For this simple blog, let me offer one key insight but in today’s world, we can see much evidence of how this can be missing. I will first point out some evidence today and will give an evidence example. I will then include some aspects of which we must be aware. I will then highlight some very key Neuroscience facts that show how the dysfunctional applications truly negatively impact our Rising Stars.
To begin, let me highlight some evidence that is often common in your society. Let me begin by saying that on the PBNN (Podcast Business News Network) Radio Show on which I am a regular guest, and this episode was about 2 weeks ago, and we talked about the Leadership aspects of developing Team Synergy and such. At one point a listener, who was a high-level manager for his company, called into the show and it was a great conversation. A key & central point he brought out was, and I will paraphrase what he said:
"Let me tell you something, the biggest challenge we face is that the younger generations have trouble making real connections. They just go through the motions and do superficial and repetitive tasks without really engaging. It's like they're on autopilot and then they're out the door!"
We chatted on the show about understanding the newest generations and how leaders need to interact and such. However, a lot of this is in how they were truly not developed through their Rising Stars journey.
Let me offer a simple example from about 40 years ago that is dysfunctional, but it is somewhat the way Parents, Teachers or Mentors need to rethink & reapply to truly develop your Rising Stars for radical future success. The simple example comes from one of the 3 central News Channels on TV about 45 years ago. This channel had a TV commercial and as the host was on he stated this (and I will never forget it):
“We will tell you the news…. but
we will also Tell You What to Think About the News!”
Even at that age, I realized how totally wrong that is because it was not their job to teach me, or anyone else what to think about it!
2 Mistakes that can be made in our application:
When being a parent, teacher, or mentor, very often our focus can only be on one of the following couple of errors:
1. Very often you can totally be focused on yourself and very often your priority is simply applause for you so, without developing your Rising Stars, you become completely focused on not developing their ability to think and envision but rather to shut off the brain and regurgitate what you want them to say so inside, you can feel “applauded” even though it is not about you.
2. The other possibility is when our focus is only on our fun and something we want to do so we don’t have time to truly connect with them and help them develop.
Often in bringing up and developing your children, parents or mentors often think that our job is to simply tell them what to do or in many cases, to tell them what to think or to discipline them when they don’t do exactly what we want. Discipline is sometimes very needed and appropriate but as mentors of our Rising Stars, often when you think about how your brain works (Neuroscience), our primary focus is on “getting them to do what we want”. This can often be visualized as “Making them just like us”. One of the things we can often see currently in our society is when people have grown to employ vindictive and malicious control freak effects and often this can come from what they learned as they grew up.
Often one of the causes of this is because parents or mentors are not even aware of what they are doing and its effect. Often a central mistake that mentors or parents do not understand is simply that “So often in today’s world, a parent’s or mentor’s focus is on Their Own Fun and an arrogant focus on themselves; and they perceive it to be a real distraction to their real fun when they must truly enter a good learning conversation that employs a real coaching & facilitative perspective and will truly enhance development the Rising Star’s mental processing.
Key Neuroscience Truth and Application:
When a parent or mentor employs these dysfunctional approaches, the result is that the Rising Star shuts down their brain and negatively affects mental processing ability. It largely inhibits the Rising Stars' ability to be aware and make success decisions in those unpredictable and unexpected Situations. In their journey, many factors that will arise are not purely academic and are totally unexpected.”
Your Rising Star and every aspect of their journey can truly suffer the consequences of that mindset where the processing ability is shut down. Some of these very truly self-focused aspects would involve these deeper, but also unethical, goals:
1. Trying to make them think exactly like me!
2. Trying to make them always do what I would do!
3. Make them not talk about the true situation and apply thoughts and processing to it, but to make people subtly think “I am my parents”!
Therefore, my real conclusion in this blog is very clear. When raising and developing your Rising Stars whether you are a parent, teacher, or a mentor, you need to envision what it will take to get yourself out of your self-focus and get yourself to a place and employ an application and vision that will make your Rising Star truly developed and truly bring success to their desires and vision. So let me ask a couple of questions for the reader to consider:
To what extent are you trying to apply your self-focused and arrogant picture?
Your Rising Star’s journey will not be as exact as yours was in your journey so how must you adjust your development of them?
How is your real clarity on the Ethical and not purely academic aspects and factors that would come on their journey and how will they be prepared?
How is their mental processing ability being developed rather than going to rote, superficial academic aspects?
What must you change to truly model and inspire their growth and leadership development?
Finally, let me ask you, how must you truly adapt your vision and application so that they will be truly developed and prepared for future leadership and success in their journey when you are not there anymore?
Randy Swaim, Coaching for Relevance, LLC