With David Yeager, PhD

Full Transcript

Michael Balchan 00:00

I'll just kick it off. Fired up. Welcome to this Heroic Coach Luminary Guest Faculty Session with David Yeager, PhD, author of 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People. Your background is extraordinary. You're a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. Your research has been featured everywhere from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Scientific American, CNN, Fox News, and The Atlantic.

You have won Best Paper awards in four different fields: behavioral science, social psychology, developmental psychology, and education, which I remember seeing was never before done, or at least close to never before done. So, a small group. You have a BA and MEd from the University of Notre Dame. Go Fighting Irish. We got to support their football team last year, and then we got to watch them perform in the National Championship. It was amazing. Then you earned your PhD and MA from Stanford. Go Cardinal.

I'm not a Cardinal, but go Cardinal. You are. Brian says it in the Note, and Brian's opinion carries weight and credibility: one of the most respected developmental and social psychologists in the world. When I was talking to Brian, I said, 'We've got a great session with David coming up.' He said, 'The number one person I'm now looking to for parenting advice.' I've got two young girls, not quite 10. They're four and eight, so very near and dear to me.

A lot of folks in our community have kids. When we think about helping the world flourish, 51/20/51, it's not really going to happen with us. It's going to happen with that next generation. So, what can we do to empower them, support them, and help them bring forth the best of who they are and what they can be going forward? I'm really looking forward to our chat today and excited to jump in.

David Yeager, PhD 01:56

Yeah, great. A lot of people have been asking for parenting advice, but not my wife. She's not interested. She just throws Dr. Becky's book at my head and says, 'You've got to read this.'

Michael Balchan 02:07

You've got good dodging skills, though, I hope. You've got kids. How many kids?

David Yeager, PhD 02:12

Oh, we have four kids: 15, 13, nine, and five.

Michael Balchan 02:17

What from your research, knowing the highly accomplished world is looking at you as an expert, and your wife is not looking to you for parenting advice with her own doctor, has most impacted how you are showing up to parent?

David Yeager, PhD 02:34

That's interesting, I guess. I mean, there's a lot of things. Obviously, any psychologist who studies a certain thing overdoes that certain thing with their children? If I was a cultural anthropologist, my kids would be like, playing in the dirt and building tools out of rocks. But like yesterday, Jack came home from hockey practice and was like, nobody likes me. And I'm like, Okay, what do you mean? Why does nobody like you? And he's like, Well, they yell at me.

I'm like, well, in what context are they yelling you? He's like, Well, when we are in line and we do the drill and I do it wrong, then they're like, dude, do it right. I'm like, Well, are you doing the drill wrong? He's like, Yeah. Like, Well, I'm not sure. They don't like you.

I'm sure it sounds like they want you to do it right, but they don't know how to ask you nicely, and they're not mad at you, but they want to have a good team. He's like, Yo, they're being mean. And so, it's that kind of thing. There's a version of parenting, in which the minute you see your kid in distress, you go into solve the problem mode, and you presume the worst of everyone else, and you presume your child is doing it right.

Then I need to go talk to some adult about why the kids are bullying them. But what I think I've learned in my research came, in part, from interviewing parenting coaches. And if you're wondering whether I interviewed the parenting coaches more than I needed to for my book so I could get free parenting advice, the answer is yes.

But one of the things you hear again and again, if you talk to great parents and parenting coaches, is: understand the problem from the perspective of the kid, like, what goal were they trying to meet? What problem were they trying to solve? And that's true of the other kids who are frustrating my kid. What I've found is that, basically, you turn a conflict into a collaborative problem solving session, and you're still positioning yourself as a resource.

You're not diminishing their feelings, but you're trying to explain where those feelings come from, and then you can problem solve. And I think that was a shift for me, because for a lot of people, our main goal as parents is to look basically as little like a monster parent in public as we can. We're mainly worried about looking awful in public in front of other parents, and so we spend all this time trying to reduce our kids' distress, make them not yell, make them not cry.

But a lot of times what they need to do is, like, kind of be stressed in order to problem solve, and you can't get to the problem until you experience the real emotions. So I've learned to stop being embarrassed about your kids' reactions, and focus primarily on solving the problem as a collaborator. And that's something that is not my instinct. It's not a lot of people's instincts. And I've learned that you just got to do it.

Michael Balchan 05:27

That feels like it applies far beyond just parenting kids, right? I could apply that same framework too.

Michael Balchan 05:38

I love that understand the problem from the perspective of the kid, from the perspective of the person that's trying to solve the problem, and then allowing for any degree of stress or emotions that are coming out because they are experiencing that problem to be part of it, and not allowing public perception to influence us.

David Yeager, PhD 05:56

I'll give you another concrete example, which you're not asking for. I also coach youth baseball, and I coach travel ball. Anyone who's got kids in travel sports knows it's full on lunacy out there. It makes no sense, and it's a total waste of money for the most part. But as a former middle school teacher who now stares at spreadsheets and does large machine learning models all day, this is my way of interacting with the next generation.

And so I coach almost every day, and what I've learned is that kids don't want to do stuff the right way because it's easier to accomplish the sport task using improper form and stuff. And there's a class of parents who just yell at kids and they move them around, like GI Joe figures to have them in the perfect position, and then it's a battle of wills. And then other parents are like, I don't want you to be stressed and yell at me.

And so they let the kid do it however they want. And then that kid has bad form, and then they can never really play the sport. And there's a middle ground, where you've got to be okay with a little bit of crying and frustration, but then you have to reframe the crying and frustration as: this is you choosing to do something hard that not everyone is willing to do in order to help your team become better.
So it's like reframing frustration as a sign of ambition and growth, and then also helping them have a reason, and the reason is not so you can do better later, because a lot of times, kids can accomplish a sports task using improper form at low levels. It's like you're going to help your team be competitive. You're contributing to others. There's a sense of purpose that goes beyond yourself, and that's a reason for you to work diligently.

But that's like another example, where if you're in what I call enforcer mode, you're just yelling at kids, like, do it my way. And if you're in protector mode, the second a kid is crying, you're like, we've got to stop this. But I've learned that a little bit of frustration is a natural part of getting better at something that's hard. You just need to be there as a supportive resource in the middle of it.

Michael Balchan 07:57

Love it. Go ahead and walk us through the four modes in that two-by-two framework.

David Yeager, PhD 08:04

Yeah, so I have this framework I talk about in my book, and it comes up initially in chapter two, and it's a simple two-by-two where one axis is standards or expectations, and the other is the amount of support you give people. And what I argue is that the best cell to be in is very high standards, very high support. And I call that the mentor mindset, and both those words are intentional.

So mentor, because mentor just means that I'm aligning my resources with someone else's well being, growth and development for the long-term. Mentor doesn't have to mean I meet with you every Tuesday for coffee and tell you what to do with your life. There's a lot of mentoring programs out there that are kind of intrusive. That's not what I mean.

I mean it's fine to do that, but like, what I mean is, anytime you interact with somebody, you take a stance: whatever expertise and resources I have, I'm going to align with this person's long-term well-being. Now, why mindset? I call it mindset because it starts from a belief system, and we've inherited this belief that young people are incorrigible, short-sighted, selfish dangers to themselves and to society, and so we do all kinds of dumb stuff with them growing out of that belief.

But if we change our belief and instead think actually, young people are capable of important stuff under the right conditions and when properly motivated, then it all of a sudden makes sense for me to mentor. Now, just to complete the two-by-two quickly, and we can go to follow ups. There are two other common errors that I see. One is the part of the grid where it's all standards, no support. So that's what I call the Enforcer mindset.

So that's a kind of yell, tell, blame and shame approach. That's somebody who says, Sometimes I talk to these people and they're like, look, society's going to hell in a handbasket. Nobody's serious about rigor anymore. I'm going to be the last bastion of sanity in an otherwise insane world, and I'm going to demand a lot, and you can meet those standards or not.

People have good reasons for adopting this from their perspectives, but unfortunately, the enforcer mindset comes across very disrespectful to young people, because you end up yelling and blaming and shaming them all the time. The other common error is what I call the protector mindset. That's low standards and high support. And that's the kind of person who really just thinks you've been through so much you're stressed and traumatized. You're about to fall apart at the seams. I'm just going to protect you from distress.

Okay, I'm going to be kind to you, but I'm not going to expect a lot.

And both of those errors, enforcer and protector, I think, come from a different mindset, and it's a mindset that starts with young people's deficits, like what they're not good at and what they can't do, and then we either think I have to impose the discipline myself and the Enforcer, because they can't do it, or there's no way they could ever live up to high standards, so I'm going to just protect them from distress. The fourth mindset is apathetic. That's low standards, low support. That's just garbage.

Don't do that, but that's how I think of those axes. And I also should say I'm not the first to put these on a two-by-two. Kim Scott has done it in her book Radical Candor. It goes back 70 years, 80 years from Kurt Lewin's research. My unique contribution is to think of them as mindsets, not as leadership styles.

And that's important, because I don't think you will adopt the style of mentor if you fundamentally have the Enforcer mindset, where you don't think young people are capable of anything.

Michael Balchan 11:44

Love that. Then you juxtapose the protector with that first type of baseball coach who's putting all the pieces in: it has to be done this way, and you've got to have the form exactly right. That's the enforcer. The protector is the one who's like, 'Whatever. You guys are great.' Then there's something in the middle, this mentor mindset, wise-parenting frame. I'm excited to refer back to that repeatedly. Going back to coaching, I'm coaching seven-year-old girls' soccer this year for the first time. Honestly, it's been amazing.

It's not travel, so it's low stakes, and it's been such a fun area to play with applying all these different concepts. I literally sent out the Philosopher's Notes on your book to both assistant coaches and every parent on the team. I said, 'Listen, this may come a bit forward for seven-year-old girls' soccer. Whatever. These are the philosophies that tend to influence how I'm going to show up.' It was your Note. It was John Wooden on Leadership. It was Mindset by Carol Dweck.

I think it was Lanny Basham with Winning in Mind, or one of the wise-parenting ones from Parenting Champions, Lanny and Troy Bassham. I sent them a bunch of Notes: 'Hey, this is how I'm going to approach things.' It's been so fun to find myself trying to balance protector and enforcer. In this young-kids coaching space, which is a beautiful opportunity to help raise children in an environment that brings out challenges and struggles, do you have any philosophies or principles that guide how you show up?

They could be connected to 10 to 25, or they could be broader.

David Yeager, PhD 13:37

Yeah, I've thought about this way too much, to be honest. My wife's like, 'You need to stop talking about youth sports. We're on a date.'

Michael Balchan 13:46

What else do you talk about?

David Yeager, PhD 13:49

But, I mean, look, when I was writing my book, I went and tried to find these great mentors who changed people's lives. And so one way I did that is I would talk to adults and be like, who was that person who changed your life when you were a kid? Now, of course, we don't always know. A lot of our life history is a story we tell ourselves, right?

But still, I learned that the story most people tell themselves is about theater, band, orchestra, sports coach, or debate. It was very rarely, like your ninth grade algebra teacher, and you're like my life was going bad, and then I learned about logarithms, and now my life is great. No offense to math teachers. I work with them all the time, but like, adults very rarely view that as like a turning point, and when they do, it's significant.

And I think there's something about being in a position where you are preparing young people not to please you, but to go perform externally, with a real standard and something that's out of the adult's control. As much as adults would like to control the outcome of your soccer game and have your kid score nine goals or whatever, we cannot do that. It's total chaos, right?

And so, all you're doing in practice is preparing a young person to later have to go earn a reputation in front of their peers. Baseball is terrifying. Like your kid is on the mound, everyone's like, I drove two hours for this, and your kid cannot throw a strike like it is your kid's alone on an island. Okay?

So there's a kind of obligation as a coach, just like if I'm a theater director a kid's got a solo, or a cello audition, and they either nail it or they don't, right? They either nail it.

There's something about, I'm tough on you now so that later you can perform in this uncontrollable situation, that when you do that right, and you take someone seriously in their preparation, and then they go out in this thing where they don't know how it's going to go, and then they crush it. That is unforgettable. And in my book, I call that earned prestige. That's different. There's a distinction between power and prestige.

So power is something you can give somebody like Genghis Khan could give his son an army, right? You can inherit power, right? And then you can influence people through that. But prestige is only earned through deeds that are viewed publicly in the eyes of other people whose opinions matter in your culture. And one of the best things you can do to have kids build authentic self-esteem, not puffed-up self-esteem, is to have them earn prestige. And it doesn't have to be sports.

It could be literally anything that's got a real standard. It's got an authentic set of evaluators and the kid goes and performs. So like, I'm mainly thinking about that when I'm coaching, it's like, how am I preparing you for later, when adults cannot GI Joe you and protect you? How am I preparing you to go perform in whatever it is on your own. That's what I say to parents. So I've kind of specialized in teaching hitting and throwing mechanics to six- to nine-year-olds.

I've interviewed pro hitting coaches and pro pitching coaches. I visited all the facilities. I've read academic papers. I'll send them an academic paper. I'll be like, 'Look at Figure four in this manuscript, and then see this condition in the middle. That's what I'm trying to do in our practice.' No one likes that, by the way. I don't recommend doing that, but like, I'm very scientific about it.

And so I was given a team of six- to eight-year-olds this fall, for the first time, to go play against these expensive travel teams where we're just going to get murdered, and by the end we're up in the fourth inning against the team that won it all, but six weeks later, because all I'm talking about is, in seven years, I want you to try out for high school baseball and know how to get outs and get on base. I don't care if you win right now.

I care if, in seven years, I hand the varsity coach nine kids who can pitch and hit, and so I'm not going to have you do a short-term strategy like try to bunt or just steal bases that you never actually steal in a real game. Then, if you do that right, then eventually you're competitive.

So I've learned that you kind of have to educate parents and other coaches, and you've got to run practices differently where you're trying to maximize the number of minutes when a young person is owning their thinking and growth, rather than maximizing number of minutes where they're listening to what you think they should be doing, because ultimately what you want them to do is after your practices, when they go home and practice the right way.

And I got this idea from following around the NBA's best shooting coach Chip Engelland, who is this incredible coach. He was the shooting coach last summer for the US Olympic team that won the gold. He's now responsible for the Thunder winning the championship the last year. He's not focusing on what he's saying to you in the one hour shooting session.

He's trying to get you to think differently in the other 23 hours of the day, in the other six days of the week when you're practicing on your own, it's like preparing for future growth is one way to label it, rather than saying you can only grow when I am in your ear. And a lot of coaching that becomes an ego thing. I want to be the sole source of power and authority and expertise, but that's not a good way to be.

You want someone who's excellent, even outside of your care, and that's true for parenting, managing, coaching, all these other disciplines.

Michael Balchan 19:29

You dropped a couple of absolute bombs there. Maximize the number of minutes when a young person is owning their growth. Then that line from Chip: 'I don't want to be the one hour working together. It's the 23 other hours that are most important.' He calls it a coach...

David Yeager, PhD 19:47

In your head.

Michael Balchan 19:49

A coach in your head. Yeah. I'm already so excited to apply that. We've got a game tomorrow, right? I told the girls, 'Look, this is my first rodeo with this kind of thing in the children context.'

David Yeager, PhD 20:07

I'll say one thing about soccer is about 12 years ago, we got contacted by the head of the US youth sports academies for U.S. Soccer, and I hosted a design thinking day at Stanford with Carol Dweck and a bunch of other people. And the problem was that on the travel teams, parents were too intrusive and basically telling kids what to do, and then they would create these super teams who would drive around and just kill all the other teams and beat them by 20 goals.

And so the U.S. teams were good until age 12 or 13, and then we could beat Brazil, and then 14 and above, we get killed. And the reason why is because the U.S. players were not playing three to four passes ahead in their heads. They were playing just to kick and outmuscle everybody. Whereas the countries that beat us in the World Cup, they have parity at a much younger age, they don't create super teams. So that way you can never just out-athlete the other team.

You always have to be thinking three to four passes ahead in your head. And on top of that, if you go to a U.S. Soccer game. And not all the time, but a lot of times it's parents yelling at where kids should stand and where they should pass. The group I consulted for flew to Germany and the Netherlands. It's like a funeral. Nobody's talking. And why? Because children are playing soccer, not grown-ups. The kids are playing the game, both in their head and in their bodies.

Imagine that, by the time you're 14, they have seven or eight more years of having played the game in their heads, they're going to kill us, and they do. And at the time, there were no U.S.-born players playing in the Premier League, zero, and now there's like 20 or something like that, because they've totally changed how the youth academies work.

Now they're owned by MLS, and of all of the major sports in the US, actually, soccer does the best job at transferring this responsibility for growth to players at a young age.

Michael Balchan 22:04

They didn't do it before the Design Thinking Day?

David Yeager, PhD 22:07

Yeah, not before, but now they're the best of all the major sports. It wasn't me. It was this guy who took our ideas, but he led it and deserves all the credit.

Michael Balchan 22:17

Yeah, well, I'm excited to talk much less while they're actually playing. So much goodness there. Let's talk a little bit more about earned prestige, given that earned prestige is going to build their confidence. I also want to circle back, mental note, on the long-term. You've mentioned the long-term a number of times: your seven-year goal, and that a mentor is aligning with the long-term outcomes of a person.

David Yeager, PhD 22:47

Yeah, there's a trick to that. So when adults think about long-term normally, they treat it like eating your vegetables now, so you don't have diabetes in your 50s. And that's a terrible argument for why a kid should not eat candy right now, right or they're like, You should factor trinomials right now so that you can get an A, and then you can get into a harder math class, and then you could maybe get into one of the colleges you apply to.

So you could maybe almost get a job, so then by your 30s, you can hardly afford a mortgage, and it's like, because that's the American dream right now and like, that's a terrible argument for kids to do trinomials, right? So I don't mean kind of harping on. I'm making you suffer now for the sake of the second Marshmallow, until you're older. What I mean is that adults often know what's in their long-term best interests, right?

It is, of course, better to have higher levels of education and not have diabetes, right? But reframing that as consistent with what matters to them right now, and usually that's a sense of status and prestige. So the trick is to basically make a kid feel awesome, impressive and amazing right now for doing something that has a long-term payoff.

It isn't, 'You need to hate your life right now because I said so and because of my logical reasoning, for the sake of yourself in 20 years.' People get that wrong all the time: 'You need to do this now so you're happy later.' And it's like, 'Yeah, but I'm unhappy right now.' Instead, find ways to reframe things so that they feel amazing, impressive and socially valuable right now.

That's your immediate payoff, so that you get the long-term growth and development that we're trying to push kids towards.

Michael Balchan 24:39

There's the great Seneca line: 'Fortify our pertinacity until the will to do good becomes the disposition to do good.'

David Yeager, PhD 24:46

It's a classic Aristotle internalization of virtue situation, yeah.

Michael Balchan 24:50

Love it. What does that actually look like when you've got a kid who has candy in their hand and wants to eat the candy?

David Yeager, PhD 25:00

That's an easy one for me, because we studied this for a while. There's a whole back story that I only alluded to briefly in the book. But 12 or 15 years ago, I was the internal consultant for Disney. They created an attraction at Epcot.

This is my buddy, Chris Bryan, who's a world-class psychologist, people should check out, and a man with two first names, and we were brought on to redesign an attraction that was designed to promote healthy eating, so that kids would eat fruits and vegetables rather than candy. Okay? And you'd think no one would go to that at Disney, and you're mostly right, except this one was air conditioned, and so it got foot traffic, and they created a version that was terrible. And you can Google Habit Heroes.

So on Google Images, it's all public domain knowledge. And it was like, it basically framed the bad guys as, like, overweight. Then you, the protagonist, would shoot the bad guys in the head with broccoli to make them drop their cupcakes. And then, supposedly, that would make a fifth grader be like, 'You know what? I'm going to eat broccoli rather than cupcakes.'

Michael Balchan 26:12

We're throwing it at all the other kids in the lunchroom.

David Yeager, PhD 26:15

Exactly. So then they shut it down during the soft launch because it was going to cause bullying. And so then they panicked, and then they were like, We need to bring in real psychologists who actually know how to do behavior change. And they contacted a senior person at Stanford whom I knew who recommended me and my buddy Chris.

So we lived at Epcot for the summer at the Yacht Club, which is a nautically themed hotel with lots of thick rope and boats, and we worked with the Imagineers and redesigned it. And what we said was, like, Look, your theory of change is wrong here. The problem is, junk food tastes amazing right now, and it's also socially normal, because, like, the kind of person who's at Epcot and doesn't eat a Mickey bar and instead eats broccoli is a weird person.

So you're not only asking people to forego sugar, you're asking them to forego a sense of what's socially normal in the eyes of other people while on vacation, when all bets are usually off on vacation. So we're like, it's got to be awesome to eat healthy stuff rather than junk food. And so we reframed the bad guys as evil ghouls that were using their tentacles to stop you from diving toward healthy foods. And we showed, like, really appealing fruits and vegetables and water and stuff.

And we showed, kind of the sense of energy and vitality. And we had an energy meter, and it's like, look at these citizens feeling awesome, doing awesome, just totally kicking butt left and right. These evil ghouls are trying to make them sluggish. They're trying to slow them down, and they're swapping out their healthy food with junk food.

So all of a sudden, the junk food became a sign that you're giving away your autonomy to these bad guys, rather than a sign that you are exerting your autonomy and so in our minds, we were reframing healthy eating as in the default construal is what lame nerds do when they listen to grown-ups. And we reframed it as kind of an awesome way to be independent and to stand up for what's right and to protect other citizens in the world.

Then we had kids go through the attraction or not, and then we measured whether they chose healthier options over time. We had little coupons that they could spend at the snack store around the park, and so we could track treatment or control. Did they choose healthier stuff when on vacation? We found that we doubled the rate at which kids chose healthy snacks on vacation when they had gone through our revised attraction. But we also reduced shame.

Normally, you can change behavior by increasing shame, at least temporarily. It's very rare to both change behavior and reduce shame. And so we made overweight kids feel better about themselves while also changing their food intentions. And as someone says in the chat, the idea we got this from the Truth campaign, which is the famous anti-smoking campaign that reframed not smoking as a way of standing up against the tobacco companies that were trying to get kids addicted and harming the world.

It did not frame not smoking as something you do because grown-ups told you to. And so the punch line is really like, it's what we call values alignment. So rather than try to persuade someone by making them care about something else, for example, making a fifth grader care about health in their 50s. That's hard to do. You're not going to do that.

Instead, reframe the good behavior, the long-term behavior, as consistent with what they care about right now, which is looking awesome, feeling in control, feeling autonomous, standing up for others, and making the world a more just place that feels great right now. That's a kind of trick we use. It's a reframe. But we do that in all of our experiments.

Michael Balchan 30:12

I love that. So, as a high-level principle, use a values reframe. Align the current choice with what feels good right now, in the moment, and with what they care about. What are the other bullet-point principles? If I'm thinking about responding to a situation, designing an environment, or creating an interaction where there's a behavior that's not congruent with long-term success, telling them it's good for them long-term is not going to work. I want to understand what they care about, what they want.

I want to find a way to make that amazing, awesome, exciting, and cool. What are the other edge pieces when I think about designing that solution?

David Yeager, PhD 30:52

Yeah. So my collaborator, Carol Dweck and Ron Dahl, and I have a 2018 paper on this in Perspectives on Psychological Science, and we have a table in there, and we distinguish between what you say and how you say it. So, what do you say? What you say is basically this, this behavior, that you imply that this behavior is consistent with something you already care about. To do that, you first have to know what they care about.

And so when I'm doing like qualitative, like anthropological work, whether I was doing marketing research or public health work. I'd be like, All right, well, who is someone who you admire a lot and why? And they tell me, and it turns out that if they describe someone that they admire, you're implicitly learning their criterion for status, and once you know their criterion for status, you can find an example of someone who obtained that criterion for status by doing the good behavior.

Okay, so that's more or less what we do. Chris offers a great example involving an anti-poverty approach in Africa called One Acre Fund, which is a smarter way of doing farming. And in the default, people didn't want to implement One Acre Fund because it felt like you were taking outside subsidies in a way that might not be long lasting, and then you might overreach and end up going bankrupt, and then need to beg for money from your neighbors, so that was threatening for people.

So only 15 percent of eligible farmers used One Acre Fund. That had all kinds of issues. Chris reframed it as if you use One Acre Fund, you're going to have insider knowledge about what helps a farm be successful, and everyone in your village is going to want to come shake your hand and get your take. And you're going to be a maven for information, in the Gladwell sense, and that was a core value in the community: being this core respected source of insider knowledge.

And then that has now tripled the rate at which people use One Acre Fund and saved millions of lives, right? So, like, that's an example of the kind of thing that you say. The second bucket is how you say it. And then it's really easy to describe the wrong way to say things, and the wrong way is what I call grown explaining. And grown explaining is very simply the idea, and I'm now going to mansplain grown-explaining to you.

It's the idea that, like, I, with my smart adult brain, have thought through all the logical choices you should take, and you, with your dumb teenage brain, need to, like, listen to what I'm saying. And in my book, I write about this example of a study where neuroscientists took teenagers in the lab and had them listen to their moms nagging them. And what happens in the brain when your mom is nagging you? And I'll tell you what never happens.

What never happens is teenagers saying, 'Mom, you have a point. I'm really glad you listed all these things I need to change. I've already started making a plan, and I'm going to get back to you soon. So, good chat.' It's like zero percent of teenagers said that when listening to their mom nag them.

Instead, what you see is a decrease in the prefrontal cortex, the kind of goal oriented reasoning part of the brain, decrease in temporoparietal junction, which is the kind of social cognition, mind reading part of the brain. So it's just in one ear and out the other. It's like a nagging-induced frontal lobotomy. It's like a way to describe it. So it doesn't matter if you have the right values-aligned message, and you say it in a nagging way. It's like, never going to work, right?

So I almost never make a direct argument to young people about what they should believe. I almost always say, I talk to a lot of other people who are just like you, who are trying to achieve the same goals, and here's what they told me helped them. And then I quote from those people, or I'll say, let's hear a story from someone like you, who's gone, who's been through this program before, and here's what it was like for them.

And I bring them back, and they give a little speech. So I'm always using social proof rather than directly telling someone what to do. And I think adults get this wrong all the time. The same applies to managers talking to young employees. Here's the logic of a typical adult. Here's how a grown-up tries to explain something: step one, am I successful? Absolutely. Step two, are you successful? Not yet. Step three, how could you be successful by doing what I do?

And then people just explain what they did, right? And like that works if the world is static, and if people perceive you as having no agenda, but the minute you're perceived as trying to control them, first of all, but second of all, the minute that like it's plausible that the world is different, then you're actually not a credible authority to that person. You're not persuasive. And I think about that, like my 15- and 13-year-olds are going to start dating?

My 13-year-old just asked someone to homecoming, and she said, No. And it was like, What am I going to say to him? Like what? I've been off the dating market for 21 years. I'm useless. I have almost no information. Like, I don't know what it means if someone doesn't like your TikTok post, I'd be like, 'Delete TikTok.' They don't want to have that problem. Like, I don't know what to tell you.

So, like, there's something about near-peers who are more credible authorities on things that are dynamic and changing, especially because they don't have an agenda of trying to manipulate you, whereas most parents are secretly trying to manipulate their children most of the time, and kids are wise to that, and same with teachers and bosses. So that's the how you say it side. You can't come across as manipulating. You have to be a credible authority and take an indirect route.

I've found that an indirect route needs to be in place.

Michael Balchan 36:39

Yeah, and I go back to that frame of taking their perspective, right? You have to take their perspective on what they want, what they care about, what they value, and what prestige looks like. You have to take their perspective on what credibility and forward motion look like. Dude, so good. I want to go back to one of the things I'd like support understanding how to craft better, which is the transparency statement. Give us context for what that is and how to do a good one.

David Yeager, PhD 37:15

So I write about this in chapter five of my book on transparency. So after I gave you the main ideas in my book, it's like, All right, what's the first easy practice anyone can do today? And that's the transparency one. Because you don't really have to change all the things you do or your whole philosophy. You just have to be clearer about what it is you're doing and why. And what I found is that's important, and people don't do it okay? So first, like, Why?

Why don't people do it? Why? Why aren't people more transparent about their approach or what they're going for? So a big reason why they don't is because they think I shouldn't have to explain myself. Obviously, I'm trying to help you and trying to do something good. Obviously, I have lots of expertise. If you need me to explain myself to you, it's because you're too sensitive and you're whining and you're complaining.

So it feeds into this whole narrative about Gen Z is the worst, and they're a bunch of wimps, etc. So why is that wrong? It's wrong because often, when we're trying to say, act with a mentor mindset, we have high standards and high support. We're aware of our intentions, and we think that we're doing whatever we're doing for the best possible intentions. Then we presume that everyone will perceive us as doing it only for the best possible reasons.

But there's no reason to assume that A, everyone has access to our own internal, private motivations, and B, that they will always presume the best possible motivation in our hearts, in part, because they're used to people mistreating them all the time. In a world in which kids are used to enforcers, adults treat them like idiots. They yell, tell, blame, and shame. They have harsh consequences for first misbehavior. There's no leniency, there's no flexibility, and adults presume the worst in kids.

Okay, now imagine you're being a mentor and you're being tough but supportive. All the young person is going to see is this toughness, and they're going to presume you're being an enforcer, just like all those other teachers or parents or coaches that they've had, right? They're used to being yelled at.

And by the way, this, like, I don't know how much time you spend in, like, super low-income American urban public schools, but like, if you spend a lot of time, like, in really high-poverty areas, and then look at how kids move from like a sports team to a classroom to the job at McDonald's. Kids are used to adults presuming they're idiots and shaming and blaming them all the time. We have a new project where we're training managers at McDonald's in West Virginia.

These are high-poverty areas, often with less-educated people who didn't graduate from high school. They're not surprised when their managers are yelling at them all the time, because that's what their teachers did, and their coaches and their after-school people and everything. And that comes from in general, people think that young people are problems to be managed and that they're about to commit crimes or go off the deep end. So people think they need to threaten everybody with harsh consequences at all times. Okay?

That's a kind of police state, and this is like half of American youth. That's their everyday experience, right? So now, now imagine I'm a tough manager at McDonald's, and I'm like, you have to wear blue gloves when you're preparing food, and you've got to shave. You can't have long hair, because it's going to fall on the food. And you got to wear the non-slip shoes. You're going to slip and fall. We're going to have a lawsuit on our hands, and you're being demanding about the rules.

You're trying to be a mentor. All the employee is going to hear is this person hates me. They're not on my side. They're out to get me, etc. So in that scenario, you don't want to lower standards. You're the manager. You've got to follow the health and safety rules. So what you need is a transparency statement.

You need to say clearly and transparently, look, I'm upholding the standard because, obviously, it's my job, but also because I'm invested in you as an employee, and I want you to learn the skill of being able to manage all of these different demands all at once.

Because if you do and I'm going to support you, then you can rise up in this organization, and if you don't care about McDonald's, you'll still be a desirable employee wherever you go, and I will be your letter writer for that. So I'm going to be tough on you right now, and I'm going to support you, but it's because I'm invested in you, I believe in you, and I care about you. Now let's talk about what's standing in the way.

Why aren't you wearing the blue gloves? Why haven't you shaved? Why aren't you wearing the shoes? A transparency statement basically clarifies what is in the hearts of bosses, managers, and coaches, teachers, but which will never come across because of how people are used to being treated. And I found that you can do it at any time. You can have what I call a culture-reset speech.

And this is literally we're doing this right now with McDonald's managers in West Virginia, but we just did it with college professors and high school teachers across Texas. Anytime there's a new start to your culture, that's a great time to onboard. And then the other group we're working on is with the draft picks for Major League Baseball teams. They're used to this, the craziness of travel baseball and being the best, all of a sudden they're not the best.

They've got a three-year road to the majors or longer. How are you going to get them to trust the critical feedback and ups and downs of making it through the minors? And so on day one, when you go to your retreat after getting drafted, what is the team going to say to you? And we learned that kind of stuff is really important.

Michael Balchan 42:48

How often do we come back to that statement, repeat it, or say something similar? We have the culture reset and the day-one draft speech. Then, with every piece of feedback I'm giving, do I want to reinforce the reason behind it?

David Yeager, PhD 43:04

I found that the most important thing is that it's authentic and memorable, and also listeners need to hear it about three times more often than you think they should. You might think you need to say it twice, but they need to hear it six times. Let's just take the case of great high school teachers who have been in our network and have created this.

And we just finished a large randomized trial in which we had teachers do this across the state of Texas, 40 school districts, thousands of students, 12,000 in total. Teachers write it, they give it on the first day or close to it, and then they post it on the wall, and then they refer to it all year. But it's not just that they're referring to it. It has to come alive in how they act.

So if a teacher says, Hey, a mistake is your friend, you can learn from a mistake. I believe in you after a mistake. And then their exams are one-shot, where you either get an A or not, and if you don't get an A, then you fail, and you can never get those points back. Kids are like, my teacher is a hypocrite. All I've learned is that my teacher is inconsistent.

So yes, you need to come back to it, but the most important thing is, is it authentic? The head of the Seattle Mariners' ownership group funded my research, and I know them now personally, because we've collaborated over the years. They redesigned the whole minor-league organization, including the majors, with a growth-mindset idea of constant improvement. And so if you go behind the dugout in the back hallways at the Mariners stadium, they've got a 1% emblazoned on the wall.

And then the idea is, every day get 1% better. So if you screw up as a player, the manager doesn't come up to you and say, Why did you miss that grounder or that throw? It's like, what are you doing to get 1% better? And if you don't have an answer, that's a problem, right? Making a mistake is different from asking, 'How are you getting better?' The other thing they have on the wall is DMGB: Doesn't matter. Get better.

It's like, Look, we're not going to yell at you or complain if you made a mistake, but you better be relentless about getting better. So that's an example where they've got the draft pick speech, but then it's also consistently referred to in the culture, and it's obvious that the people who have authority and are making the critical decisions are evaluating in terms of that framework.

Michael Balchan 45:30

That's so good. They're in the playoffs now, right?

David Yeager, PhD 45:34

Yeah, they were looking good, and now they just got crushed the last two games. So we'll see.

Michael Balchan 45:39

It's two to two. Good luck to them. Game five, I think. Yeah, I'll be rooting for them. I don't know who they're playing, but now I'm a Seattle fan. So, the transparency statement is an explicit mentor-mindset statement, right? It's some version of: 'I'm going to be hard on standards. Here's what I'm going to do because I care about you and your long-term potential.'

David Yeager, PhD 46:07

Yeah, it's more than just the expression of care and concern, although that's part of it, it's also outlining how I'm going to support you to meet that standard, what my side of the commitment is, what I'm going to do and why I'm going to do it, because, think about it, in a world in which people are used to being treated as though they're incompetent, and now your manager is like, I'm going to check on you twice a week.

You're like, Well, sounds like you think I can't do my job, but if it's like, I'm going to give you a super hard task so you're going to crush your performance review in six months, but I'm not going to make you do it alone. I am making myself a resource available to you so that way you can go above and beyond. Then it makes sense for you to talk twice a week.

But if you don't frame it that way, it seems like the manager is checking up on you because they think you're incompetent. That's what I'm talking about.

Michael Balchan 46:55

Beautiful. Back to family, is this something you are doing implicitly or explicitly with your kids?

David Yeager, PhD 47:05

Yeah, all the time. I have a neurodiverse kid, some of this stuff's hard because he just wants to yell at me, and it's just that's part of his neurodiversity. Jack, for example, is nine. This is like, this is too much detail, but then I can only think of a way to tell it in detail.

His summer ball coach taught him to swing down on the ball, which you should never do, because then you're, if you hit it, it will have backspin or go straight into the ground, and you'll ground out. You should have a 10- to 30-degree bat path. There's a whole thing to this, so I had to, like, retrain his muscle memory. I didn't coach him for the summer because I was coaching my five-year-old, and I also wanted to give him a break from me coaching him.

So now we're back to hitting and trying to do it right. And it's so frustrating for him, because his instinct is now to swing down at the ball. We'll spend an hour, and he's like, 'I'm still doing it. I'm not any better. We did all these drills.

I'm never going to get better.' And I'm like, 'Jack, every time it got hard for you, when I was telling you to do it right and it got hard, you stormed off and walked away, and then you came back and did it the old bad way. If I had counted all the reps, 95 percent of them were the old way. So of course, you haven't changed to the new way, because every time you started doing the new way, it was hard and you quit.

And I'm like, when it gets hard, that is you changing your muscle memory. Your muscle has a habit, and your brain has a habit, and you're changing it. And so when it's hard, that means you're growing.

You have to feel that it's hard, and I love you too much to have you go through a whole season grounding out or missing the ball or back spinning it, and then you don't get on base, and then you don't get to steal, you don't get to score like it's not fun. I care about you too much, so even though you're crying and upset, this is me saying I love you and helping you to get better.

And then I felt like I'd said this 100 times, and finally he looked at me and he was like, Oh, well, when you explain it that way, it makes sense. Like, Jesus, Jack, I've been saying this the whole time. I found I just had to explain what's obvious, which is, if you only do the practice that feels good, then you're reinforcing the habits you already have, and then you're not getting better.

It has to be the habits that don't feel good in order to change the muscle memory. And so that's an example of transparency. I've found I've got to do that with mental math, facts or reading or whatever. It's like, 'I love you too much to have you not do it the right way.'

Michael Balchan 49:42

I appreciate the detailed story. One of the things we like to frame up is a coaching tool. It could be something you're using for yourself, in your family, or in your work, whatever it is. I know we've covered a ton of them. When you think about tools everyone should have in their toolkit to apply this work to their lives, is there one we haven't talked about that you really think people should understand and be able to apply?

David Yeager, PhD 50:12

Yeah, it's a good question. They're not physical tools, but the two things I come back to a lot are, first, the do-over, and second, this questioning routine. So I'll do the questioning routine first. I learned this from this parenting coach, Lorena Seidel, who is in my MasterClass too. So if people check out the MasterClass website, she's a guest on that and basically it's like, when your kid is freaking out. This could work with an employee too.

Obviously, when a kid is freaking out, our instinct is to solve the problem or remove the distress, but then she's got a routine of saying, okay, like, if the kid is mad at you that you didn't buy them a toy. It's like, well tell me how you're feeling and why. And they're like, I'm mad because I didn't get the toy. Like, all right, what else could it mean? And then that's the first question. And then it's like, well, it could mean that you're a terrible parent.

And it's like, Nah, what else could it mean? And then you can have them generate some alternatives. They usually perseverate on the negative. And then it's like, Okay, if that's true, is that serving your goals? And kids are not ready for that question. And so like, huh, it's not serving my goals to think my parent hates me and that they're a bad parent. And I'm like, Well, what else could it be? I tried this with Jack when I didn't buy him a toy one time.

Now he's being analytical rather than just yelling at me. He's like, 'Well, it could be that you don't want me to buy a toy that's just going to break and be a waste of money.

Then I'm going to be even sadder because I have a broken toy.' And then also, now it's a broken toy that I got to throw away, and then it's going to take up space in the trash, and it's going to go in the garbage heap, and then now it's going to hurt the earth, and global warming is going to be worse.' He's got this whole thing about that. And I was like, Well, if that was true, then would that serve your goals? He's like, Oh, yeah.

Then it would mean my dad loves me, and it would mean that he loves the earth and is trying to save the earth so that I can live in a good place. And I'm like, can we go with that? He was like, yeah. Like, okay. And then I bought him ice cream.

So, like, it's kind of like a down-and-up, like the down is like, have them consider alternatives and whether their current perception is meeting their goals, and then go back up, flip over to a different perception, and then is that meeting your goals? And then how can we go with that? That's a tool that's kind of, I think about that mentally. People don't have to visualize it on that axis. But in my best moments as a parent, I do that a lot now.

Michael Balchan 52:57

'What else could it mean?' Or be like...

David Yeager, PhD 52:59

'What else could it mean?' Eventually, when they say the bad thing, it's like...

Michael Balchan 53:03

'Is that true? Is that serving your goals?' Then they're like, 'No.'

David Yeager, PhD 53:07

I'm like, Well, is there anything that would serve your goals, like, another way of looking at it? And like, yeah. And then here's another one. And like, well, let's just play with that. Would this work any better? And you'd be like, oh, yeah, that would make me feel a lot better. Like, well, what does it take to go with that? So that's one tool that's in chapter six in my book. There's a protocol for that. And then the other is the do-over.

And the do-over is basically the idea that there's all this leadership and management advice, there's parenting advice, and it's all framed as though you're going to say something wrong and screw up somebody's life and ruin your own life. Like, as a parent, I'm going to snap at my kid and I've cost myself $10,000 in therapy bills for the next five years. Like, there's this worry that you've irrevocably ruined your children.

And what Lorena Seidel, the parenting coach, always says, 'You get do-overs.' You can lose it on your kid and then go back to them and say I didn't live up the values I want to live by in our family. Now I still need you to do this hard thing that you don't want to do, but I should have been more curious about why you weren't doing it.

So could you explain to me why, from your perspective, you are resistant to what I was asking and then listen, and then problem solve, and they'll remember the do-over way more than the first time. And they might even learn the lesson that people can change and that it's not all or nothing. So I think those are two, I don't know if they're tools, but those are two things I come back to a lot.

The other technology tool is that I'm working on creating a kind of Yeager in Your Pocket, AI agent. So we have this deployed in McDonald's right now. But before managers go yell at their employees for wearing the wrong shoes or not cutting their hair, smelling, or whatever it's like, what should I say? The first thing the app says is, like, ask them why they're not doing it. Yeah. Wait for an answer.

No manager would think to wait for an answer and then it basically helps these managers not be in the yell, tell, blame, and shame world, but instead in the problem solving mode. So that's a new thing. People could email me if they have any interest in it, and we're targeting service and retail first, but I'd like to go into coaching and parenting also.

Michael Balchan 55:19

Ask them why they're not doing it, or why they are. Wait for an answer. For the do-over, we had Dan Siegel on again, we've had him on a couple of times, and he walked us through a process for damage repair, which is a similar version of that. In your do-over framing, do you have a quick one, two, three? Some version of: 'Hey, sorry, that wasn't great. Let me get curious about what's going on.' What's the process?

David Yeager, PhD 55:49

Yeah, I think that the one-two-three-four do-over is like apologizing for not upholding the values that you're trying to live. The second is like reaffirming. The reason why you were upset or what you needed. And then third, express curiosity and a sense of what I call collaborative troubleshooting, about what it would take to do it right. And then again, you got to wait for an answer, like explain to me why, from your perspective, this was hard to do. Then wait and respond to what they actually said.

Don't have your answer ready while they're talking. This isn't an argument. This is a collaboration.

Michael Balchan 56:34

I'm hearing waiting is important, creating space to give you the opportunity to take their perspective and align with their perspective.

David Yeager, PhD 56:43

Yeah, someone in the chat is talking about the Chris Voss book. I love Chris Voss. His MasterClass is my favorite.

Like, I'm not often impressed by celebrities, but I once saw him in the United Club, and like, my heart was racing, I was so nervous to talk to him, and I finally worked up the nerve to go talk to this master negotiator, and I introduced myself, and then he asked me a question, and then got me to talk for like, nine minutes straight, and then I walked away. And I was like, damn it, he did it to me, like he mirrored me.

And so, like, if you ever wonder if someone practices what they preach, like Chris Voss is one of those people.

Michael Balchan 57:20

That's amazing. I want to create some space here for questions. Frame it around anything you have heard today, or come across in David's work, that you'd like support actually applying to your life. Think about what would help make the next 20 minutes or so the most valuable. David is here and excited to make sure we apply that framework. In the meantime, Dave, you talked about Yeager in Your Pocket. Love that. Pocket Yeager might mean different things to different audiences.

Where else can folks go to learn more about you and your work, connect with you, or find programs you'd point them toward? You mentioned MasterClass. Where would you send folks to engage more deeply?

David Yeager, PhD 58:14

Yeah, I think that we're trying to start this new venture. We don't know if it's a business or just a free app. We haven't decided which, but I'm trying to get it to work. So if anybody is interested in applications in retail or service, especially, but really any kind of manager, frontline-employee conversations, I would say, reach out to us, because we are forming new partnerships. And so just my Texas email is good.

The other thing is that we've gotten a gift from a donor to help us start a new lab we're calling Motivation Lab, Alpha Motivation Lab. And the idea is to find the big puzzles in motivation that everyone's frustrated by, where it feels like there's no good answers, and then do the rigorous study to try to get an answer similar to the wise feedback study I talk about in my book, that's a once-a-decade kind of study that should be 10 times a year.

So what are the big questions? So if people want to collaborate on big puzzles in motivation, whether it's in management or parenting, etc, that would be great. In terms of resources, when I wrote the book, I have a whole practical section in the back. It's the gray pages that I wrote with someone named Rosalind Wiseman, who's a very thoughtful person. She wrote the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, which became the movie Mean Girls.

And so she's like, the origin of us understanding teenagers in this new, powerful way. And so it's all scripts like, say this, don't say that, and we do it for managers, parents and teachers. So those are some things to check out. And then if anyone has a novel idea, I'd love to hear about it and collaborate, but yeah, I'm happy to go to questions now also.

Michael Balchan 1:00:08

AJ, please drive for us.

AJ | Team Heroic 1:00:11

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, metus at rhoncus dapibus, habitasse vitae cubilia odio sed. Mauris pellentesque eget lorem malesuada wisi nec, nullam mus. Mauris vel mauris. Orci fusce ipsum faucibus scelerisque.

M. Aurelius 1:00:17

Hey, Dr. Yeager, David, I'll catch you between bites. First of all, thank you for the work you do and for being a person who practices what they preach. I remember you shared a story. I believe you were tubing, and your daughter was talking about becoming first chair in the orchestra.

David Yeager, PhD 1:00:47

Oh, yeah. Water-skiing. There was all the stress-mindset stuff about how butterflies in your stomach and nervousness are actually mobilizing energy to get oxygen to your brain and muscles. As a fifth grader, I said that to her while water-skiing when she was nervous. Then she remembered it years later when she was auditioning for cello. A proud moment when my kid actually listened to me. I could have written a longer book about the opposite happening, for sure.

M. Aurelius 1:01:10

Well, you've got to take those small wins, right? My question for you is twofold. First, something I don't think was mentioned in the Philosopher's Note is expanding your mentoring network, where, as the protégé, you're inviting the kid to share their wisdom with someone they trust. Later on, you did the whole study on it. I wanted you to share it with the group because I don't think we know about it. It's reaffirming the kid even beyond the classroom.

David Yeager, PhD 1:01:43

This is an idea from a guy named Keivan Stassun, who, last year won the MacArthur Genius Award for basically being the best astrophysics PhD mentor of all time. He's a great physicist himself, but he runs two important things. One is basically the best bridge program to increase the diversity and talent pool in professional physics.

So he invented this idea that you go start a master's at a local college, in his case, an HBCU next to Vanderbilt, and then you're pre-admitted to Vanderbilt once you kind of publish and kind of prove you want to do professional physics anyway. So he's got this whole thing about how to mentor in those kinds of circumstances. His second thing, by the way, is about neurodiversity and autistic scientists.

It's very powerful as well, but in both cases, people need mentoring, and the conventional view of a mentor is one person has to be the source of your technical expertise. I'm going to help you, like, gain a skill to be a professional in this field. They also provide emotional support and tell you what you should do with your life. Okay? And that's a lot to ask of one person. Even if you could do it, it's not scalable.

If I'm a great professor, maybe I can do that one person at a time and Keivan was like, 'We're never going to get the numbers. If, first, I have to filter for who's a super mentor, which is only a subset of professors, because most of them think about lasers and stuff all day. They don't think about feelings.

Second, they can only do it for one person at a time.' So he came up with this idea of a mentoring network, where you first do almost an informational interview, and you're like, how do you want to change the field? Like, how do you want to be a leader that's accomplished in this field? Then they describe it.

And I was like, All right, to do that, you're going to need to know how to use this telescope, this data set, this analysis tool and this software, so it's four things you're going to know. But guess what? The people who know those things are different people. So you create a bridge to each of those four people, and you ask them to mentor on that specific skill. It's like, Hey, I have a promising student. Can you let them access your black hole database?

Hey, I have a promising student, can you teach them this machine learning statistics thing? And now the mentor is agreeing to a very small thing, and it's in their area of expertise. So it's very scalable, because they think about it all the time, and it's what they know about. And so he's produced, over a 10-year period, helped more than 100 people from underrepresented groups earn PhDs, first-generation students. The first-ever Black first author on a Nature paper in physics was his student.

First-ever tenured Black physicist at Princeton. These are amazing accomplishments, but you do it by thinking of mentoring as like a network of skills-based expertise, rather than an all-encompassing role that one person has to do. Is that what you're referring to? Was that the idea?

M. Aurelius 1:04:47

Yes, it was a little different from the one you described. Thank you for that. The one you did in the schools invited the kid to talk about what advice they would give a ninth grader coming in who had to overcome...

David Yeager, PhD 1:05:04

What I describe is in chapter 10 in my book, and there's a whole section on the mentoring network. And then separately, there's stuff about basically mining the stories of people who've gone through this experience before, and then having them share that narrative. And there's a kind of structure to those stories. So if I'm a ninth grader showing up at high school and I feel isolated or left out and the standards are high and I wonder whether I belong, right?

It doesn't help for an adult to just say you belong. Instead, it helps to hear from an 11th grader who says, I too, wondered whether I belonged initially. Here are the steps I took to come to belong. And now here's how things are better for me. So you hear those stories from the upperclassmen, and then we have the ninth graders themselves, videotape themselves or write messages to help next year's ninth graders.

And so in the process of hearing this mentoring message, and then now you're mentoring others, you end up convincing yourself of the truth of this message, and it ends up being a really subtle way of giving people hope and optimism in a hard time.

M. Aurelius 1:06:12

Yeah, that was it. Last question before I go. I work with minority entrepreneurs. There's a lot of great work from you, Duckworth, Galinsky, and so on. Is there a person you would recommend who would resonate with them regarding mentoring and parenting, an author or a scientist in the space who does research?

David Yeager, PhD 1:06:41

I'll just say that a couple of my friends have books that came out recently. So my friend Greg Walton has a book called Ordinary Magic that's about a lot of these interventions. He's a very wise psychologist. And then Jeff Cohen, who developed wise feedback initially, has a book called Belonging. And so, yeah, there's a lot of good science in those books. Thank you, sir. All right, who's next?

AJ | Team Heroic 1:07:09

Up next, we have Niels.

Niels 1:07:14

Hi, can you see and hear me? Yes? That's great. It's very nice meeting you. Of course, I'm a little bit of a fan, so it's nice to actually be able to ask a question. I'm from the Netherlands. Right now, I'm trying to develop, or we already do develop, programs for learning agility, but also the capacity for leaders to lead in a way that creates the best learning possible. We have programs of three to six months with a lot of interventions during the period.

My question, because I've done a lot with design thinking as well, is: are there principles that work really well with these kinds of short, high-impact interventions? Do you have recommendations for papers or things I could study?

David Yeager, PhD 1:08:12

Yeah. Remind me of the population you're trying to change.

Niels 1:08:15

Most of the time, it's younger people or people who are becoming more senior managers.

David Yeager, PhD 1:08:23

Managers, and you're trying to help them become lifelong learners?

Niels 1:08:28

Exactly, yeah. Also, a way of leading through which you can develop other people in the best way possible. Interventions for the mentor mindset are also very interesting because we use that framework a lot.

David Yeager, PhD 1:08:43

Yeah, I think that there are a couple of things. One is, we produced a series of videos that I use in my class. We call them closer look videos. The link will only work for a couple of weeks. In my undergraduate and graduate classes, we basically walk line by line through the short interventions and what we were going for. And so it's me and Chris Bryan, and then we'll interview Carol Dweck, or interview Greg Walton, or whatever. So it's in that box folder.

And then on top of that, I would say that we just published an intervention that increases mentor mindset, and that was in PNAS a couple years ago. Cameron Hecht was the first author, H, E, C, H, T, and it uses this values alignment framework, and we basically make the argument that every leader wants to be the kind of leader where you walk in the room and people listen, and are motivated and engaged.

You don't want to be the kind of leader where you lose the room and everyone takes advantage of you. And so we then argue that the way to be the kind of leader that people listen to is to adopt this mentor mindset stuff, and there's more to it, but that's how we've made the mentor mindset more than a nice-to-have thing that you should do to be kind to others. It's more like it helps you accomplish the goal that matters to you. That's the whole logic.

And I think there's a bunch of excerpts from the intervention in that paper. It's open source, so it's Cameron Hecht, PNAS paper.

Niels 1:10:23

Cameron Hecht, and then the values-alignment framework, right?

David Yeager, PhD 1:10:27

Values alignment, which is Chris Bryan's thing. And then Chris Bryan has a great chapter in the Handbook of Wise Interventions that Greg Walton wrote. Chris's chapter is probably my favorite, and it explains how to align something with people's values, how to reframe it as consistent with what someone already cares about. It's, yeah, it's called the Handbook of Wise Interventions. I think 2021.

Niels 1:10:51

So much stuff. All right.

David Yeager, PhD 1:10:55

Good luck. Thank you. And Niels, I have lots of friends in the Netherlands, at Utrecht and in Amsterdam, who are professors. I lived there for quite a bit. I love it there.

Niels 1:11:03

Oh, really? I live there.

David Yeager, PhD 1:11:12

Oh, yeah. Look up Sander Thomaes. He's the best psychologist there, in my opinion. He has a values-alignment intervention that basically convinces teenagers to join pro-environmental causes, but it's the same stuff we've been doing. Sander Thomaes is a great person to meet there if you're at Utrecht.

Niels 1:11:34

Sander Thomaes. Okay, super. Thank you so much.

Areli 1:11:43

Hi, David, I am a professor at a big public university in the United States, and the last time I taught my big lecture course, there was a line of students coming to the podium, all telling me all the different ways in which they perceive themselves to be broken. I have ADHD, so I have to bring my pet ferret because I can't sit next to others. It was literally a litany of victimhood.

What can you suggest one or two practices or tools that I can use to do a culture shift or a reset at scale that might be helpful in that context?

David Yeager, PhD 1:12:23

Yeah, so your class might be bigger. My class is 150 students every semester, and it's a project-based course, so tons of critical feedback for students, and they have to do a big presentation and other work, but what I always say, and this is something I heard Uri Treisman say, Areli. I write about Uri in chapter 11 in the book. He's a MacArthur-winning calculus professor. And I sat in the back of his class for two years and just watched what he does.

Right after I got tenure, I didn't publish much. I just watched this old guy teach calculus. Anyway, his whole philosophy is, like, my assignments are really hard, and you're going to have to get to this standard. And I care that every single one of you meets this standard, but I don't care how you meet it. It's like, I'm agnostic about the process. I'm really more concerned with where you get to.

I have a fellowship where I train faculty who teach large introductory courses in large public institutions like chemistry, physics, biology, and that kind of thing. And I found that when people hear rigor in these classes, they often think it means logistical rigor, so deadlines, chances to make things up, extended timelines. And they think that if I'm flexible on the logistics of the course, then my students will walk all over me, and they'll never learn anything.

But Uri and I think a lot of the teachers I've been inspired by, they mean intellectual rigor, and they care much less about logistical rigor. They only think about intellectually: are you meeting this level? To be concrete, Uri, teaching freshmen at UT Austin, a public university, gives the same calculus exams as the freshman course at Harvard, because his friend teaches the class.

And so he's like, You guys can compete with these people for jobs and graduate school applications, and so I'm going to hold you to that standard.' So they might get a 68 on the test. And then he's like, Yeah, but the Harvard kids got a 65 on this test, so you're fine.' But he has ways for them to make up points later so a midterm doesn't kill you, because first of all, questions you get wrong on one test could show up on later tests.

Second, and this is specific to calculus class, but like, his final is cumulative, so you can literally get an F or a D on every single midterm, but then get an A on the final and get an A in the course. Because he doesn't care whether your learning function is like that, or if it's like that, or if it's like that. And that's in part because, in his case, 80 percent of kids who take freshman calculus already took AB or BC calculus in high school.

And if you're in the 20 percent that didn't, then you feel like an outsider. But he's got those 20 percent for whom it clicks after Thanksgiving, all of a sudden. So every year, he's got students who are from the Valley, low-income, first-generation students, for whom it clicks. They become math majors. They go on and get scholarships everywhere and stuff.

But if he didn't have the kind of flexibility to get all your points back on the final they would have no reason to study after Thanksgiving and learn it at the end. So I haven't yet gotten to the part about accommodations, but in my class, too, it used to be three kids a year, and now 30 percent of students ask for accommodations. That math teacher is Uri Treisman.

What I always say is, my goal as an instructor, what you are paying for is to have expert knowledge in your head after you leave my class that you use for years. That's what you're paying for. You're not paying to be entertained. You're paying to know stuff at the end here, and I do not care how you get there. So, if a certain thing gets in the way of your learning, then tell me that, tell the TAs, and the TAs and I will accommodate it.

What I found is that they ask for one thing, and it's really just the feeling that they have flexibility and that I'm on their side, and then they kind of feel guilty about asking for other stuff, because they're like, 'Oh, this is someone in my corner.' But in the old days, when I was a novice, I was super strict about logistics, and then it became very legalistic. They tried to negotiate everything to get something out of me.

But once I flipped and I was like, I am on your side, and I'll tell them I'm like, if you all get A's, no one will fire me. Like, first of all, I have tenure. I'm unfireable. But second of all, your final projects are my defense against my department chair harassing me for giving out too many A's. So do incredible work. Record it. That's their protection. And if you get there, I will give you an A. So they don't haggle over grades.

Really, it's about doing incredible work anyway. I'm sure this is probably stuff you're already doing, but I've learned to stop judging kids for whatever they see as their victimhood. I'll tell you an example. A student was like, I can't come to class because I don't remember if it was a hamster, but it was a hamster-vet situation. And that sounds like a right-wing meme like, let's blame all the idiot teenagers for complaining about their hamsters. And like, a hamster accommodation, right?

And I thought about being like, stop whining. What are you talking about? And then I thought about, I was like, Well, what if she's from Brownsville, and she left her whole family behind and came to Austin, and all the other kids are in rich apartments. And she's like, having to commute from Pflugerville, and she's totally alone. She has no friends because she's commuting an hour each way.

And then the only memory she has of home is this dumb hamster, like, and if she said, 'I'm really stressed out, but my hamster comforts me,' I'd be like, great. Take whatever you need to be comforted as long as you can do the work. So if she needs to spend an afternoon trying to take care of that hamster, why do I care? Like, just do your work. So I've learned, I don't care what your accommodation is.

You just have to do the really hard assignment and make it public. It has to be legitimately yours. And I don't care how you do it. So anyway, that's the approach I've kind of learned.

Areli 1:18:58

Thank you so much. What was especially interesting and useful for me, because what I was thinking about was: I'm fine with the accommodation. We're going to accommodate whatever they need. I'm not a policeman. I'm a teacher, and I want them to learn any way they can. I'm on board, on board, on board.
What was new for me here, especially, was being very explicit about that, because I don't think I've said it out loud to the whole class or individually: 'I want you to be able to do these things, I'm an art historian, at the end of this class, and by whatever means necessary, let's go about doing that.' What worries me is that they feel, 'I have this challenge, and therefore I'm not going to be able to.' That's the mindset they're coming in with.

David Yeager, PhD 1:19:50

I've learned that I first have to say, if you're in my class, then you can do this work. The university did not make a mistake. I teach this class every year, and every year I have 30 percent of students who doubt themselves. And they get to the end and they can't believe what they've accomplished, and then they call their mom or their grandma, and they show them their final project, and they're like, look what I'm doing in college.

And their mom or grandma says, I'm so glad I sacrificed for decades so that you could go to college and do this. That's what I want. Then I have students who call me and they're like, I interviewed for McKinsey, and now I'm making $400,000 a year because I talked about my course project in my interview, right?

And so it's like, I say that, and then my students tell me every year what they're doing, and they tell me these stories, and I sometimes record them and I play them, and I don't make them take my word for it, but like when I say, 'You can do hard things, and I care about you too much to let you do a crappy final project,' it's because I want you to make a good living. I want you to impress your family and your community.

I want you to feel like it was the right thing to leave home and leave behind your cousins or your nieces and nephews and your brothers and sisters, to come to college. I want you to know you did the right thing because of what you're accomplishing. And I care about you too much to let you fall short.' I've found that you have to say that stuff out loud.

Areli 1:21:13

Magnificent. Thank you so, so much.

Michael Balchan 1:21:18

Oh my goodness, this has just been extraordinary. AJ, pop me back up. Thank you so much, David. Just absolutely exceptional. One of my favorites. We like to end with a question: what's one thing we can do for you? What's one thing we can do to spread ripples out into the world that, if spread, you think would make it a better place?

David Yeager, PhD 1:21:42

That's a great question. I mean, my publisher would like people to tell everyone to buy the book and leave a review. But I have always thought that a fun viral meme would involve people going back to that one person who changed their life, and then using the language of the book, explaining to that person how now you realize what they were doing and why it was so great, because sometimes these mentors don't really understand what they were doing. And I did this recently.

Being on book tour was fun because I would send messages to my mentors from when I was growing up. And anyway, I emailed my high school biology teacher, who was a real hard ass, but he was awesome, and the projects were ridiculous, like we had to go find a roadkill and then boil it and then reassemble the bones and make a skeleton set, which, honestly, you should not have kids doing that. You could get run over by a car and get a disease.

But that was our project. And I was like, Man, I love that in retrospect. And he's like, You wouldn't believe how many moms have hated this project the last 20 years, since you were here.

But I went back and told him, I was like, 'It meant a lot to me that you thought enough of me that you thought I could do something that my mom obviously did not think I could do.' And I think it would be cool if people just briefly interview that one person who changed their life and put it on LinkedIn, and they're like, this is me telling them how they had a mentor mindset and changed my life.

I asked my publicist to do that, and she's like, that's a cute idea, but we're not doing that. I always thought that should happen anyway. Some people might hate that idea, but I always thought it would be cool.

Michael Balchan 1:23:24

I love that idea, and I think that should absolutely happen. I will personally commit to doing at least one of those. I won't commit on behalf of everybody here, but I will do it. If you're here, or if you watch the recording, replay, podcast, all the things, please think about someone who has changed your life. Have a conversation with them.

Articulate how you understand what they were doing, even if you maybe didn't at the time, using what you've learned in 10 to 25 and in this interview today. Then post it on LinkedIn. Hashtag, I don't know...

David Yeager, PhD 1:24:03

I'm a nerd professor. I don't know that kind of stuff. Tag David Yeager. That's who you should tag. There you go. Have a competition. I'll give 1,000 imaginary bonus points to whoever can make up the right hashtag, and they can spend it on imaginary prizes.

Michael Balchan 1:24:22

So good. Seriously, you're extraordinary. I appreciate you and your wisdom. On behalf of my kids, the kids I will be coaching, and all of us in the community, thank you for the impact through me to them.

David Yeager, PhD 1:24:35

Thanks, guys. Have a good one.

 

*This transcript was generated using AI speech-to-text and may contain inaccuracies.*