An important role of adults in a culture is to prepare upcoming generations to be competent in that culture. This has historically been the primary goal of parents and others working with youth.

In western cultures, we seem to have lost that focus. Instead, we have other goals which compete with our time with youth, and goals with youth which don't produce long-term competence.

For example, We want to provide our children with the best, and deny them the opportunity to earn what they want. We spend inordinate amounts of time on our jobs, and when we do focus on our children, we focus on sports, music, recreation, having them feel loved, and a number of other goals. The fact that we aren't spending enough time on long-term competence is demonstrated by the fact that children are now taking, on average, until age 25 to become financially independent.

Since this has been a multi-generational issue, many of us lack the skills to effectively coach youth towards competence. Whether we are parents, teachers, youth workers, or other community members with an interest in youth, we need to know, not just what to do with youth, but how to develop the relationships with them to be effective.

Success Technologies has been very successful in teaching adults concerned with youth to be more effective coaches for the youths' success. All the products on the Youth/Families page will help you be more influential with youth. The Intensive Youth Coaching Skills is our most extensive training series for working with youth, including our other products in a systematic, 12-day training series. We offer this training to schools, agencies, parents, foster parents and others who want to be successful in developing competent youth. The training topics are:

• Developing Rapport and Dialoguing About Goals (2 days)
• Understanding Youth (2 Days)
• Developing Healthy Self-Concept and Beliefs (2 Days)
• Coaching Competent Strategies (2 Days)
• Language and Ethical Influence (2 Days)
• Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Skills and Developing Optimism (2 Days)

Developing Rapid Rapport and Dialoguing About Goals
(2 Days)

Building a Connection

The first skill we need with youth is one of making connection with them. This can be a major challenge. William Condon and others have studied interpersonal communication and documented that people who are comfortable with other demonstrate a synchrony, a very intricate rhythm of postures, movements and counter-movements which have nothing to do with what is being said in a conversation. Only 7% of communication are the words we say. Rapport and connection is about the other 93%. People won't listen to our words, unless we first have the ability to make most of the other 93% of communication comfortable for them.

Add to this the fact that teens go through phases in which they deliberately try to break up synchrony with adults, this is a critical skill. Think about it. With whom are you comfortable communicating? Are the rhythms similar? With whom are you uncomfortable? Are the rhythms different? We can help you learn to establish and maintain rapport, with practice, with almost anyone.

Facilitating Dreams

The second skill we need with youth is the ability to deliberately focus dialogue on their futures and help them create excitement about their dreams. If we want children to succeed, they need to have identified things they want in live. We need to encourage their dreams, goals, and wants, so they can become engaged in creating their lives. In many cases, youth are intimidated by the very word or idea of a "goal". We need to know how to talk about their futures in ways that excite rather than intimidate them.

Why is this important? I want you to imagine trying to motivate yourself without first having a desire or goal, something you want to get or to avoid. Now try to imagine making a decision without a goal. Try to imagine creating something without having a goal about what to create. Try to imagine learning something without wanting to learn.

Too often, we "act as if". We pretend that we are being effective with youth, when the young person's brain isn't engaged in the goals we are pursuing. When we realize the youth in our lives have no dreams, wants, or goals, we need to stop and help them develop them before going any further.

Other Coaching Skills

While the following workshops are best integrated in the order presented here, you can benefit from any of the workshops after attending the Developing Rapid Rapport and Dialoguing About Goals workshop.

Understanding Youth
(2 Days)

Youth perceive the world in very different ways than adults. We have created a culture in which young people spend most of their time in age-segregated groupings for at least nine months a year until they are 18. Then they may go to college and extend this pattern for another 4-plus years.

Given this isolation, they create subcultures, with their own values, norms, beliefs, etc., about the world and what is important and normal. These differences serve to isolate them even further from the adults in their culture. Add to this the tendency of Western media and entertainment to portray adults as ineffective boobs, we often have difficulty feeling like we are respected.

In spite of this, survey after survey indicate that youth want adults involved in their lives. One way to be really effective in working with youth, is to have the tools to develop an understanding of each youth's individual cognitive model or map of the world.

This training introduces you to the needs of youth development and the manners in which we all create our cognitive models. It gives you means of both understanding the neurological filters an individual young person uses to develop his/her model and the tools to honor and work with the differences between his/her model and yours. You will begin to understand what types of language will effect different filters to positively influence youth.

Developing Healthy Self-Concept and Beliefs
(2 Days)

Beliefs About Self

The most important beliefs we develop are those beliefs we hold about ourselves. Together, these beliefs form what we term self-concept. Positive beliefs about yourself allow you to create more success in your life. We often term the positive or negative aspects of our self-concept as "self-esteem". Both self-concept and self-esteem are important to influence when coaching youth.

Negative self-concepts contribute to a very high percentage of problems youth experience. If I wrongly believe I'm overweight, it can lead to Anorexia or Bulimia. Once we hold beliefs about ourselves, they can become our "truth". That truth then serves as a massive lens or filter through which we perceive ourselves and the world.

Accurate self-concepts and healthy self-esteem go together. We want people to have accurate perceptions of their behavior and feel good, and bad, about themselves appropriately.

For example, we have all known people who were rude, mean and had other negative traits who thought they were wonderful. Then there are those who are polite, loving and lovable who think they are total losers.

This training gives you means to identify aspects of a person's self-concept, and work with that self-concept to make it more accurate, flexible and useful. As a side-effect, his or her self-esteem can shift to be more congruent with the new realizations.

Beliefs About The World

Einstein indicated in one of his statements that the most critical question for an individual to answer is whether the Universe is a safe place. While this is a simplification, those who feel comfortable and connected in the world live more meaningful lives. Unfortunately, all of us have experiences which make it challenging to remain connected and comfortable with others.

We form beliefs in a number of ways which then serve to either help us succeed or hinder our enjoyment of life. Once one of the negative beliefs is formed, it becomes a lens or filter which we perceive the world.

This training will give you methods of challenging and changing negative beliefs and allowing young people to consider other perceptions which might contribute to their being more successful.

Coaching Competent Strategies
(2 Days)

While beliefs are about the What's and Why's of the world, strategies are about the How's.

• How do you motivate yourself to do things that you both like to do and don't like to do?
• How do you make competent decisions which produce what you want on a regular basis?
• How do you go about learning anything you have decided you want to learn?
• How do you proceed to create something new?
• How do you evaluate evidence to form new beliefs and convince yourself about the positives and negatives of other people, places, things and discoveries?
• How do you insure that you can remember what you want and need to remember?
• How do you work with someone who has mastered a skill set in such a way that you learn that skill rapidly?
• Most importantly, how do you lead youth through all these strategies?

This training leads you through the different structures of these and other strategies and teaches you questions to ask to coach youth to develop increased competence.

Language and Ethical Influence
(2 Days)

Introduction to Language and Time

The goal of this training is to help you improve your ability to influence others in positive ways through deliberate use of language.

How often have you been involved in conversations about problems, which seemed to last forever and never get past "ain't it awful"? Perhaps there are people in your life who just seem to naturally help you feel better whenever you talk over your problems with them, while others are no help at all. Have you wanted to be better at being one of those helpers?

In this workshop, you will explore how to immediately help youth and others shift out of being stuck in a problem as soon as you start a conversation. You will learn ways of questioning and making suggestions which will help someone else change their problem experience naturally, easily and without their knowing you are doing anything significant. You will also learn methods of suggesting future possibilities which will help them continue the change. You will work with other participants in the learning process in ways, which will give you a chance to practice the skills and share the skills with others following completion of the class.

You will develop the ability to:

1. Recognize problem statements.
2. "Reframe" problems and open up possibilities for change.
3. Use language to help others move problems into the past.
4. Uncover "real" goals.
5. Suggest change in ways which others can easily hear.
6. Develop positive anticipation that things can be better.
7. Improve success, as people naturally achieve more of what they want.
8. Do all this within the course of normal conversation without others knowing.

Using Influential Language with Youth

In this module, taken from our Ethical Influence Series, you will learn over twenty-five "influential language" patterns that will help you keep children and youth moving towards their goals. These language patterns will also help you develop the ability to compliment others in ways that they hear, regardless of their level of self-esteem. Finally. you will learn patterns of questioning which help others become open to giving up their rigid approaches to problems. They work with adults too!

Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Skills and Developing Optimism
(2 Days)

Thinking, Feeling, Behaving: Emotion Regulation Skills For Kids and Adolescents

This exciting and fun curriculum will give teachers, guidance counselors and parents skills and strategies to help children and adolescents build effective emotion regulation skills that will follow them for life. Positive peer relationships, academic perseverance and impulse control are all behaviors that children must master. This workshop provides a number of tools which will help youth change their negative patterns of thinking and feeling. When combined with the language skills trainings, this workshop can help you produce very powerful results with youth.

Learned Optimism

Research by Martin Seligman and others indicates that Optimists achieve more, live longer, and have happier lives than pessimists. Optimism helps youth develop a coherent, consistent set of beliefs about their chances for success. Dr. Seligman and others have developed extremely successful programs for high-risk youth using cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to teach optimism to youth. Youth in their programs have become more successful in virtually every area of their lives. An extension to the emotion regulation skills, This module teaches how to challenge pessimistic thinking and develop optimistic thinking with youth.