Producer: Alright, welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. I am here as always with our host, Sucheta Kamath.
Good morning, Sucheta, always good to be with you. Looking forward to this one.
Sucheta Kamath: Thank you, Todd, and I think you and I have talked a little bit about this, is how do we do things that we really don’t enjoy or how do we learn new things when we have a sense of ambivalence towards learning something new and learning skills, particularly when they are hard? So, I’m very excited about the guest we have today, but I just wanted to share a little bit about my experience in this area.
When I was younger, my father used to take us to the – I mean, those who listen to this podcast by now know that I grew up in India, in Bombay, and my father was one of the greatest teachers I had at home while I had amazing teachers and some bad ones too, but one of the things that I inculcated in the experience of growing under his master coaching was to really take interest in things that don’t appear to add any value to you. I’ll give you an example, so we used to go to the market – this was pre-supermarket; now, actually, there are supermarkets, but you would go to a marketplace and vendors would be sitting on the ground and they will have their own little things that they are selling, vegetables and such, and then you negotiate and you haggle, but also, it’s not the price you’re haggling but you’re also kind of selecting what is the best thing to choose, how fresh it is, how many weeks away it is from becoming ripe, for example, mangoes, and so my father had this technique. He would take each of us alone to the market and kind of walk us through, like okay, if you’re looking at the mangoes, hold it in your hand, put some pressure and see how firm it is, look at the stem and the area, is it yellower? Do you see any blotches? And he would kind of help discover this idea of how ripe it is, if it is right from outside but rotten inside. Of course, there turned out to be a whole science to it. So fascinating, but he didn’t use any specific words to engage, there was no praise or reward, or money given to me to want to do this, there was no merit to this exercise, there were no grades given to this exercise, and what was so amazing, that my father had this ability to kind of tweak my wisdom to take interest in this exercise without ever explaining to me what the value was or how this matters, and I find this very, very challenging when dealing with executive function, that those who need the help most don’t have a buy-in and they don’t have the best insight into why they should do these things that at surface look like they are ordinary things or they may not even add up to anything big, which is why I have the great pleasure to introduce our guest.
His name is Michael Delman. He is Massachusetts’ distinguished educator and a pioneer and a leader in the area of executive function coaching. He has served as CEO and founder of Beyond Book Smart, the nation’s largest executive function coaching company since 2006, and he has got amazing resources on that website which we will link. Prior to that, Michael cofounded and was principal at Mccollister Charter School in Framingham, Massachusetts. Michael has presented in conferences such as Teaching at the Learning Disabilities Association of America in 2018, international conference on ADHD and numerous regional organizations. He has been featured in the Times of London, CBS Boston, affiliate WBZ-TV, and dozens of media outlets across the country, and the most important resource that everybody should go and get is Michael’s book that he published and it’s called Your Kids Are Going To Be Okay: Building The Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs Into The Age Of Attention, and this kind of reminds me of the movie Your Kids Are Going To Be Alright. I think it gives a great message of ease and gives us a great sense of confidence that truly, these skills can be developed and there is a method to the madness.
So, welcome to the podcast, Michael.
Michael Delman: Hey, Sucheta, thanks so much for having me here.
Sucheta: Well, let’s start with the question that I often ask my guests: since this podcast is all about executive function and we specifically are going to talk about coaching and your insight into those who need the change don’t necessarily have the best insight, how would you describe your own executive functions and when did you discover this learning how to learn process for yourself?
Michael: Well, mixed bag. So, executive functions, these skills, these self-management skills let you set and achieve goals and manage yourself on the way there. Obviously, they have to be pretty good to write a book or start an organization. Not everything is done by my secretary although probably most of it, so I think that I would always tend to break it down. For me, one of the executive function skills that I have really cultivated and developed over the years is that of prioritizing, really being able to figure out what is most important and what is worth my time and energy? So, that allows me, even if my attention may wander a little bit, to know where is the energy and where is the time, and to have a large blank spaces in my schedule, so that the time that I’m spending is focused on things that are of great value and have a lot of leverage.
In terms of your wonderful question, Sucheta, about where did this all start for me and when did I realize? I think it really wasn’t until my mid 20s that I started to realize, oh, I sometimes have a bit of a challenge of staying attentive to things that I find boring, and the only way that I can is if I do certain things, employ certain strategies, like notetaking at a meeting that I’m going to fall asleep at or asking questions and engaging with the presenter. Those kinds of things are the things that I really didn’t consciously begin to develop until my mid 20s when I was a teacher and starting to teach other people how to be more effective.
Sucheta: Yeah. I mean, it’s so interesting, Michael, I’ve been asking this question to all my guests, even very world-renowned researchers and the typical theme that keeps coming back is college is when people really became aware of their ability to think about these things. So, it kind of validates the trajectory of development as we see it, but the second question, if I may repeat that was, was there anything or anyone in particular that helped you to discover learning how to learn that kind of added value to your own approach? And as you said, I like that idea that you said, mixed bag: it started with a mixed bag. You were not probably the expert, but you eventually kind of coached yourself to pay attention to those weak spots.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, from a very young age – it’s funny you mentioned and you have talked about your father, and my mother who was a psychologist, and when it comes to looking at yourself, this was something that from a very young age, I was always deeply encouraged and sometimes outright forced to reflect upon what I had done to make things go well, what I had done to make things go not as well as I hope. So, always from a very young age, it’s what we call in the business metacognitive skills are strongly encouraged at home. I did have certain teachers that had that as well, but I was very fortunate to have a mother who deeply believed in the power and the potential of reflecting on what happened and really kind of everything was a learning experience. It was okay to fail as long as you learn from it. My dad too, to some extent, have that in a more intellectual level, but my mother always had it on every level, from an interaction with someone to goalsetting, and from my dad, certainly about academics as well and what I could learn. So, I would say that I was very, very fortunate to have two parents who really understood the importance of reflecting on everything, and maybe ad nauseam at times, but I got it to the point where it became just second nature and something that is easy and enjoyable for me now.
Sucheta: You know, I mean, I love that, I love that you and I, I too, that self-reflection was so deeply embedded in daily home experience and that it was valued as a family value, like we as a family reflected on how we are behaving, and particularly in the social context, it was sometimes taken to the extreme, but I really appreciate it now as I’ve grown up but thank God, like what was allowable, what was not allowable, what was the cool thing to do, what is not kosher – all those things were explicitly externalized which really helped me to become more cognizant of what I’m doing and what I’m thinking about I’m doing, you know? So, it sounds like you and I both had that wonderful experience.
Michael: Formative experience, yeah.
Sucheta: Amazing, so let me start, maybe take it back to the beginning of your career. When you started your career as a teacher, you taught in the Southborough public schools, probably those were Boston area – interesting neighborhood – and you received an award there as you were teaching for creating superior learning environments for the students, so what are some of your observations about teaching and learning at that time, and what road blocks did you experience early in your career that influenced your teaching one way or the other?
Michael: Michael: So, I was fortunate to work in a town that had a lot of resources and kids – well, they were motivated, but their motivation was by and large to get a good grade and to be good kids, and I would not complain about that because to work with kids who are generally well-behaved and wanted to do well, I mean, that’s kind of a blessing for a teacher. On the other hand, it wasn’t inspiring and what I found in the school system where I worked, and again, good school system, a lot of very, very competent teachers, was there was a sense of limitations that I felt constantly. For example, other learnings and the lessons learned in one class did not seem to carry over into another classroom. So, a common lament of one of my colleagues was that students that she taught for both Math and Science would ask her in Science why she was bringing Math into the Science class. Now, granted, it was middle school so it wasn’t as obvious as 10th grade Chemistry, but really, I mean, Math and Science, you can’t see the connection – no, they couldn’t. I was always looking for ways to make things more interdisciplinary, to connect to the real world, and I have a passion for that. I can tell you more about that if you want to hear more, but that was one of the limits.
The other was the huge chasm between the intellect and the affective side of students’ development, so out of middle school in particular, I often made the joke later when I started my own school, it [0:11:55] at a school for troubled kids, I would say it’s in middle school, so yes, obviously. But how can you teach middle school kids and really hope to connect with them and help them to grow and to change, and to consider even changing their perceptions about themselves if you’re not deeply attuned to their affective development how they feel about themselves, to what their aspirations are? And so, from myself sometimes getting reprimanded at school for trying too hard and trying to go beyond my job description, and sometimes, they got it and sometimes, they didn’t but it really was a huge part of what ended up pushing me to start my own school, and there was a straw that broke my camel’s back which was we had started a wonderful advisory program for the sixth-graders at my school. It was terrific: all the teachers were trained, it was great, we brought it to the seventh and eighth grade teachers and they said, “Well, there’s no research behind it.” We brought the research. They said, “Well, it’s extra work. It’s an extra prep, so we are not going to do it,” and believe it or not, that wasn’t the straw. The straw was when the sixth-grade staffmen said, “Well, if they’re not doing it, then we shouldn’t have to do it, so we are dropping it,” and everybody bailed on a program that was honestly life-changing for the kids, and that’s when I had said, “You know what, I’m done complaining about something that is not going to change. I’m just going to do it myself,” and that’s what I did.
So, it wasn’t so much out of it being a hero or thinking that I’m so wonderful; I just couldn’t bear it, and felt that it was absolutely necessary to go beyond just semicolons and fractions, as much as I love those two things, you know.
Sucheta: Well, I fail at semicolons and fractions – I mean, not fractions but semicolons.
Michael: Anytime, anytime.
Sucheta: I have a grammar disorder, I call it, but you are pointing at something really profound and that’s why I love this podcast becomes the platform to bring expert neuroscientists and educational researchers, by practitioners, because this is the part of education that is getting underestimated. I think the very experience, the straw that broke the camel’s back as you are describing, it’s the reluctance to engage in something that is new and does not have any clarity to the person – maybe the teacher, but just unwillingness to explore: in what ways can I supplement my approach? And there are teachers who do that, so thank you for doing and failing on it and saying okay, I’m starting my own.
Michael: Yeah, thank you. You’re welcome.
Sucheta: So, as you have been doing this work for at least 13 years if not more, but in your work and observations, what have you noticed in terms of problems with the smartest or even the hardest working kids that are problems they are facing these days? And I would love a distinction, if you can bring our listeners’ attention to what’s the difference between the smartest and hardest working kids if there is any?
Michael: Yeah, you could be both intentionally, you could be neither but you could be one or the other. There are very hard-working kids and I’m not a big fan of the word ‘smart’ because there are so many aspects to one’s intelligence and brilliance. A mentor of mine, Steven Lee, he used to talk about kind of what is your genius? What is your particular genius? So, he used that word to kind of illuminate where do you shine? Where is your origin space?
Sucheta: Yeah, I love that, yeah.
Michael: He is a Massachusetts Educator of the Year, Disney Educator, like amazing guy, really kind of opened my mind to that appreciating more – the way Gardner does and others.
So, there are kids where certain things do come to them so easily, whether it’s acquisition of language or it’s mathematical skills and so forth. I think their biggest problem is the praise that they get, and the problem that can result for them is, what happens either when the praise stops or when the material gets harder, or some combination where they start to wonder about their intelligence? And do they become lazy over time because things have been so easy, I’ll just do it last minute because I can? And I’ve seen that with kids who have a certain kind of natural ability, and I do believe there are natural abilities – I think we all see it, it’s kind of undeniable, but natural ability means a lot less to me than the kids who are hard-working if they are working hard effectively, and a problem for hard-working kids, so just to wrap it up with the smart kids, if you get labeled as smart, you can feel dumb very easily when you encounter failure. Carol Dweck talks about the [0:16:40] mindset, right? Once you start to think, oh, my gosh, maybe I’m not so smart, you haven’t built those habits, you haven’t developed the executive function skills, the persistence, the ability to regulate your emotions, when things aren’t going right, so you can actually very fragile. So, that can be a really sad thing.
For the other kids, those who are very hard-working and they have learned to overcome challenges, there is still too much of a good thing and sometimes, kids are working so hard because their standards are – there are television standards or there are Nobel Prize standards, there is something that they saw somewhere, heard somewhere, and they believe they have to achieve this perfect level all the time across all domains, and we are talking about kids who are wonderful kids but they are so hard on themselves, and it doesn’t matter whether their parents are or are not, but it’s really, really painful, so they are anxious and miserable.
Sucheta: So, do you mean those kids who have that neurotic perfectionism to achieve something that is unreasonable or untimely or even nonessential for the context in which they are operating?
Michael: Absolutely. I call them defeatist perfectionist, really, they are self-defeating because they are exacting standards, they are not realistic, and they can focus on the wrong things this way. Would it be okay to give you a quick story of that?
Sucheta: Oh, yes, please, you are always welcome.
Michael: I mean, I want to illustrate it, and I’m going to give a personal story about my daughter who is wonderful and she knows it – I do share this from time to time, but my older daughter who is a very successful student just finished her freshman year of college, but she in high school had a moment when she was really, really overwhelmed and putting in an hour and night in every subject in spite of all of all of her other commitments and she said, “Dad, how am I supposed to put in so much work in every subject and get the homework done at that level when I’ve also got this project? It’s no wonder I can never start the project until the night before or two nights before!” and I asked her, “Are you just wanting to vent or do you want me to say something?” Because I’m her dad and you don’t know, it could be the wrong thing to respond, right? She said, “Fine, I actually would like to hear what you have to say,” and I said, “Well, how much are the homework assignments worth?” She said, “Well, they are two points apiece.” I said, “What would happen if you took 20 minutes away or whatever from one of these homework assignments, what would you lose out on two points?” She said, “Probably nothing. Maybe half a point at most,” and I said, “Well, what’s your project worth?” and you know where this is going, she said, “The project is worth 50 points,” and I said, “Do you want me to say anymore?” She said, “No, thank you, I got it. I should’ve figured this out myself.” It’s one of those things where it’s so hard to do because a lot of kids aim to please and it is hard to let go of that and to simply think about what’s worth my time? What do I love? Where are the points? What is valuable? It’s okay to say, this one, I just need to wear my jeans for, this one is more of a formal gown level of effort.
Sucheta: I love that.
Michael: You have to adjust based on how valuable something is, and it’s a tough skill to learn.
Sucheta: I often describe this to the kids that I’ve worked with, is using a sledgehammer to kill a bug. You have a toolset and you have a hammer, and then you can swap with your hand, so why are you using a sledgehammer? And this analogy, of course, is that not only is it big for the outcome or reward, or the result, but it also requires a lot of effort to pick up the sledgehammer, to take it all the way above your shoulder, it’s a lot of work than waving a hand and swatting something rather. So, thank you for sharing your personal experience. I do think that it’s funny, my son who is now going to be a senior in college said the same thing one time. He was up until 2:00 AM and I happened to be up, and we just got talking and I said, “Honey, why are you so hard on yourself or why are you working so hard? You know, dad and I don’t care about your grades,” and he says, “Yeah, you may not care about them but I do.” I think he said, “There was a point where you cared about it and you stopped caring about it, but I have picked up on that habit,” and it was such an eye-opening thing for me that my casual sheet that, “Oh, I don’t care about your performance or what it results into,” was not true, like I probably exuded that importance in my behaviors if my words didn’t say that.
Michael: Well, I just think that there is what we say and then there is what we do, and I do think that there is a distinction between grades in high school and for most grades in college. Your grades in high school, yeah, they actually have real value in the real world. They are a part of what you look decide where you go. In college, a lot less. I can’t tell you my college degree where people have asked, but it’s very weird. When you were screening, you didn’t ask me my grade, it wasn’t really important.
Sucheta: He was dying to know, so I curbed my behavior.
Michael: Yeah, curb it, you don’t need to know, but no, you get it, but my daughter did make that transition to college and she understood that her grades are not as important now. She actually did really well, but she didn’t drive herself crazy and she actually commented that some of these kids, she’s at Northwestern and she said, “Some of these kids, it’s like they don’t realize that they actually got in. They are not able to distinguish between the little things and the big things, and they are miserable,” and she said, “You know, I found out what matters.” Oh, it is wonderful when kids – and I do think this is a significant part of growth for our young kids as they mature into young adults, for them to understand how to make their own decisions and not treat everything as gospel that is said to them by teachers and not treat everything as incredibly important just because someone told them to do it. Really, that judgment is going to matter more and more as they get older realizing what is priority and what is not.
Sucheta: Yeah. Michael, I think you are making an amazing case for imparting that wisdom. Eventually, the learner picks up this underlying principle.
So, let’s talk a little bit about when people don’t get it right. Seeing a disengaged or underproducing, or even underperforming kid is quite painful and you and I see the world coming at these kids and there’s a great deal of ideas and suggestions that are made to get these kids engaged. How do you think the parents and educators are getting it wrong? As you mentioned earlier, there is a praise and extrinsic mechanisms that people deploy often to get them to care about their success, but how do you see the role of motivation and in terms of coaching? So, maybe I can combine lots of questions into one, is what does coaching in the context of such kind of environment mean and how do we get started, kids, which is what I do in my practice – I’m sure you have some tricks up your sleeve – if you don’t mind talking about that?
Michael: Yeah, no, it’s a really well-phrased question, actually. So, you know the context for most kids is that they’ve got – I know there are parents who just have nothing to do with them, back out and let things go, but let’s go with for so many kids, their parents are making demands, pushing them, we’ve got these labels for parents now. We know the helicopter parents, the drill sergeants and that kind of thing, and so for kids, how do you develop intrinsic motivation if you’re just either trying to get your parents off your back or you are always depending on them, and then on the other side, they’ve got school which is not only a full-time job but two full-time jobs, right? You’ve got your day job and then you’ve got your fabulous no-paying night job of homework’s, so that –
Sucheta: I love that, yeah.
Michael: Yeah, right? And so, for kids, you’ve got often teachers that may care about them and presumably do but don’t really understand all their pressures and really don’t know them individually well enough to help them figure out what’s in it for them.
So now, the role of the coach is to step into that messiness and discourage feeling for a student, and just push all that to the side and to say, “Look, your parents hired me but you can fire me. So, I’m not going to work with you if this is something that you don’t see valuable,” and that is first. It’s a really empowering thing to do for a kid and what else can they do? They can’t quit school, they can’t fire their teacher, they can’t fire their parents, so just right off the bat say, “I’m here to help and you may need to get a little time with me to make up your mind, but this really has to be your decision.” So, I think that’s the first and most important thing, is to just get out of the power struggle, don’t make it bad. I had this student, he was at a really nice private school and the first time I met with him, I asked him how much of this was his idea and how much was his parents’ and he said, “Not my idea. 100% my parents’.” When I asked him why he was opposed to coaching, he said two words: assignment notebook – “My parents make me use it and I hate it.” I said, “Well, what’s wrong with it?” He said, “I don’t need it. The teachers post the assignment every night, so why would I use it?” So, I listen to that then I just said, “Well, is it every teacher posting every night?” He said, “Not the English teacher. She is the only exception.” I said, “Well, what do you do with the English teacher?” He said, “Well, obviously, I write that down in my assignment notebook!” So, he wasn’t opposed to using the assignment notebook; he was opposed to his mom and his dad telling he had to do it for every subject, the school checking and treating him like a baby. It was insulting and it was unnecessary. So, the first thing I did there was I said, “You don’t need to write that stuff down, not for me, and I will write a note saying that I don’t think you need to do it except when you do need to do it,” and that just got him started on the right track, so if you can let them come up with the solutions, empower them to make some of those decisions for themselves, it’s really, really helpful. And then, of course, you have to be able to relate to them and connect some of their objections and their frustrations to things that they actually care about. So, always try to do that as well.
Sucheta: I call this psych-wise parenting, you know, showing some wisdom, psychological wisdom, not just wisdom and your brilliance, but the psych-wise teaching and psych-wise parenting to get that partnership. I love that. I always tell the kids I work with: I have some knowledge and expertise, but I am useless if there is no one who wants to make use of my advice. So, I’m very happy to be of help and give you advice, but I don’t know if you think my advice will be of help, and that of course, parents freak out because they say, “Don’t give him that option! He’s going to tell you he doesn’t need your advice!”
Michael: But there is no other way really. I mean, if you’ve got this amazing tool you want to hand over to the kids but their fist is closed, you can’t hand it to them. They need to be in a relaxed place, calm place, receptive place to be able to say, “Alright, let me take a look at that Swiss Army knife. Oh my gosh, it does all that! That just made my schoolwork easier!” I mean, you don’t say to a kid – I’ll just clear this because I think it’s so important – you don’t say to a kid, “You need to try harder,” because there is a good chance they are either trying as hard as they can and be effective or they are so discouraged that that is the last thing that’s going to motivate them. What you say to a kid who is discouraged is, “Would you be willing to just try a little experiment? I’m not going to ask you to try harder, but maybe to try about the same that you already are but in a different way that I think will get you better results. Would you be open to that?” and you don’t overpromise and you don’t tell them it’s going to absolutely necessarily work, but “Would you be willing to give it a try for say, five minutes or so?” and we call this five-minute goals, or “Would you be willing to set a goal that you can do in five minutes, trying it in a different way?” and you just get so much out of the kid that way, and frankly, out of an adult too that can be set in their ways, so we want to give people a choice and give them a chance to see it for themselves. Why do they need to know how smart Michael Delman is or how smart Sucheta is? Just try this out, see what you think, you decide.
Sucheta: I don’t know about you, Michael, but I’m really smart. I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding.
Michael: Oh, I believe it!
Sucheta: No, no!
Michael: I’ll just do it. But I love that.
Sucheta: I think one thing that is so meaningful to me about everything you are saying is there is such a self-evasive attitude that you bring that I’m not the boss, nobody died and made me the mayor of your life, and also, your disposition is of great compassion, that I understand why you might reject me, so I’m not feeling threatened by it, I’m not feeling this is catastrophic, like this will end your life, so that chillness that you have when you are coaching is really exuded through your nonverbals and the guidance you give, so I can see why children relate so well to you.
Michael: Aww. First of all, thank you so much. I was going to say there was a kid that I started with and we weren’t even going to get to a conversation about assignment notebooks in our first meeting. The mom said, “I think this is going to be a one-session and that’s it, but I’d like to at least try,” and it turns out, this kid is a great musician. He was a sophomore in high school when I met him, but he had just put an album out on iTunes, so I listened to it and it was really very good. It was beautiful. One song in particular really caught my ear. I play a little bit of guitar – not very well, but a little bit, and so the first time I went to meet with him, I asked him if he would be willing to show me how to play a bar chords on a guitar and he did it, and then I asked him how he did it. Could he explain how he taught me and he showed me: “Well, it’s just this little thing with this finger, that little thing there, that little thing there, and when you put these little things together and you have a whole chord,” and I said, “That’s amazing! Not only did you teach me this, but you explained how you taught me and I would like to, at some point, one, if you’re ready, use that same teaching method you just showed me to help you with writing an essay which I know is something that’s just a giant pain in the neck for you. It’s kind of like one small thing, like a topic sentence and another small thing, like details, another small thing, some editing, and eventually, you have an essay,” and he’s like, “Yeah, that’s cool, man, I would do that,” and so really being able to just let the kids lead a little bit to where you understand them and not come in as it is, “Oh, I know better. When I was your age…,” like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have heard that.
By the way, with my kids, I do get some of the, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had heard that. Yeah, that’s why I didn’t knock before entering. Are you looking [0:32:33] or not? He usually answers, “No, thanks, dad. We know you are a professional, we got it.”
Sucheta: You know, just reminds me of a story that I had a kid, same situation, it was not his idea, he wanted to talk about everything but his life that really was not working well, but he was such an engaging amazingly curious bright kid but just a little odd. An average lens would say this is odd or offbeat, and so I said the same thing. I said to him, “What do you really like to do or you don’t find paying attention is a problem?” He says video games, and I said, “Well, anything else?” And he says, “Oh, I love inventions. So, when I have time, I watch YouTube inventions,” and so I said, “Really?” I said, “Oh , my God, I love inventions!” And so, I said, “Can you show me your favorite video and I’ll show you mine?” and so we exchanged the videos and I said, “How do you track your inventions?” So, he says, “Well, I have an invention folder.” Michael, a ninth grader had an invention folder. His own inventions. These were sketches, nothing that will materialize into anything but they were such clever ideas. I mean, of course, half of them, I did not understand, because they involved some kind of complex physics that I couldn’t understand, but what happened is, he realized that we too can be in a space where it was a deep interest in him being a person, and I had a side to me that which was not a teacher which is me being a full person.
Michael: Right, right.
Sucheta: Right, isn’t it?
Michael: It is.
Sucheta: We could be ourselves.
Michael: Alright, they just don’t want to feel like they are a problem to be fixed or they are just like a little box for you to check off – okay, well, worked with that one. There is a person there, there is a real person, to get to know the psychology of the individual, who is this person? Although there are certain – this is an interesting thing and I don’t think I’ve said this in an interview before, but it’s funny, there are certain standard things that you can do as a parent, as a professional that actually are really good for getting to who this individual is, but paradoxical that there are standard things that are not individually tailored but they work at being able to get to oh, wow, this is who this person is. I just find that interesting thing, that there are proven methods. I mean, some of them had gone to through name of motivational interviewing, but they are really being empathic and normalizing their experiences, but they come down to fundamentally being deeply interested in this other person and not feeling like what you said, that you died and became mayor of this other person’s destiny, that’s just, nobody wants that. I love it.
Sucheta: So, the next thing that I think you address is, but what makes a good coach and it turns out, is a coach more than a teacher? And if so, in what ways?
Michael: Yeah, in so many ways, and I think the great teachers have aspects to coaching in the way they naturally are, but a coach is very deliberately going for more than the current win. A teacher, they are focused on the content first and foremost, and a good teacher may be able to notice that there is a problem, but they are often stuck with kind of it the crisis du jour, and a coach has a timeline that is much longer than that and a goal that is much bigger, and so when the coaches in my company are working with students, and I imagine you and people out there who are really dedicated to this, what they are doing, what all of us are doing is thinking, okay, there is an English paper or there is a Math test, or whatever it is, and that’s the immediate problem, and I’ve got to figure out how do we break down that English paper? How do we assess what is known and unknown in the Math test or whatever it is? But the skill that is going to be bigger than that is really what matters because there’s always going to be another test. There is always going to be the long-term project, there is always going to be some major issue that is forgotten and now, it’s due tomorrow, so how do we address that?
So, by way of a specific example that a student said to me, “Oh, my gosh! I forgot to study for this test, and I’ve got the test tomorrow,” and if I were with him as a teacher or a tutor, I might be tempted to say, “Alright, what is it on? Let’s dive in.” I would not do that as a coach. I would absolutely hold back and I would say, “That must really be hard. How are you feeling about that? Oh, my God. Alright, just take a minute or two, how did you get here? Like, what happened that allowed you to get into this space? Okay, well, let’s look at it in the context of what else is going on for tonight, how much time?” I wouldn’t just dive in too, “Gee, let’s figure out what content you don’t know and solve that” – no way, there is a bigger picture which is how do you approach these kinds of crises because it may come up again and how do you prevent them in the future? That is a very different approach than really a teacher or a tutor probably should be trying to do.
Sucheta: So, the image that comes to my mind is more like a sensei, it is a master who is not just supervising a goal to be attained. It’s not like a foreman who is watching the people on the floor and making sure they get the things done for the day, but is somebody who is an architect who has seen all the elements put together and it all adds up. When built right, it is supposed to hold something much bigger, and so it sounds more like those with wisdom.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, our coaches are frequently referred to as mentors and I think there is a combination or cross between that sensei or the mentor, and then someone who generally has some specific knowledge, but no, you’re not just trying to convey knowledge, you’re not just trying to hold someone’s feet to the fire, your goal is for them to be able to, whatever, walk on the coals themselves, get themselves motivated, get them to set the goals for themselves. So, I think we have a very different mission and it’s a really important one.
Sucheta: So, as we come close to the end of the interview process, let me see if you can share more about this. You talk about possessing a keen eye and a special ability to connect with those who are not already or interested in making a change in themselves, those who are struggling but are kind of discouraged or as of the six stages of change we talk about that, the engagement stage, and so tell us a little bit about that. I think this might be the most useful thing for people to know who are reluctant engagers. They also are very quick to refuse help but also turn around and blame the person who is trying to bring the help and blame them for causing a problem. So, how do you see that?
Michael: Well, I think you have to begin with kind of a deep question which is what is change? What does change look like? So often, people are making changes and they are not visible. If you’re thinking I want to lose five pounds or I want to work out at the gym more, or I want to be a better student in school, long before the change is going to be visible to somebody else, there are these stages people go through, these talked about in the trans-theoretical model by James Prochaska and his team, and these stages, it’s so valuable because if you understand these stages, you can support people in a way that is incredibly encouraged. It’s difficult to do if you’re constantly wondering when the change will happen, waiting for it and looking for some perhaps a miracle-changing behavior. So, what I’m looking to do when a student is working with me is to begin with understanding where they are coming from as I discuss to empower them to understand their objections, really get to know them, and begin with very simple techniques, things like – I mentioned this kind of knocking before entry: “Is there something you would be ready to talk about today? Is there something that is okay to talk about? Is there something you would be willing to try? Would you be willing to try this experiment for just five minutes?” So, experiments, knocking before entry, empathizing with them, that just sounds miserable. Normalizing their situation: “A lot of kids your age feel exactly the way you do. This is just, what a drag to come home from your school and a job you didn’t choose, and then have a second job, and then have additional people bossing you around – you got the teachers, you got your parents – it’s got to be really frustrating at times. What could I do to help it so that people maybe got off of your backs more? What is it that you would like?”
So, those are some of the many approaches that can help somebody who is feeling so resistant and so uninterested that they can shift from that to, “Well, I don’t know if I really want to do much about it, but I kinda know that what I need to do is I need to start my homework earlier because I always procrastinate.” Okay, great. You know what just happened there? They just changed. They just changed, like they just went from, “This stuff is stupid and everybody is judging me and I’m not going to deal with it,” which is we call precontemplation or stage one. They have shifted to stage two, contemplation of, “I don’t know if I want to do anything about it.” That is a huge change, but if you said it to their parents, most parents, “Your child made tremendous progress today.” They went from, “I’m not doing this,” to “Maybe I will at some point.” Well, is that something parents are going to applaud for? Well, the ones who really get it do, actually. They are the ones who really understand their kids too, but it’s actually very hard for parents to get that because they are seeing their kids drown and they want the support and the change to happen immediately, and you get that but you have to do it at the pace that the kid is ready for and encourage them to move just a little further to the point where they start to go, “You know what, I would like to try this experiment, but I’m not committing to it.” “Yeah , that’s cool. You don’t have to commit. Good for you for even being open-minded. I mean, that shows a lot of maturity,” and you couch it in those terms: “If I can say, you seem a little more grown-up about all of this. I mean like yeah, this stuff is stupid, I don’t really like to do it but, I will get it done because I kind of have to. That’s actually mature of you.” For adults, we have a lot of things we have to do that we don’t want to do but yeah, I got to do it, get it done. So, good on you for that. It’s really acknowledging the difficulty of change and that people don’t come to it easily and they certainly don’t come to it when we pressure them to or bully them into it, or shame them into it. It’s just that’s not how people will make changes that are in anyway sustainable, so being encouraging and being the biggest cheerleader, and really respecting them in the places where they do shine, those kinds of things are the things that get a kid to say, “You know what, maybe there is something in this for me. Maybe I’m not being forced into this. Maybe I do have my own motive for doing it, like get that teacher off my back or earn the teacher’s respect, or outperform my friend who is always rubbing it in how much better she is than me or whatever it is.” Kids have a lot of different motives, but the motive that does not motivate is someone who is making them do it, so I think we can get them past that.
Sucheta: I love it. I think what you are talking about is unlocking this knowledge that the true ability to unhook yourself lies within you and that is such an empowering place to be, and I have experienced this a lot in my coaching and training, is that once you give that insight to them, that you just showed a readiness to even listen to somebody else’s perspective, you just showed some signs and patience to hear an idea that seems to be stupid at the face of it, but if somebody says that it has been seen to be effective or useful, you just showed some signs of insight that what if I’m wrong? That’s great.
Michael, I think this has been such a fantastic conversation. I know we have [0:45:12] a little bit beyond our timeframe, but thank you so much for being with us today and providing us these amazing ideas and particularly what is so striking about them, they are deployable and they are just not limited – the coaching is not just, I have a word called “pentor” which sounds a little bit awkward but it’s parents who become mentors to their children and that is where there is a shift they can make, is they are the compassionate and patient teachers who are not driven by the goal of grades but more of long-lasting changes in their children.
Michael: I love that.
Sucheta: Yeah, so I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for your wisdom and I can’t wait for us to meet again and talk more.
Michael: Sucheta, I so appreciate that you’re doing this and getting this information out there to families and professionals. This is a wonderful thing to do. Thank you so much for including me.
Producer: Alright, that’s all the time we have for today. If you know of someone who might benefit from today’s conversation, we would be grateful if you would kindly forward it to them. So, on behalf of our host Sucheta Kamath, today’s guest, Michael Delman and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thanks for listening today and we look forward to see you again right here next week on Full PreFrontal.