May 29, 2022

How to help teens take accountability with Jeff Otis

20 minutes

In this episode, I’m joined by Jeff Otis, the founder of the personal leadership platform, Project OTY. Jeff is going to clue us in to why teens may resist taking accountability, how to encourage them to take more accountability, and how to help them uncover a sense of purpose and own their future.

Key Takeaways

The three O’s: Own your time, own your education, and own your organization

We need to acknowledge that we've got a generation of young adults growing up in a world that none of us have experienced. The speed at which information is coming at them is off the charts. It's becoming more difficult to take ownership and make decisions when it feels like the future is fuzzy and unsure.

Help them build their roadmap to create their purpose. Shift the focus to what they want their world to look like five years from today. Define success. Create a visual representation of what success looks like. If you can see it, you start to believe it, and then you start taking those steps to achieve it.

One of the challenges we see in education is that it is very career focused. I think we're doing a disservice to young adults and teens by talking about picturing the rest of their life. That feels overwhelming.

Change doesn’t happen overnight, be a little bit patient. You're in the middle of what's happening and often you can get caught up reacting to what's happening. When it becomes frustrating, this is an opportunity to pause for a moment, step back and look at why it's happening. When we start to unpeel, we see the uncertainty and fears that need to be addressed.

There are four stages to learning

Unconscious incompetence: You don't know what you don't know

Conscious incompetence: You realize you don't know what you need to know.

Conscious competence: You know what to do, but you still must think about it for a little bit.

Unconscious competence: Everything's on a reflex.

Start exploring opportunities that are in alignment with your child’s unique strengths. Introduce them to different solutions and help them acknowledge and understand what their unique strengths are and how to leverage then today to move themselves forward.

We encourage young adults to reach out to 10 people that they trust to be honest with them, and ask them, “How would you describe my unique strength?” What strengths above all others seem to come effortlessly for me? This does a few things

It’s an immediate confidence boost for the young adult.

They'll see strengths they may not have recognized in themselves.

They're developing a list of strengths they can leverage going forward.

New strengths are going to develop as we experience new things, but at every given point a young adult needs to be aware of what strengths they can leverage right now.

Accountability starts with young adults identifying their unique strengths and how they can leverage them. When they can imagine a future they are passionate to go build, they will start getting out of bed a lot earlier on their own.

“As a parent, it's vitally important to be aware that your child is a unique individual.”

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By Dr. Cam

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