11 Sep Why adults need to have real career conversations with young people

Every two weeks, I meet 50 or so high school students that have signed themselves up for an intensive career development conference….on a weekend. These are some of the most motivated students I’ve met, and I love their desire to step outside of their academic environments and have some real career conversations.

On those conference mornings, I can see on their faces that they are nervous, unsure of what to expect, surrounded by strangers from high schools in cities they’ve never even heard of. But they have all shown up (on time!), dressed up in their best versions of “business casual,” ready to step outside of their comfort zones, and learn what it takes to be successful.

After a few minutes, with the help from ice breakers, the students become friends and the energy in the room skyrockets. Everyone is more comfortable, eager, and excited to learn. But then I tell them about the professionals that will be coming in an hour to meet them to have real career conversations, and immediately, I see them tense up. “What? Why? They don’t care about me. I don’t even know what I care about. What do I talk to them about? What if I ask stupid questions? I don’t know what to ask. Oh no, you can’t do this to us.”

For so many students, and certainly for me when I was younger, adults seemed intimidating. Most of the guest speakers I had in high school spoke about their successes, and how great life was.  They would give us advice on how to become awesome adults, and I would try to jot down everything. But there was a serious lack of real career conversations.

These adults seemed to have it together, as if they’d never made a mistake. They all seemed to have their dream jobs, as if those came to them effortlessly. They talked about all of the cool stuff they’d done, as if their entire lives were fun adventures. But rarely did I get to hear about their failures, their pain points, those days when everything went wrong…. I didn’t hear about the pivots they had to make, or the many careers they explored before finding the right fit.

But those real career conversations are exactly the ones I needed to be hearing. And because of this disconnect, adults came off as intimidating. Maybe these adults were trying to protect us from the concept of “struggle.” But that only increased my teenage worries. Teen me thought adults were perfect, and I was not. And based on today’s students reactions, it’s clear that many feel the same way.

I was discussing this struggle with a colleague, Joanne Martens. She is an executive and leadership coach who, alongside working with top executives, has spent the last 10 years working with students around career development.  In doing so, she too has noticed students feeling too nervous to talk to adults out of fear of feeling stupid or not cared about. T o alleviate these concerns, she is encouraging students to have real career conversations with their parents.   Both parties discuss the reality behind career journeys, and not only the successes.  Joanne was telling me how, after her students had real career conversations with both parents and other adults, many returned to her exclaiming, “I can’t believe how much adults want to help me!”

Real career conversations include talking about the hard stuff. Organizational psychologist, Adam Grant says protecting kids from struggle may be counterproductive. He chooses to talk to his kids about his own struggles, asking for their advice, and hoping to normalize the experience of struggle. Adam embodies what it means to have real career conversations with students.

I made a commitment to do the same. I want to ensure students see adults as human, as real people facing real challenges, dark moments, and living real lives. At every Skillify conference, I see students listening intently to the panelists, who are answering questions like:

• What is a challenge you are facing right now?
• Did you have anyone helping you as you built your career?
• Were there any transformative moments in your life that changed your career path?
• What weaknesses did you have that you had to improve on to advance in your career?
• What is your definition of success?

One of our recent panelists, Justin Michael Williams, singer, speaker and conceptual artist, shared how he finally took a chance on his dream:

“Sometimes the darkest moments in our lives are the most transformative. Three years ago, I sat next to my grandmother on her deathbed in her final days of battling cancer.  And she asked me a question that changed his life forever. She said, ‘If you were in my shoes and knew you were going to die in two months, what would you do?’

I immediately responded with, ‘I would drop everything I’m doing and finally record an album.’

Three years later, I released my debut album, which premiered in the iTunes Top 20 charts. Although I grew up poor, surrounded by violence, addiction, and domestic abuse, I overcame all odds to finally live my childhood dream of being an international recording artist.”

Justin was speaking to a group of 60 high school students.  The same group that had been nervous to meet a successful musician, while also simply seeing him as a professional living his dreams. After five minutes of him speaking however, he became a real person engaging in a real career conversation. Students learned about how Justin struggled to take a chance on himself and experienced a big loss.  They heard about how he had to find the courage to come out of a dark moment and transform his perspective.

After every networking event, I ask students, “Were the professionals as intimidating as you thought they’d be?”

“No!!! They were actually so real, and SO inspiring,” is usually the response I get.

In conclusion: the more adults talk about their failures, the more our next generation will learn. In these real career conversations, students will learn that failure is inevitable, and overcoming it is crucial.  They’ll learn that nobody is perfect, and everybody needs help along the way. And as a result, I hope they’ll seek help, become more resilient, and keep pushing forward.