Mentoring our kids to understand their natural skills

My boys are now both teenagers. Markos is entering high school (3 more years of school left..how the hell did that happen so fast!!) so discussions around university studies and work opportunities are becoming more frequent and important.

What I have come to realize is just how much luckier my kids are (vs. myself and my husband back in the days) to have 2 parents who have worked for 20+ years in multi-national corporate environments and who as a result can help them - through methodologies and learnings from our work - understand, see and surface their natural skills.

I too had 2 working parents but they could not help me in the sense of mentoring with an aim to understand what I am good at, what are my natural skills and towards which direction employment-wise I can leverage these skills.

At the age of 40, I changed jobs after 14 years of working for the same company. That meant that at 40, I had to go out there and 'sell' myself, market myself, something I hadn't needed to do for so many years because I had worked for the same company, where changing roles and departments did not entail having to market myself each time from scratch. But now that I had to go out there in the job market arena, what in fact was my story? How on earth was I going to market myself? (See also my article of Generalist vs. Specialist ). And yes, even at 40 - having nearly 20 years of work experience - it turned out that I needed someone to tell me, to basically spell it out for me -> what is my skillset, what are my strong points. I need someone to tell me to sell my story. What an 'aha' moment that was at 40!

Wouldn't it have been amazing if I had such insights about myself from the age of 15-16? Someone who all along those years (not suddenly at 40) could have mentored me, coached me, enlightened me, challenged me, guided me so that I could have been so much more aware of what and who I am BEFORE that age of 40!?

Now when it comes to mentoring/guiding your own kids it becomes a lot trickier.

First of all, there's a difference between telling your kids what they should be studying or following as a career (according to your micro-cosmos and beliefs) and helping them understand their energy drivers and natural skills so that they THEMSELVES can discover what intrigues them and ultimately what direction they want to follow.

We struggle in being as objective as possible - which is intrinsically difficult - while simultaneously needing to put our personal interests and ambitions for our child aside. We also need to juggle that 'cringe' feeling kids get when they feel they are being 'preached' at by their parents. Preaching adds no value because no one is listening at the other end. To avoid that cringe-preaching feeling it's good to avoid 'let's sit down and talk' situations but to aim for lighter settings and discussions where teenage listening capabilities are heightened.

Because of this last parameter (not always interested in listening to what parents have to say), setting up sessions with friends and people from your wider social circle who can talk to your kids about their work, what they do, what they love or hate about their work as well as the opportunities that line of work has to offer, can prove to be very valuable. This of course deviates from the mentoring concept but aims to get your kids exposed to new info and insights from areas of work other than your own, from people your kids know and trust.

Parental mentoring in the form of career discussions can perhaps prove to be more useful AFTER your kids have listened to a variety of people, gathered and processed new info. As mentoring parents, we can then help them detect their 'aha moments', find out what sparked their interest and then anchor further discussions around those aha moments and areas of interests and merge these with the skills and potential you know (as parents) that they possess.

What a great outcome that could be. What a privileged position for a kid to be in, to have such helpful insights and guidance from such an early age.

Think about what (and who) has helped you along the years to uncover your skills and energy drivers. Use all the professional experience you have had in career discussions and/or mentoring and adapt that to a mentoring philosophy that best suits your kid(s).

Help them understand the concept of 'natural skill', which is basically what they are good at, what they enjoy most that takes very little 'effort' from their side. Is it writing an amazing essay, is it solving a math's equation, is it leading a debate, is it presenting in class, is it sports or music? What might seem obvious to you, may not be at all obvious to them. Help them uncover insights, help them surface those skills. This will assist them in discovering a degree and/or career direction that best suits them in a much smoother, easier and faster manner.

I think in conclusion, throughout all such type of study and career discussions with our children, the most important message to convey is that there is no 'wrong choice'.

Everything in life can be corrected, course correction or intentional change of direction is doable and often is desirable.

Having insights and guidance about one's natural skills from an early age is the most valuable gift a soon-to-be-adult can have.

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Epilogue:

One last but important IMHO point: our definition of success for our children might be very very different to their definition of success when they get older. I find it unfair of us to mentor them based on our definition of success. Mentor them with an open mind. Mentor them knowing that where they end up might be very different to what you aspired. Many are not meant to follow the corporate path like us. Perhaps they are meant to be a tattoo artist, a watersports instructor, an astronaut...WHATEVER MAKES THEM HAPPY because being BALANCED and therefore HAPPY is the key to a good life.

(And yes, these are old photos of my boys, Markos and Philippos...this last one precisely depicting daily life with 2 young boys!!!)

THE END

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