediocrity.

If you think I’m being overly pessimistic consider the following.

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default. …

“The new rule, suggested by “involved parents,” is a temporary measure that will be replaced by a pre-season skill assessment to make fair teams.” (Hat tip to Elliot Ross for leading me to this article.)

Great lesson to teach our future leaders—don’t excel, don’t try too hard, don’t strive too much, don’t field a winning team and, whatever you do, don’t follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Magic Johnson, Dr. Jonas Salk or any of those who surpassed their peers by a wide margin.

Helicopter parents are nothing new, but their actions are getting more outlandish. And whoever said that life is fair?

Meanwhile, here in the land No Child Left Behind, the pressures have gotten so great that some teachers and administrators have turned to a repellent solution.

Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers — thousands annually — cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.

Cheating ranges from accessing current tests and using the questions in test prep classes to tampering with tests by correcting incorrect answers.

Cheating seems to be a fact of life these days and not just the US; when you add the pressure of funding and paychecks people have been known to make rotten decisions.

People rant on about what teachers are paid, but, in fact, they make far less than your average teen babysitter.

The average teacher’s salary (nation-wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour.

Keep in mind that the 6.5 hours doesn’t count meetings, preparation, study, admin or any of the other things teachers have to do.

And that $1.42 is to educate, not babysit, them.

Try hiring a neighbor kid for that and you’ll get laughed off the block

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thost/170369652/