HOW KIDS CAN LEARN FROM ENTREPRENEURS
Self-motivated youth can become trailblazers
Hard work, persistence, initiative. Can the skills found among entrepreneurs help today’s young people navigate their way to success?
Absolutely, say a developmental psychologist and a successful public relations company founder who have teamed on a new book, Raising Can-Do Kids, available next month.
Self-entitled kids may be able to navigate their way into the Ivy League, but it’s the self-motivated ones who have the skills to be trailblazers, said Richard Rende, the psychologist and researcher who wrote the book with Jen Prosek, CEO of Prosek Partners.
Together, the two take on the science of success as it relates to entrepreneurship and parenting alike.
Rende, a dad of a 15-year-old daughter and director of curriculum and instruction at a college preparatory school in Phoenix, spoke to The Associated Press.
Q Why take on the idea that parents can learn a thing or two from successful entrepreneurs?
A What was interesting to me
about it was the idea of taking on seminal issues, revisiting key concepts, but looking at them with a fresh eye. The entrepreneurial perspective gives the long-range view on why these skills are important.
These skills, arguably, matter more now than they ever have. To Jen, there was a little sense of urgency that kids aren’t getting these things which are going to be the things they really need.
I think kids can learn from entrepreneurs what their value will be in the world. It’s to find in you what you’re passionate about and how you bring all your skills to bear on that. I don’t know that kids are as well-equipped as they should be to do those things. Not just supersmart but innovative.
Q Are most kids natural entrepreneurs?
A I think most kids are naturally entrepreneurial. There’s a difference. Our perspective isn’t so much that kids should grow up to be entrepreneurs in that classic sense but that they share entrepreneurial traits, like exploration and innovation, developmentally.
Babies are wired for exploration in that way of naturally searching through their environment for the right kinds of information.
They’re wired to pick up on all these things, like watching a human face. So we take that through early childhood and the idea of how important it is to be exploratory.
Q And there are other traits the two of you discuss.
A There’s also the personal, things like optimism and risktaking, but we have a different take on risk-taking. We talk about it as opportunity-seeking, learning how to seek out challenges and manage risk.
It’s knowing how to push yourself a little bit to climb up a tree because it’s interesting to you to climb up a tree and not do it in a crazy way that will land you in the emergency room.
Q How do you see Generation Me and Generation We playing out today?
A It’s complicated. Kids are getting a message that it’s so important for them to focus on their accomplishments and on themselves, right?
I don’t think they’re necessarily growing up in a social void, but I do think there’s so much pressure on them to achieve that it does take away from their ability to have the opportunity to learn about being more connected to people and the value of that.
Q You both wrote about several
C words that make a difference.
A Conflict, how do you learn to appropriately deal with conflict. It’s a very important developmental skill. You don’t want to learn to avoid conflict, per se, but if it’s handled the wrong way, you get into, essentially, coercion, where you learn to handle disagreements by just trying to get your way. So, ‘I’m just going to keep arguing with you until you give in.’
And we also have co-operation. You have to learn how to co-operate. You have to really learn it. In the broader, entrepreneurial sense it’s about collaboration. How do you work together well?
And then there’s conversation. It’s important. We talk in the book about how a teacher, Paul Barnwell, says that he thought kids didn’t know how to have basic conversation these days. There’s so much embedded in conversation that’s good for kids.