Shownotes:
What if the way we lead young people is the very thing holding them back?
In this episode, Dr. David Yeager, psychologist at UT Austin and author of 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, shares the “mentor mindset,” a practical approach built on high standards and high support. You will hear why wise feedback works, how the stories we tell ourselves shape motivation, and what real support looks like when it removes barriers without taking over.
Thrive Global Article: David Yeager on the Mentor Mindset
About Our Guest:
David Yeager, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the cofounder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He is best known for his research conducted with Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, and Greg Walton on short but powerful interventions that influence adolescent behaviors such as motivation, engagement, healthy eating, bullying, stress, mental health, and more. He has consulted for Google, Microsoft, Disney, and the World Bank, as well as for the White House and the governments in California, Texas, and Norway. His research has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and more. Prior to his career as a scientist, he was a middle school teacher and a basketball coach. He earned his PhD and MA at Stanford University and his BA and MEd at the University of Notre Dame. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their four children.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] David Yeager: The mentor mindset is the label I use, and it's very simply the idea that you have very high standards, but very high support.
[00:00:07] And it's my reframing of a classic idea in parenting and psychology and stuff but, what's new is that we've identified the conditions under which people don't uphold high standards or aren't sufficiently supportive. And it's when people believe that young people are incompetent and therefore they're not capable of meeting high standards or that what young people need is like punishment and they need the fear of God put in them, and if they don't, then they're gonna go off on their own and ruin society.
[00:00:38] Welcome to the Evolving With Gratitude podcast. I'm your host, Lainie Rowell. I'm an author and speaker, and I'm here to help you optimize happiness, relationships, and performance.
[00:00:50] What if the way we lead the young people around us is the very thing holding them back? Dr. David Yeager is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of 10 to [00:01:00] 25, the Science of Motivating Young People.
[00:01:03] His research has shaped how we understand motivation, feedback, and what it actually takes to help people grow.
[00:01:09] I am so excited for you to hear this episode. Enjoy David Yeager.
[00:01:13] Lainie Rowell: Welcome Dr. David Yeager. So happy to have you.
[00:01:18] David Yeager: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:01:19] Lainie Rowell: I definitely. I have too many questions for you, but I just wanna have a conversation. I'm so excited for people to hear about your work, and we're gonna talk about the art of motivation and a mentor mindset. But I'd really love to start with what brought you to this work, I mean, I've seen Masterclass with you and Carol Dweck. What brought you to this point?
[00:01:41] David Yeager: Yeah, I mean, the most immediate thing, like right now, I wrote a book about parenting and managers and teachers is because I am in all of those roles and I wanted to know how to do those roles well. And so I, I have four kids I, I coach three baseball teams, coaching [00:02:00] like eight or nine months outta the year basketball. Also, I teach 150 undergraduates every semester, and then I run a lab and have lots of employees that are paid, that are 20, you know, to 25. So I, I kind of felt like in general that so much of what we do involves the young and so much of our like hand wring and consternation also is about what's happening with the next generation.
[00:02:24] And yet we walk around just totally lacking confidence and you know, we just really don't feel like we know what to do or say. And you can, you can tell this if you just remember, for people who've had children, when you have a baby, strangers come up to you and they're like, this is so amazing. I'm so happy for you.
[00:02:43] Like, look at this baby. You're gonna cherish every minute. But if you walk around with a teenager. Like, no one says that to you. No one's like, remember every moment they're like, just lock 'em in a closet until they're 20. You know? And that's just weird to me, like how, why are we giving up on an entire stage of [00:03:00] development?
[00:03:01] And so that's the more proximal thing. But then what initially got me into that style of thinking. Is that the, the only kind of work I did when I was young was like youth work. I worked at the local church and did youth retreats. I had this nonprofit in high school where we would set up computer labs in the low income neighborhoods of Houston and help kids.
[00:03:23] Basically, there were after school programs where kids could go get training. This is like the nineties where the internet was a big deal. And then I was a middle school teacher and, uh, after college and, and that kind of continued that line of service and I just felt like I didn't have good advice as a teacher as much as I, I appreciated the people who trained me.
[00:03:40] It, it's just, it's hard. And, and so I wanted to do science that gave us better advice for how to interact with young people. And then it turns out that stuff was coming in handy in my own life, uh, later as I went through my career.
[00:03:54] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And you've done a ton of research on growth mindset and the one thing I [00:04:00] wanted to get out there, I'm just gonna read this I wrote this down 'cause this is amazing. So I read your book and then I saw you had a master class with Carol Dweck. The Carol Dweck said since she wrote Mindset, which is like the seminal book, she has expanded her own thinking thanks In large part to David Yeager. Like that's a pretty big compliment. So I, I knew you mostly from the art of motivation and mentor mindset, and then I was like, oh wow, he did all of this stuff with growth mindset before.
[00:04:27] David Yeager: Yeah. That's funny. I don't even talk about our growth mindset research in my book, but that is what a lot of people know me for that in our belonging research on college persistence. And so there's, they're very different communities who know, like there's a long time where I was, I was the main keynote for community colleges on student success because of all of our work on something we called Productive Persistence, which is the idea that students start at community college and they're like, this is the time I'm gonna turn it around.
[00:04:54] And they persist, but they do so very unproductively and they get the same grades again and again. I [00:05:00] left the classroom and even though I loved it, and then I, uh, I applied to graduate school and I didn't really know what I was doing and somehow got into Stanford, not in the psych department, into ed school, and,.
[00:05:11] I eventually, the end of my first year ended up in a class with Carol Dweck on Motivation and along with a guy named Mark Leper who founded the study of Intrinsic Motivation. He's a famous psychologist. So there there's two amazing professors. I was like, this stuff's pretty cool. I think I wanna do some more of it.
[00:05:29] And I, uh, there's, there's a long story, but I basically was able to convince Carol to meet with me and, 'cause she's a busy, famous professor and I was a nobody, and then she at that meeting was like, I'll meet with you one more time. And then I came prepared to the next meeting and then she's like, I'll meet with you again.
[00:05:47] And then I just made sure that I always had a reason for her to say yes to a meeting. And so by my second year, third year, I was really working primarily with Carol on growth mindset work. Um, but not in the [00:06:00] academic motivation space. It was more, um, uh, we were looking at ninth graders who were getting bullied.
[00:06:06] And then they would add, add a fixed mindset and would say, this will never get better. And because they think that the bullies are bad and will never change, then they want to take revenge and hate them. And then they also think in a fixed mindset, the reason why I'm getting bullied is 'cause I'm bad and I should be ashamed.
[00:06:23] Then people go in this shame, hatred cycle of fantasizing about revenge and self-loathing. And so we created the first growth mindset programs to help teenagers cope with social conflict in the transition to high school, especially when you get your friendship groups are changing and you get left out.
[00:06:41] Um, and then that led us to say, well, could you teach a growth mindset instead of just in a, in a, in a workshop, in a, in a classroom that you can only get 20 kids at a time? Could you do it for like 10,000 kids or 20,000 kids? And the only way to do that is over the computer. So this is the early [00:07:00] days.
[00:07:00] Schools didn't have internet access before like 2010, like they did, but it wasn't reliable. Yeah. And the computers didn't work. And so at that era where all of a sudden every school started having internet and computers. We created the, I mean, I helped lead the first scalable growth mindset programs and now, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have been in our, our programs.
[00:07:23] We have all kinds of interesting results. Um, and that's really what Carol's referring to was taking it out of something that was done with 20 kids at a time to something that we could test at a national scale, and then what can we learn from that?
[00:07:36] Lainie Rowell: That's so fascinating to me and I really love, and we're gonna get into that, especially a little bit later, all the ways that your work is available to other people.
[00:07:45] I'll do a little teaser for Yeager in Your Pocket. Actually, your name has been on this podcast before because we had Geoff Cohen on a few years ago.
[00:07:52] David Yeager: Oh, yeah. He's my mentor
[00:07:53] Lainie Rowell: and one of the things that made me want to reach out to you and have this conversation is 'cause I just really love wise feedback. [00:08:00] And you were involved in that, so can you tell us a little bit about Wise Feedback, because I think this is life changing.
[00:08:04] It's a part of Mentor Mindset, but it's just such a specific example.
[00:08:08] David Yeager: Yeah. So in this, this Geoff Cohen gets the credit for coming up with this, but there are a lot of other collaborators like Valerie Purdy Greenaway and Allyson Master and others who were involved.
[00:08:18] But basically, it's a type of mindset moment you could call it, and it's the critical feedback, interaction that you do your work in earnest, whether you're an employee or a student, or you know, even a professor and you submit it for review by an expert. And in, in a perfect world, that expert points out the things that were not yet up to standard.
[00:08:41] And then you're like, oh, thanks. Now I'm gonna fix those things. And so that's a world in which you imagine people as just excellence and information seeking machines on the lookout for any way to improve at all times. And that's not the world we live in for the most [00:09:00] part because there's a relationship between the person who did the work and the feedback giver and that relationship involves an unspoken conversation and often that conversation is in the mind of the person who did the work.
[00:09:14] Am I gonna be looked down on? Am I gonna be punished? Am I gonna be humiliated? Are they gonna treat me like I'm a nobody? Those are the worries people have when you expose your work to others. And then the feedback giver, of course, is having a narrative of, I'm being so noble and generous with all of my feedback.
[00:09:32] Look at how I'm sharing my expertise. They should really appreciate this. And if they don't, they're, they're an ungrateful jerk. I'm never gonna help them again. Okay. So Geoff realized that those two narratives in the heads of the two different actors in that interaction keep being at odds with each other.
[00:09:48] Where the feedback recipients think they're critiquing my work because they hate me. And the feedback givers say they're not taking my comments seriously. 'cause they're not a serious person or they're too, [00:10:00] um, feeble or sensitive. Right?
[00:10:02] Yeah.
[00:10:03] And then our argument was, well, what if you just clarified. What is in the hearts of the feedback givers that they're trying to help someone become excellent at their discipline or field.
[00:10:14] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:10:15] David Yeager: And so we did an experiment where, uh, we had, um, teachers who asked students to write a first draft essay on in their social studies class, and then they wrote the five paragraphs as seventh. These are seventh graders. Teachers cover them in comments as they normally would, and then before students got the essays back, the research team intercepted the essays.
[00:10:36] And appended a, basically a post-it note to all of them, but half of them got a note that had what we call wise feedback, which says, I'm giving you these comments because I have high standards and I know that you can meet them. And so the two things are, first, the appeal to the high standard, and second, the assurance that with the right support, you're capable of meeting that standard.
[00:10:59] And then a [00:11:00] control group got a placebo note that just said, I'm giving these comments so you have feedback. And what we looked at was when students got the essays back and these sealed envelopes, teachers don't know who got which note. Kids don't know there's different notes a week later. Do kids even turn in and revise essay or not?
[00:11:17] Right? Are kids sitting there like, no, I'm good. I'm not doing this. Or they're like, oh, I can fix this. What we find is that kids were twice as likely to revise their essays when the comments were accompanied by Wise feedback. Yeah. So they didn't view it as an insult. It's almost like the, the feedback was a compliment, and we think it's like a good coach.
[00:11:38] Like if you went to a golf clinic and the golf coach just ignored you the entire time, right. You'd be like, they don't think I'm good enough to be worth their time. Right. So, but people don't view that that way when you're getting a performance review at work or you are, uh, getting your essay covered in comments as a student.
[00:11:59] Right. [00:12:00] And so we, the experiment I led in that paper was not even with the objective note, but just can you have students read stories from upperclassmen who say, the last time I got critical feedback, at first it felt bad, but then I realized they're treating me like a good coach would, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:12:21] So just telling, this was done in a low income school in New York City, just telling these predominantly students of color experiencing poverty, lots of critical feedback from teachers, et cetera, telling those students that teachers are going out of their way 'cause they believe in you and wanna hold you to a high standard.
[00:12:37] Mm. Cause students to get higher grades all the way at the end of the year. Several months later, and then that I'm under, we were set up together. Yeah.
[00:12:44] Lainie Rowell: So if I'm understanding correctly, it was both that the teacher. Specifically gave this transparency statement, I hope I'm using that correctly. When you talk more specifically
[00:12:54] David Yeager: in one, in one set of experiments,
[00:12:55] Lainie Rowell: in one set, yeah.
[00:12:56] David Yeager: You have the teacher give the transparency statement, and by transparency I mean [00:13:00] they're transparently communicating what their previously unspoken intentions are.
[00:13:04] Lainie Rowell: Yes. So they're like very clearly transparently saying, I believe in you. I've got these high standards. I believe in you and you can get there.
[00:13:12] And then the other thing that was a part of that study, and this is something I've seen throughout your work, is the power of storytelling and just how when people understand what is possible, that is also motivating to, to, to work harder and to have that, that effort, if that, if you will. Is that fair to say?
[00:13:31] David Yeager: Yeah. A, a big insight, and again, this Geoff Cohen, Carol Dweck, Greg Walton, a lot of us have contributed to this insight. Uh, but it's that, you know, there's, there's not just the hard things we experience. There's a story we tell ourselves about those hard things.
[00:13:46] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:13:46] David Yeager: Right. When something hard happens, whether it's critical feedback or a low grade on a test, or you're rejected from the admissions of this is college admissions time, students are getting rejected from colleges.
[00:13:58] Right. [00:14:00] What do you think that portends about your future?
[00:14:03] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:14:03] David Yeager: Do you think this is the tip of the iceberg? That this bad thing is just a, a small sign of something huge that is kind of impending doom. It's gonna sink my Titanic, you know, and I'm gonna die of icy death, the bottom of the ocean because it's a bad thing now.
[00:14:21] Or do you think that's a wave we went over and it's, in a moment the storm's gonna clear. Right. Obviously, when I say it that way, it makes sense that if you interpret something hard as a sign that it'll never get better. You're more pessimistic and it's worse than if you interpret it as a sign that things can improve.
[00:14:39] Lainie Rowell: Right?
[00:14:40] David Yeager: The the big insight from our research is how do you get people to tell the latter story rather than the former story? Because the stories we tell ourselves, of course, are the product of our upbringing and culture.
[00:14:52] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:14:53] David Yeager: And so if as an infant you learned, when I cry, no one will help me. Then why in the world later [00:15:00] if someone dumps you, would you believe, oh, I'm gonna find love around the corner.
[00:15:05] Right? So the stories we tell ourselves of course, are the product of socialization. There's actually a genetic component because certain, like catastrophization in your head, uh, can, you know, the rumination, things like that can be contributed to by genetic internalizing factors. So why in the world would our little experiment, it's like a story from three upperclassmen, change a narrative, and we obsess over that.
[00:15:29] And what we've found is that, you know, there's some things that sound obvious when I say them, but we hardly ever do them. And it's like if I'm gonna give you a new story, framing it as something that you couldn't have known before. Because if I say like, all along you've known this and you refuse to believe it.
[00:15:48] Like, well, I'm not gonna be convinced 'cause now you're telling me I've already rejected it my entire life, so it sounds like I'm gonna reject it again. But if it's like, look, there's some new insights here, it, it's [00:16:00] actually hard to. If you're a freshman, hear from upperclassmen and how it actually got better for them.
[00:16:05] 'cause you're only talking to other freshmen. And so let me give you a story from an upperclassman and it's kind of surprising. So you do that kind of stuff and then you say, you know what? And we're telling this to you, not 'cause we think you have a problem, but because we think you could help us get smarter about telling this story to future students.
[00:16:24] So if you engage with this story of improvement and growth, et cetera. We'll know how to change the lives of other vulnerable students. And so you're being noble, you're contributing, we're taking you seriously. We're honoring your perspective. So you do a lot of that stuff. And then people are like, open
[00:16:42] to a different story. And then of course you need a narrative in the story. Just if you remember sixth grade English, you know, it's like you've got a rising action and falling action and you know you've got a conflict and you need the elements of those to help people. Basically draw an, an analogy between the [00:17:00] experiences of others, they're, they're encountering, and then the experiences they're gonna face themselves.
[00:17:05] And so we, we obsess over that kinda language. And then the end result is that you can sometimes get a 25 minute reading and writing exercise that will have effects a year later, or in some cases four years later and feels magic. Um, but if you believe in the power of the stories we tell ourselves, that can then be self-reinforcing, then it, it's more plausible.
[00:17:27] It makes more sense.
[00:17:29] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And it's, it's not magical thinking when you're hearing these concrete stories of what's happened, right?
[00:17:35] David Yeager: They have to be based in, in the reality of, like, a classic example is our work on belonging with Greg Walton has a wonderful book called Ordinary Magic, by the way. I recommend, um, and he writes about stuff that I write about as well.
[00:17:48] 'cause we did a lot of it together. And it's this idea that when you start college. In your mind, you're thinking, this is great. I have freedom. I got into this institution that I wanted to be a [00:18:00] part of. My life is going great. And then all of a sudden you feel alone. You feel like everyone else has friends except you.
[00:18:09] And then when you talk to other people, you're putting on a face to fake. That you're liking talking to them, but in reality, you don't feel known and seen and heard. And so, uh, the more that you fake it, the more you feel like a phony. And then you see everyone else looking casual and natural. And that's what everyone else must be belonging and you don't realize that everyone else is also having a hard time.
[00:18:34] And they're faking it as well, and they're just good at it. And, and my colleague Paige Harden, a psychologist, has an interesting book out now called Original Sin. She, she teaches freshmen at the, the big intro class at at UT Austin, which is a huge, were the biggest major big class. She always says, don't compare your insides to other people's outsides.
[00:18:56] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:18:56] David Yeager: And I, I think that's profound wisdom. But [00:19:00] in our interventions, we basically give that. Nugget of wisdom to freshmen who are undergoing that transition to college. And that ends up being a useful thing for them to have heard because they can apply it a bunch. And then it prevents those negative cycles from worsening and worsening and worsening where it's in the default condition.
[00:19:20] It's like your initial worries about belonging are like a boulder rolling down a hill that has tons of momentum. The more revolutions it has and then it ends instant catastrophe, right? But if you can just slow the ball from rolling, then actually you don't have the crash at the bottom and you can weather the storm.
[00:19:36] Lainie Rowell: Now I want to make sure that, 'cause I, I kind of took us there like the back road I feel like. But let's talk about the art of motivation and specifically the mentor mindset. Could you explain to someone who has not heard that that term before? What is the mentor mindset?
[00:19:52] David Yeager: Yeah, so it it, the, the basic idea was, you know, we've done all this research on treatments, we crafted to [00:20:00] motivate the next generation, and then we looked at 'em and we're like, what do they all have in common?
[00:20:06] So that was a whole set of insights. I'll explain. And then we thought, well, who are the adults in young people's lives who almost naturally and consistently say the kinds of things that we said in our very highly crafted treatments? Right? So we talked about wise feedback. I mean that concept, I mean we, the term something that we coined, but like that idea is something that great mentors do all the time.
[00:20:34] So it's kind of like. On the experimental side, in the laboratory research, et cetera, what, what did our success stories have in common that made them different from so many things that fail to motivate young people? Like, why can we talk to a kid for 25 minutes and it lasts years later? And another parent might talk to their kid for hours and the kid forgets it the second the conversation's over.
[00:20:57] Right. That's weird.
[00:20:58] Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] David Yeager: And then separately, who are the people who are intuitively figuring out. Ways of saying the stuff that we were saying in our lab studies, but they do it naturalistically all the time. And when we looked across that, the, the big insight is that you, you basically capture motivation for adolescents when you honor their need for status and respect.
[00:21:18] You take them seriously, you show them a root to having a positive reputation, to feeling like they can do hard things that matter, and that other people will perceive that accomplishment and view it as. Meaningful as a contribution, as something people care about. Right? And the like growth mindset, even when something's hard, that you're still growing, you're growing your brain, right?
[00:21:42] That basic insight is about overcoming challenge. Well, great mentors also do that, right? The reason why they do that is that they say basically, you can be a leader. You can do this impressive thing. It's gonna be awesome, it's gonna be good for your future, and you're gonna feel good right now. By the way, I'm gonna be [00:22:00] impressed by you if you do this.
[00:22:01] So this, the feeling of status and respect is like implied in these effective approaches. And then the, the way I characterize a leadership style where people chronically basically harness this desire for status and respect in young people is. The mentor mindset is the label I use, and it's very simply the idea that you have very high standards, but very high support.
[00:22:26] And it's my reframing of a classic idea in parenting and psychology and stuff but, what's new is that we've identified the conditions under which people don't uphold high standards or aren't sufficiently supportive. And it's when people believe that young people are incompetent and therefore they're not capable of meeting high standards or that what young people need is like punishment and they need to, they need the fear of God and put in them, and if they don't, then they're gonna go off on their own and ruin society.
[00:22:58] So if you have these like [00:23:00] negative beliefs, these what I call the neurobiological incompetence model, then you end up in mindsets. Where you take leadership styles with young people that disrespect them, might humiliate them, et cetera. But if you believe in the competence and potential of young people, then you end up with this mentor mindset, which is high standards, high support.
[00:23:20] Lainie Rowell: I make a connection between the neurobiological incompetence model and a fixed Both are saying there's these limitations that can never be changed, right?
[00:23:32] David Yeager: Yeah. I mean, I think that the. The way I arrived at the mentor mindset was growing out of our growth mindset research with Carol Dweck and others. Um, and we asked ourselves, well, who are the leaders who create the conditions for growth?
[00:23:48] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:23:48] David Yeager: Not just who like tells kids to have a growth mindset. Like, we didn't think that was gonna work.
[00:23:53] And, and frankly, like if you ask Chatt PT how do you help someone have a growth mindset? It'd be like, well, [00:24:00] classroom culture. And so then that makes you think, I'm gonna go to Google images and print out growth mindset posters. And by the way, they're mostly cats. Yeah. I don't know why like cat memes are growth mindset memes, but they are for some reason, um, it's like a cat reaching for a cookie jar and it's like growth mindset.
[00:24:19] I'm not kidding. And so we, we were like. We, we wanna study growth mindset cultures, but the way society has processed that information has led to very trivial stuff. Like what, what Carol Dweck calls a false growth mindset. And, and we learned furthermore that you can have a growth mindset but have like an ineffective idea for how to create growth.
[00:24:42] So I might say, yeah, I believe you can learn, and the way you're gonna learn is I'm gonna threaten to take away everything you value and care about and have really harsh punishment and consequences with zero tolerance. And if you do that, then you can learn calculus, right? And so that [00:25:00] to the kid that comes across as a very fixed mindset thing because they're like, you're presuming.
[00:25:05] That I'm not motivated, that I, I don't care, and that I can only be motivated by threats of punishment. And that's an insulting presumption. You know, for the kid it comes across as a fixed mindset thing. But the teacher might be believing they're doing growth mindset.
[00:25:18] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:25:19] David Yeager: Another version, and we see this a lot too, is people are like, yeah, I believe every kid can grow, but they're so traumatized and stressed
[00:25:26] they need tiny steps to move up in their confidence. And then they're gonna do something pretty easy. But then I'm gonna praise them for their effort, do something a little bit harder, and praise them for their effort. And I'm gonna boost their confidence at every point. And if you look at the mentor mindset leaders and how
[00:25:44] like, and I follow these people, like the best calculus class in America, the best high school physics teacher in, in Texas, in, you know, et cetera. The best astrophysics PhD H mentor. They are not doing tiny incremental steps. Like they've got big projects that are super hard [00:26:00] and that people cry when they try to do,
[00:26:02] Lainie Rowell: yeah.
[00:26:02] David Yeager: But their supports are so high that everyone eventually gets to that level of standard, but they're not having low standards.
[00:26:11] Lainie Rowell: Right. And so with the high support, the high standards, I think high standards is like so clear, crystal clear, and I think high support is too, but my wondering is do sometimes people struggle with, okay.
[00:26:24] And like, when do I step back so they can step up or things like that. Because high support is not like doing everything for them, obviously. And so could we talk a little bit more about like some examples of high support that are still allowing them to Yeah. Work hard and improve on their own, but that high support is there too?
[00:26:47] David Yeager: Yeah, I mean, I, I, what's funny is like I, I would definitely lump moral support into the concept of support and yet there's a version that is wrong, that is only moral support, and I'm not [00:27:00] gonna do anything for you to actually meet the standard. Right? Like, just saying, I believe in you, but doing nothing to help you overcome a challenge is not helpful, right?
[00:27:09] That'd be like if your car broke down in the middle of the night and then you get on AAA and you're like, I'm, I'm unsafe. I need a ride home. And then AAA's response was like, I really believe that you can find a way home. You know, like that would not be a good service, right?
[00:27:31] Lainie Rowell: It's
[00:27:31] David Yeager: high. You could do natural language analysis and code the language big.
[00:27:34] This is very emotionally supportive. It's high empathy, whatever, but like you didn't do anything, so you're worthless, you know?
[00:27:39] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:27:39] David Yeager: And I think a lot of people get that wrong. They think support is just the moral support part, and then what they're really doing is failing to take any responsibility.
[00:27:48] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:27:49] David Yeager: But they do that because they think if I help you actually accomplish the task, then I'm babying you. And I'm coddling you and that you're never gonna learn. [00:28:00] Right.
[00:28:00] Lainie Rowell: Right, right.
[00:28:01] David Yeager: And so how do you know the difference between what you should do and not do? And I, I'll kind of tell it through an example. So, um.
[00:28:10] We did a, I wasn't planning on talking about this, but we did a project with the startup called Mainstay that I, I like and have been involved with, and they worked with the state of Texas when Harrison Keller, who's the commissioner for higher ed now, he's president of North Texas, but he was doing innovative stuff.
[00:28:27] And what happens is every single kid in Texas, when they apply to college, they don't do the common app. They do what's called Apply Texas. Because in Texas, if there's a perfectly functional solution that works for the rest of the country, then we like to create our own and relabel it with the word Texas on it.
[00:28:46] And that's our favorite thing to do. And so, and I'm intan, I'm allowed to say this.
[00:28:50] Lainie Rowell: Yes.
[00:28:50] David Yeager: And so we have a Apply Texas I our own Common app. Right. But anyway, every, so every year, like, let's call it 300,000 kids. Start applying to college and they're pre-enrolled in [00:29:00] a text message chat bot that is available 24 7 to help them with the college process, not just the application like you got the application in.
[00:29:08] When are decisions. Like when, how do I do my fafsa? Um, how do I apply for scholarships? Like, when do I pick my classes? And so the chat bot has really good answers to these standard questions. But the problem is like some huge proportion of the time, kids don't ask logistical questions. They ask, am I good enough for college?
[00:29:27] Lainie Rowell: Interesting.
[00:29:28] David Yeager: Or. If I go to college and leave behind my family, will they resent me the rest of my life, or my mom just died. She was the main reason why I was pushing myself to go go to college. I no longer have motivation. I don't think it's worth it anymore. So the robot doesn't have good answers for that.
[00:29:46] And so, um, it goes to like a college student who, or, or a recent college grad who then rep, there's 10 kids are sitting there replying to thousands of text messages every night. Okay.
[00:29:57] Lainie Rowell: Wow.
[00:29:58] David Yeager: So as a part of a [00:30:00] consulting project with NDAs and everything, I got all of the queries and all the answers, and the question is, what's a good and bad answer to a person in crisis?
[00:30:10] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:30:10] David Yeager: Okay. Now the like enforcer approach is be like, you're going to college, you're an adult. You gotta figure it out.
[00:30:18] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:30:18] David Yeager: Like stop whining, stop complaining, suck it up and get your act together or else you don't care about your future. Right. The protector is, I'm so sorry. You're so distressed. You sound really overwhelmed.
[00:30:31] Like, I think you should just don't think about this for a while. Go for a walk. Take a bubble bath. Like drink some chamomile tea, you know? And after some yoga, uh, then we will talk about it, right? And, um, those are not good answers. Also not a good answer is be like, sounds like you're in crisis. Here's the crisis line.
[00:30:51] Go get in touch with 9 1 1. Right. And like the really high proportion of answers were like that. And that's not person, like barely mustered the courage to text [00:31:00] this chat bot. They don't wanna be given homework basically.
[00:31:02] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:31:04] David Yeager: So I was like, all right, well how should a great mentor mindset person reply in that scenario.
[00:31:10] And so I had this guy, Sergio Estrada, who's the, one of the exemplars that I follow in my book. And he's a, a fabulous high school physics teacher at a super low income school in El Paso, Texas. And um, so every year he's got kids who are first gen, first in their family to go to college, maybe immigrant, uh, families applying to college, unsure of what's gonna happen.
[00:31:32] So they're asking the same questions that the text messages people are seeing.
[00:31:36] Lainie Rowell: Hmm.
[00:31:36] David Yeager: So I was like, Sergio, what would you say? And he doesn't do anything like those examples. He's like, alright, well you know why you're stressed. The reason why you're stressed is because we put so much pressure on college and we basically say where you get in determines whether you're a valuable person.
[00:31:52] And that's ridiculous. You have so much worth and value as a person, and the snapshot of what you're capable of doing [00:32:00] at 17 in one quarter of a year's old is not, that does not determine your entire potential as a person who are gonna live the next 80 years, so, et cetera, et cetera, stressful for a reason now, then it will be like, tell me what you've already tried.
[00:32:16] So if they're doing fafsa, presumably that has thought of something, right? Yeah. Adults never do that. Adults are like, okay, I see the problem. Uh, here's what you need to do. Do this and that and let me know how it goes. Yeah. Like we, we were quick to diagnose. We jump in to fix the problem. If we care. If we don't care, we're like, you should have already known this because I told you nine times, so you need to go handle your stuff before I talk to you.
[00:32:41] Sergio doesn't do that. He's like, what did you already try? That's good because if, if I provide advice to a teenager and I tell them to do something they've already tried, you know, that's so insulting. Maybe like a kid, your girlfriend just broke up with you and you're like, did you try being nice to her?[00:33:00]
[00:33:01] You are like, that's the most insulting piece of advice ever.
[00:33:03] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:33:03] David Yeager: You know, even if you're right, the kid was mean to his girlfriend, you know? So anyway, what have you already tried? And then they troubleshoot together and he is like, alright, I think what we need to do is this next step. Your, your counselor needs to handle that.
[00:33:16] I'm gonna walk with you to the counseling office and make sure that they don't put you in a long line where you never get what you need. Make sure that you get over this bureaucratic hurdle and they submit this thing. Okay.
[00:33:28] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:33:29] David Yeager: So that sounds really proactive, but asking, and so you'd think that's too much support, but like, it's also high standards like your, your Sergio's causing the kid to think.
[00:33:42] What have you already tried? What didn't work? What are you gonna try next? What are your plans? Mm-hmm. Right? So that you're transferring the thinking to the kid rather than you solving it.
[00:33:50] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:33:51] David Yeager: But you don't leave them alone to fight against an impossible bureaucracy. And that is... especially talking about low income kids, like this happens all the time.
[00:33:59] It's like our [00:34:00] bureaucracies are terrible and they're even worse with all kinds of, the things aren't regulated anymore, where you sign up for something once and now they can bill you every you know, thing and then your credit card and then now you've lost your, you know, credit score and like, just the whole thing escalates in our economy right now, right?
[00:34:16] It's like, I'm gonna use my knowledge of how to navigate bureaucracies so that you can do the real thinking of what you wanna do with your life, but you're not hung up in the logistical, procedural stuff about how to get there. And that just all end this point by saying, that's the big distinction that I think people miss.
[00:34:33] Like a high school physics teacher might say, um, I have high standards. Therefore you need to read the syllabus on your own. You need to look at what assignments are doing on your own. If you miss them, you get a zero and that's on you. And it's like that's the logistics of the class. That's not force and momentum.
[00:34:49] Your high standard should be. Do you understand centripetal force? Hmm. Like, do you understand like Newtonian mechanics?
[00:34:55] Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:56] David Yeager: And if the answer is no, by the end of the year you did not do your job [00:35:00] because society paid for you to teach physics and your kids did not learn physics. And you shouldn't care if you have to remind them when their test is.
[00:35:08] Like they're all, they're 15. Like, like why do you care? And so I think that the big distinction is between the intellectual rigor that you maintain, but a big part of support is making the logistical stuff easier for kids to overcome. Especially we talk about Neurodiverse kids or ADHD kids.
[00:35:25] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And we're talking a lot about kids, but these, these are things that apply to adults too, right?
[00:35:32] Like the Oh, yeah. The collaborative troubleshooting, the high support in the way of, let me remove barriers. Maybe things that you don't have a position like I think of in the workforce. You know, there are oftentimes where people they're ready to do the work, they're motivated. But there is something that is in their way that they don't have the power to remove.
[00:35:52] Yeah. So it's not, not just for kids in schools and
[00:35:54] David Yeager: No, for sure. And, and I'll tell you two examples. So one is Microsoft, the other is McDonald's. But at [00:36:00] Microsoft we, we tried to find a super manager. It was like Sergio, her name is Steph Akimoto. Um, and, uh. She was the best basically at young employees moving up through the company and having high promotional velocity.
[00:36:15] And the first thing she would do is, is basically tell people, look, I think you're so talented that doing your regular job is gonna be too easy and boring for you. So what is the stretch project you want to have on your next performance review so that when your skip boss looks at all the performance reviews, they're like, wow, that person
[00:36:33] is ahead. And then they'll make up some project that might go beyond their normal job duties. Mm-hmm. And that sounds great. And Steph won't do it for them and she's meets with them and supports them. Right. But inevitably, in a big bureaucracy of a, of a major company, you run into gatekeepers.
[00:36:51] Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:51] David Yeager: And if you're gonna do something like, if you're in HR and you're gonna try to improve some data system.
[00:36:57] That's gonna involve some programming time. But the [00:37:00] programmers, they don't like hr like HR is the losers, like the program, like we run the company, we're, we're the CS majors and so they're not gonna give free time to some 23-year-old HR person. And so Steph will like run interference and talk to that other person's manager and be like.
[00:37:16] This is a part of all of us overperforming, and I promise our skip bosses will be impressed and she builds will. She won't do thing for the 23-year-old, but it's like blocking and tackling, like removing barriers. And so that's like the good example. The bad example is that inevitably if you're doing something that is beyond your level and beyond your current abilities because you're growing, then you'll be frustrated and you'll be stressed and there might come a time where other things in your life happen.
[00:37:44] Your work is piling up because you've chosen to do hard stuff and then you break down with your boss and you're like, this is impossible. I can't do it. In those moments, bosses are often tempted to be the protector, you know?
[00:37:57] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:37:57] David Yeager: Where someone comes to you with distress and they're [00:38:00] crying and you're like, I'm gonna go fix it. This person was mean to you, da, da, da. Like, you don't have this.
[00:38:05] I'm gonna go do it. But then you come across as thinking that they're incompetent.
[00:38:09] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:38:09] David Yeager: And then you also piss off the other managers who think, oh, this is like a woke wimpy, you know, Gen Z-er who can't do anything.
[00:38:19] Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:20] David Yeager: And so it's very important for managers to like provide the right kind of support.
[00:38:25] Support so that the young person can do something truly impressive, not that you're doing it for them.
[00:38:32] Lainie Rowell: Oh my goodness. I feel like we could spend the whole time just talking about the nuance to support. 'cause it's very, very interesting and there's so many things that come into it.
[00:38:40] But I really appreciate those examples that you gave and I know I gotta let you go here soon. So Dr. Yeager, I'd love to hear from you. You know, we've talked about a lot of things, the mentor mindset.
[00:38:50] You've given specific examples and I'd love it if there is something that you could shout from rooftops. Like it's something that you either [00:39:00] haven't said in this conversation, or it's just something that's so important you can't say it enough and you'd still say it again. Like, what's that one thing that you really want people to walk away with?
[00:39:10] David Yeager: I would say that we're, we're very much a like results focused culture and I think we need to be a development focused culture a lot more. Um, you know, we're doing a lot of work on youth sports these days, and parents like will pick travel teams for their kids based on the win-loss record for these travel teams and then they'll spend infinity dollars on these teams. And you know, a youth sports coach who wins a lot of tournaments is not necessarily a good coach. It could just be the kind of coach that kicks off any kid who makes a mistake and then holds a tryout and then 90 new players try out for that one spot and they pick a kid for one more year, and then some other kid hits a growth spurt and then they replace that kid.
[00:39:57] Like that's how you win a lot of games. But then [00:40:00] what happens is like youth sports or participation rates are declining, uh, starting at like age nine, depending on the sport. Um, and they're, they're down across the board.
[00:40:11] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:40:12] David Yeager: And on, and then you've got managers, right, where it's like, well, in a world in which I can just fire and hire, then why would I develop anybody?
[00:40:20] Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:20] David Yeager: But the problem is then you. Your, if you don't develop people, then your best people leave and go to competitors where they can learn new skills and then you pay a lot of money to retain mediocre people or to steal other companies, mediocre people. So it costs you like three x to have that kind of approach.
[00:40:39] And like the best way to like cost effectively have excellence is to develop talent. And that's true in the professor. If you look at, I mean, Harvard and Stanford can like just buy everyone. They're like, can be like the Yankees, but like. Most good universities with great departments hired great assistant professors and developed them into stars, you know, by associate in full.
[00:40:59] [00:41:00] And um, so like I just think we have the wrong philosophy at in so many levels, whether it's school, formal schooling, extracurriculars, university, workplace, and we are so quick to like sort and rank we should be developing. And, and that's a version of the mentor mindset is like you're it, if you're committed to development and the mentor mindset, people are gonna screw up when you ask them to do hard things that are beyond their abilities.
[00:41:32] And then the question is, what are you doing to help people learn from those screw ups or avoid them more in the future? Right? Um, and I kind of wish we had that philosophy.
[00:41:41] Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and from my own experience, I will say that focusing on development does not lead to worse results.
[00:41:48] It'll ultimately get there. It's just where are you really focusing that energy.
[00:41:53] David Yeager: Yeah, for sure.
[00:41:54] Lainie Rowell: Okay. I know I need to let you go really quickly. How can people stay connected with you and is there anything [00:42:00] you've got coming up that you want to make sure they know about?
[00:42:02] David Yeager: Yeah, so the, the people can check out the masterclass.
[00:42:05] The masterclass would love for me to tell you that, uh, the Simon Schuster would love for me to tell you about my book. That they can be purchased wherever books are sold, mostly on the internet, uh, 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating Young People. But I would say that the, um. The new things we're working on where if people are interested, I'd love to hear from them are one, we're creating tools to coach people on mentor mindset language.
[00:42:30] So, uh, the, our first client is, uh, owners and operators at fast food chains. And so we're in 30 stores in West Virginia at a major, um. popular fast food chain. And so managers have problems with their Gen Z employees where they might, employees might come in a little late or they go hide in the bathroom on their phones, or they forget to refill the milkshake machine, or they wear jewelry when they're [00:43:00] frying burgers and they shouldn't.
[00:43:01] And managers typically just go yell, tell, and, and grown-splain everything to them, and then people quit. And the turnover rate is absurd. It's 150% per year. Turnover in McDonald's for crew. And, um, we're trying to reduce that by, before a manager goes and yells at somebody, they ask the Yeager in Your Pocket app, what should I say?
[00:43:23] And then it'll say things like, ask them why they're using the restroom so much when they arrive. And then in brackets it says, wait for answer. And this is shocking to people. And then it turns out they'll say stuff like, I have diabetes and I have to go to the bathroom a lot. That's a really example, you know?
[00:43:43] Yeah. And you're like, oh, wow. I would've been a jerk if I yelled at you for having diabetes. You know?
[00:43:48] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:43:49] David Yeager: So that's kind of where it's that. And then we're applying that to teachers as well. So we have a program, um, where we're training [00:44:00] mainly sixth to ninth grade math teachers, but it's expanding, um, to create a culture of mentor mindset.
[00:44:06] Lainie Rowell: I love it. Can anyone get Jaeger in your pocket? Is that available? Is it in
[00:44:09] David Yeager: the app store yet? Uh, so right now we're, we're selling to corporate clients and so we're trying to, you know, I'd love to be in Applebee's and Chili's and
[00:44:17] Lainie Rowell: yeah.
[00:44:17] David Yeager: Um, Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell. Um, and we're seeing, depending on the analysis, like 20 to 30% reduction in turnover.
[00:44:25] So, um. For 30 stores, it's gonna save over a million dollars a year in, uh, the cost of rehiring people. So if people are interested, they could reach out to me. But then, uh, the, the teacher stuff is, uh, available. It's called Fuse, FUSE, and, uh, Fellowship Using the Science of Engagement. And that's run out of the University of Texas.
[00:44:47] And, um, we're always looking for partnerships on that.
[00:44:50] Lainie Rowell: I love it. Okay, I'm gonna put a bunch of links in the show notes so people can stay connected to you, obviously in the article as well. Dr. Yeager, thank you so much for your time and I hope to stay connected with you as well. [00:45:00]
[00:45:00] David Yeager: Alright, thanks for, thanks for talking.
[00:45:01] See you soon.
[00:45:02] Lainie Rowell: Take care.
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