May 1, 2024 • 32 mins
"Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience." - Colin Powell
This episode is a MUST for parents of teens and tweens, as well as anyone who can't see themselves in a leadership role!
Unlock the secrets to molding tomorrow's leaders with Lorraine Connell, a visionary in leadership traaining and owner of Peers Not Fears - a unique program aimed at fostering leadership qualities in young teens. In this episode of Hustle&Harmony, we dismantle common misconceptions about leadership and delve into Connell's innovative approaches for instilling confidence, resilience, and impactful leadership skills in young adults. Join us for an empowering discussion that illuminates the journey toward creating the bold leaders of tomorrow.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:22):
Everybody, welcome to the Hustle & Harmony podcast, Finding Balance in the Chaos.
I'm your host, Sharon McEntee, owner of Embody Med Spa and founder of FI Skin Care.
Today, I'm so excited to be joined by Lorraine Connell, owner of Peers Not Fears,
a leadership development program that empowers young teens.
(00:44):
Welcome, Lorraine. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for being here. year. What you do is so fascinating to me as both
a mom, I have three kids, as well as a business owner.
So I wear the mom hat and the leadership hat.
And so I'm very interested in your business and all the words of wisdom you
(01:09):
have to present to the audience today.
So if you don't mind starting with just giving us a little bit of background
about yourself, how you got started, and then we'll segue into what your business does.
Yeah, I started this company because it was something that I realized that I
had really needed when I was a young teen.
(01:30):
And I noticed this as I was a teacher for 20 years.
And during this time, there was, you know, I taught chemistry,
but my focus was empowering kids to know that they could do hard things.
If any of your audience was in chemistry and they heard the word chemistry,
(01:51):
chances are they probably had a negative reaction.
And it's because of some memory that they had where chemistry was really hard.
And so that was really where my leadership journey started with empowering young teens.
And I was, I wasn't, sorry.
(02:18):
When I was a teen, I played sports, but I wasn't the best at any of these sports, right?
I loved volleyball. I loved playing volleyball, but I wasn't the best.
So I wasn't going to be the captain of the volleyball team.
I had friends, but I wasn't super popular.
So I wasn't probably going to be nominated for any of the student government opportunities.
(02:43):
And so I saw those titles as leadership.
And when I graduated high school, I didn't have any of those titles.
So I guess I wasn't a leader.
That was sort of my mentality. I became a mom.
I became a teacher. I became a coach for volleyball.
I became an advisor to students, but I still wasn't a leader.
(03:05):
And that's because I didn't have a leadership title.
In all of those instances, all four of those things that I listed,
I was doing leadership things, but I didn't consider myself a leader because
I believed I needed a title to be a leader.
And so that was the awakening for me when I had a student say to me,
(03:28):
I'm not a leader because, and it made me reflect on all of the things that I said to myself,
I'm not a leader because, and I knew that if I had had somebody like me,
how me, when I was 15, 16 years old, that leadership isn't what you think.
Leadership is making a decision, leadership is working with another person,
(03:52):
then maybe I wouldn't have gone for so many years believing that I wasn't a leader.
So I, listening to you, I think a lot of it comes back to confidence too,
but maybe the confidence comes as you embrace leadership roles and not the other way around.
(04:13):
So why don't you tell me then what are some myths about leadership that you
think people kind of get caught up in their heads?
Yeah. So the first myth is that leadership is a title, right?
So, and what I have soon realized is that 10% of any organization,
(04:34):
10% of the organization can earn a title.
That leaves 90% of the rest of us not having a title.
And if we are believing that myth, that leadership requires a title,
that's 90% of your organization, 90% of your school believing that they're not leaders.
(04:54):
And when we believe that myth, we can't make decisions without having somebody
agree or confirm, and it slows the process down.
So that's one of the biggest myths. The other big myth is that leaders are perfect.
And that myth is perpetuated in a lot of different ways.
(05:16):
Number one, many leaders deny when they make a mistake. They hide them.
They blame other people.
And that happens all over the place. It even happens as a parent.
I found myself not wanting my kids to see I was making mistakes because I was their superhero.
But I've also learned that when I acknowledge a mistake that I've made with
(05:41):
one of my children, are in, it changes my relationship with them almost immediately.
And I always tell parents, like, if you're having a really hard time with your
teenager, go ahead and admit a mistake that you made and see if that doesn't
change your relationship almost instantly.
And then another myth that is sort of clouding how we see leaders is that leadership
(06:06):
is a skill that you're either born with or not born with.
And in fact, leadership, like self-confidence, is something that you build along
the way through practice, just like basketball.
Practice a coach, practice a coach.
Real life experiences like games, things like that.
It's not something that you're either born with or not born with.
(06:32):
Agreed. A hundred percent. I think that that's amazing. There's a couple things
that you said that I just want to go back to.
And one is the ability to make a mistake and then own it.
As a business owner, I have employees and even with my kids, the same thing.
I try to tell them that I have much
(06:53):
more respect for the person who admits
they made a mistake and owns it than the
person who won't doesn't want to fix it
doesn't want to own up to it because I'm a problem solver so if a mistake is
made we have to just admit that and then let's move forward and figure out how
to fix it but I also that ties into the other thing that you said is that I
(07:16):
went into business ownership thinking that everyone who owned a business knew
what they they were doing.
And I realized that nobody knows what they're doing before they're actually doing it.
But you learn from the people who've gone before you and have been successful
and success leaves clues and you learn from others.
So yeah, I agree with you.
(07:40):
And it's a constant process and we're always making mistakes,
but that's how we get better. Right.
So yeah. And, and I wanted to like go back and respond to what you said,
because those are really, really important things.
What I tell young teens all the time is when you make a mistake,
(08:00):
the mistake doesn't go away if you hide it.
The mistake doesn't go away if you blame someone else.
The mistake is eventually going to surface.
And at the point that it surfaces, it likely doesn't matter who was at fault.
And so nobody's really trying to point any fingers, but there's one person that
will always remember who was at fault, and that is yourself, right?
(08:24):
So if you hide your mistake, maybe nobody else knows that you made the mistake, but.
You will always remember that you made that mistake and it only bothers you
and holds you back for a really long time.
And, you know, we learn those lessons sometimes a really hard way.
And you also mentioned that as a business owner, most people like don't know
(08:49):
what they're doing until they're in it.
And one of the ways that we're learning how to do things is through trial And
every time you make a try, there's likely an error.
And that error is what we call a mistake. And when you make that mistake,
you learn immediately what not to do the next time.
(09:10):
And so when we make this myth of that leaders are perfect or that perfection is possible,
we're actually reducing the
ability for people to learn because they're so afraid of making a mistake.
When you're not going to learn unless you do make those mistakes.
(09:31):
A hundred percent. And I think we learn more from our quote unquote bad decisions
than we learn from our good decisions.
A hundred percent. So that's how you have to look at it too, right?
But I think, so I think some of that comes with age and experience.
So then tell me, how do we train young teens to maybe learn these things sooner?
(09:59):
Or what are some things you wish you knew as a teenager, as a young adult,
that you think would have helped you in the long run?
Well, I think it goes back to that comment about decisions, right?
So if I know that's the only requirement to being a leader, and that's one of
the things that I wish I had known, is that the only requirement, right?
(10:22):
And when I'm in a room full of people and I ask them what the requirements of
leadership are, there's an unlimited number of requirements that people are
spouting out, but they're really just qualities.
There's only one requirement, and that you make a decision. And like you said,
bad decision, good decision.
(10:44):
The only person that can evaluate whether that decision was good or bad is the
person who made that decision.
But often, as parents, as business owners, we are identifying that decision as good or bad.
And when we communicate that, especially to our children, they...
(11:05):
They absorb that evaluation from us as that they are bad, right?
I made this bad decision.
You think this is a bad decision. Therefore, I am bad.
And it is not the intention of the parent.
It's also not the intention of the kid to be in that situation.
So what I try and encourage young teens and hopefully parents who are in their
(11:31):
orbits is that we have to understand that every decision we make has a cost and a benefit.
And I love to give the example of like oversleeping, right?
So my child oversleeps and I deem that as a bad decision, mostly because it
(11:51):
impacts me, right? Right now I'm late for work or whatever consequences happen impacts me.
But I don't honestly know what caused my child to oversleep.
Maybe they were up really late studying.
Maybe they had a situation with a friend that caused them an emotional sap on themselves.
(12:12):
And if they had gotten up on time, maybe they would have gone to school in a
really bad mood and they would have
snapped at a teacher. And so like everything has a cost and a benefit.
And what I like to try and encourage teens is, did that decision that somebody
deemed good or bad for you, did that take you in the direction that you are going?
(12:36):
And if it did, what is your goal? Is it going in that direction?
Then it wasn't a bad decision. And like you alerted, you know,
that's where we're going to learn our mistakes.
What were the consequences? Were they intended? Did you know that they were going to happen?
What would you do differently? And really helping our kids, our employees,
(12:57):
our business owners to evaluate our decisions based on those metrics and not
the instantaneous feeling that you get from a quote unquote bad decision.
Right. And that ties back to what you said about the decision,
I mean, or the mistake, the decision, whatever, is done. It's already done.
So there's no sense in dwelling on that. It's just, what do you learn from it? What do you take from it?
(13:23):
There's a great quote, and I forget who said it, so forgive me,
but it was, the only bad decision is no decision, right?
Yeah. you know, staying in limbo when you're unsure of what to do,
sometimes making even the wrong decision, you're still propelling forward because
now you know what not to do, right? So I love this.
(13:46):
And so tell me about your programs.
Do you work one-on-one with kids? Do you do group settings? Do you do seminars?
Talk to me about your programs.
What I have learned is that one-on-one coaching really relies on two individual people.
(14:07):
And there's a limited amount of learning that can happen when you're limited to two people.
So I am approaching leadership with young teens in a group situation because
as a teacher, I learned that I am not the knower of all things.
And my students can teach me just as much as I teach them.
(14:31):
And so in these group programs, these students are given a task.
And sometimes these tasks are outside of their ability to do something, right?
We might say it's outside of their comfort zone or it's outside of their knowledge capacity.
It doesn't mean they haven't learned anything by coming back to the program
(14:55):
and saying, I didn't do that activity.
There's still a ton of information to learn by not doing something.
And if you're in a group and somebody else was like, I also struggled to get
that activity done, or somebody was able to say, at first I had that challenge
too, and here's what I did.
(15:16):
Now there's so much more community building, there's learning from each other,
and they can understand that they're not alone.
And I think so many of us and so many young teens really are feeling pretty
isolated because we don't see that other people are struggling through their challenges.
And it's become even more apparent that that's a problem with social media and
(15:42):
everybody just posting their perfection.
And so if I can bring kids, and I say like the age that I I want to work with
is a young teen because when kids move into their junior year of high school.
Their time becomes so finite. They're so busy.
(16:05):
Every decision they're making is impacting their future.
And so if I can talk to them before they get to that pressure point of junior year,
then I'm able to give them, like we said earlier, a little bit of confidence
boost to see that leadership is happening in their daily routines.
(16:26):
So yeah, so I work with groups of about 15 and it's virtual.
So it doesn't matter where you live, you can access this.
And it's even better that it's virtual because then these teens are coming into
a group where they're peers based on age, but they're not peers based on daily life, right?
(16:50):
And I know that for many kids, doing something that is outside of their comfort
zone or risky is often too hard to do because they're afraid of what their peers
in their everyday life are going to judge based on that.
And we talked a little bit earlier about being afraid of making a mistake, right?
(17:11):
So if I make It's one thing, but if I make a mistake in front of my peers,
especially as a teen, that carries a lot more weight.
And so I'm going to avoid anything that challenges me if there is an audience
that's going to judge me.
And so my hope is that these teens are coming from different locations,
(17:34):
different communities.
They're coming together in this community to talk about something that could
be really vulnerable for them.
And there's not that judgment aspect of somebody who doesn't know what they're going through.
I love that. I wasn't sure, actually, to be honest with you,
how your program worked as far as if you went into a school or if it was more
(17:58):
of a private type of environment.
So I love that because there is a sense of anonymity, right?
Amongst these kids, they can be themselves, hopefully.
So is this a one-time session or is it a... So tell me how this works. Yeah.
So it's the program that I'm running right now is a leadership level one.
(18:20):
So that's the first level of leadership.
And all of these kids are going to come in and they agree to a four month program.
And it's we meet twice a month virtually for about an hour.
We talk about what we did and didn't do. We get our activities for the next session.
And and it's four months. So at the end of those four months,
(18:43):
they have the opportunity to decide, do I want to take this to another level
of leadership? And that would be level two.
And in that level two, it becomes a train the trainer model.
So now they're going to work with me and train.
Build a cohort. Either it's another virtual cohort with me, or they're going
(19:04):
to take what they've learned and build it into some aspect of their own community.
And then it doesn't have to be virtual for them.
Maybe they're in Boy Scout troop, or maybe they have a church group and they
want to bring this into their smaller group.
It could even be a classroom in school.
So there's There's a lot of different ways that they can join again and continue
(19:28):
to build on that leadership model.
I do work in schools. It's just a smaller impact on a smaller community.
And I love doing that because then kids are actually, we play a lot of activities that are game-based.
And when kids play games, their guards come down a little bit.
(19:51):
It's a little fun. And so there's laughter.
And when I make a mistake, it doesn't feel so impending.
And so we see each other making mistakes. They see each other making mistakes.
And all of a sudden, making mistakes doesn't feel so terrifying.
Okay. And so then your ideal window for age would be like 12 to 15,
(20:17):
13 to 15, something like that? Yeah, it's prior to their junior year.
And so if kids are more mature, they could come at a younger age.
If kids are struggling in their maturity or their relationship with kids their
(20:38):
age, they could come as an older student. And it really, you know,
originally I was like, this is a sophomore program.
But I also realized that that busyness that I alluded to in the junior year
really becomes a problem in the spring of their sophomore year.
So I can't, I've decided not to restrict my population to just sophomores,
(21:01):
but to like that age group. And often our sophomores are overlooked.
They're like the middle children of high school. And so giving them something
to work on during that sophomore year is an incredible boost to their self-confidence.
Perfect. I want to touch on one thing as far as it's kind of a generalization,
(21:24):
but what do you say to either the parents or the student themselves,
the child themselves, who identifies as an extrovert who probably doesn't need
this because they're outgoing enough?
Or the introvert who is never going to be a leader because they're too shy. So how would you...
(21:48):
Embrace those generalities for these kids.
Yeah, I think the only person that this program doesn't work for is the kid
who is already doing so many things.
It would work for them, but they're already so busy that putting one more thing
into their schedule is counterproductive.
(22:10):
I think that we we
really label introverts as not leaders and and i know that i did it as a teacher
i know i did it as a parent and also we we label kids and once we label them
they carry that label as if it's like their badge.
(22:32):
And so really redefining how we define a student, right?
So in this situation, the student may be introverted, but in this situation,
they may be more extroverted.
And so I know that I often labeled kids shy and therefore not a leader.
And since working with students more and more and being able to observe what they do.
(22:59):
Our shy student who is not vocally contributing in the classroom is one of our best observers.
They are an incredible listener.
And if you need somebody to tell you what's happening, they're the people to
look for. And that's leadership, right?
(23:21):
So I think that what I try to provide for all kids in this program is the opportunity
to see themselves outside of the box that they've been placed in.
And I, you know, I will admit that as a teacher, my classroom management,
(23:42):
the word management has really been something that I've evaluated.
When I manage kids, it's putting them in boxes. So I, as a group of students
walks in my door, I'm evaluating their behavior.
I'm evaluating what they're saying. I'm evaluating the way they look.
I'm doing all of those initial evaluations, and then I'm managing them.
(24:05):
And I realized that when I manage kids and I put kids in boxes like that,
it's really hard for them to get out of a box that I put them in.
So that's the other thing that I really try and encourage parents and teachers
and students is those boxes serve a purpose, but they're not the be-all end-all.
(24:29):
Agreed. And I think, too, sometimes kids don't know what lights them up. Adults, too, I guess.
You don't know what lights them up unless they're exposed to a bunch of different things.
This reminded me, and I'm going to show my age, but when I was growing up and
going through high school and my older sisters and all that,
(24:52):
there was a book called What Color Is Your Parachute?
Do you remember this? I don't remember that one, no. So What Color Is Your Parachute
was this book that you would fill out these questionnaires and then it would spit out for you.
I mean, if it was done online, this is what would write. You'd fill out an online
questionnaire and then, boop, all this, you know, information would spit up
(25:15):
where it would tell you what career you're best suited for.
And I remember a lot of the questions
had to do with characteristics of an introvert versus an extrovert.
And I feel like it was putting kids in these boxes.
And it may be in areas where things might come easy to them.
(25:37):
But to your point, how do we know what they're actually going to do and enjoy
and what, you know, what would really make them light up in their life unless
they're exposed to it? So I love this.
So how often do you run these programs and how would somebody get enrolled in
(26:00):
it? Yeah, the program runs concurrently.
So once I get a group, I will start a new program after.
So I just started one group.
I had an info session with a variety of ages of teenagers.
And the purpose of that info session is, I as a parent, I really want my kid to do this.
(26:24):
My kid wants nothing to do with what I want. So how do the kids know that this
is the program for them? So that's what we do, the info session.
I tell them what it looks like, how often we're going to meet,
when does it work for them. I get their buy-in.
And so now that this cohort has been formed, I will now start building a new cohort.
(26:46):
So if a parent is interested or a kid is interested on my website, peers-not-fears.com,
there's a button at the top and it's high school leadership cohort and you just
click on that i will get your email and then i will connect with you to let
you know when the next info session is and.
(27:10):
I learned a lot of lessons in this first round.
Kids don't read emails anymore. And, you know, as a parent, I'm like,
seriously, how can you not read an email?
But they don't. They, you know, my own child, I sent them a text message.
They don't read text messages.
So he was like, if you just Snapchatted me, mom, I would have read it.
(27:31):
And I was like, is this the problem?
These kids are not getting my emails. They're not getting my text messages.
I need to go where they are. So I learned that Snapchat is the way for me to
communicate with kids, with young teens.
And yeah, so it's been, like I told you, they teach me just as much as I teach them.
(27:54):
And so that's what I love about the program is that kids are sharing information
with me and I'm like, oh, got to write that one down.
That's a new piece of information. And it's really beautiful.
And when I take, when I took myself out of the expert role as a teacher,
and I allowed that, that flow of information and energy to go in both directions,
(28:18):
it opened up a world of relationships with students that I didn't even know I could have.
And so that's the kind of thing that I try and embody with my leadership programs
is that there's a flow of information, a flow of knowledge and we all have it.
So let's use it together.
Perfect. I'm already planning on signing my daughters up for this. I love that.
(28:43):
So people can attend an info session before they commit.
And is the info session primarily for the child or do the parents participate
in that info session? Or what would you prefer?
Yeah. So here is what I learned after running the info session yesterday.
(29:05):
Having parents there is great because I had a couple of parents with one of
the teenagers and I knew that that teenager was super busy and she was like,
I don't think I can do it right now.
And when I reached out to her afterwards, she said, my parents are so excited
for me to do this, they don't want me to wait.
So it's like, it's a combination of the kids and the parents getting that same message.
(29:30):
But I'm also going to host an info session for parents afterwards.
And I think now that I've run this once, that info session will be.
So for the teens will be like the first half of the half hour and the parents
will be the second half of the half hour.
And then if that doesn't work for parents, I'm available to chat via text or phone or email.
(29:57):
Parents still do use email. So that's great.
Yes, we still read the emails that we're inundated with daily from the schools.
Yes. So any remaining last little nuggets of wisdom that you want to pass on
to the audience before we kind of wrap up here?
I think the thing that changed my view is that once I saw myself as a leader,
(30:22):
then my own children were able to see themselves as leaders.
And often if what we want for our kids isn't something that we can embody ourselves.
It's It's going to be really hard for our own children to step into those roles
if we're not willing to accept that we can be those things.
(30:43):
So when I wasn't willing to define myself as a leader, it was going to be really
hard for either of my children to see themselves as being a leader someday.
And so I had to embrace the thing that I was afraid of in order for them to
be able to step into the roles that I want them to be.
Love it love it why don't you
(31:05):
give us your contact information where to find you
one more time lorraine yeah everything tiktok instagram and facebook is at peers
not fears and my website is the same except there are dashes in between perfect
i want to thank you so much this was so informative.
(31:26):
And I think every child should go through leadership training.
And if for no other reason than just to have the confidence to know they could
do it, if they were ever even thrown into a leadership role.
Absolutely. Yeah. That's one of my missions is to really debunk those myths
(31:46):
and let every person know that we're already leaders because we make decisions every day.
Love it. Thank you so much, Lorraine. I really appreciate all of the information
you've given us and so happy to have you on the show.
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me too. It was really, really fun. Great.
Everybody else, don't forget to follow Hustle & Harmony wherever you listen
(32:09):
to your podcasts and be sure to follow me on Instagram at shaa underscore mom boss.
Music.
Music.
(00:22):
Everybody, welcome to the Hustle & Harmony podcast, Finding Balance in the Chaos.
I'm your host, Sharon McEntee, owner of Embody Med Spa and founder of FI Skin Care.
Today, I'm so excited to be joined by Lorraine Connell, owner of Peers Not Fears,
a leadership development program that empowers young teens.
(00:44):
Welcome, Lorraine. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for being here. year. What you do is so fascinating to me as both
a mom, I have three kids, as well as a business owner.
So I wear the mom hat and the leadership hat.
And so I'm very interested in your business and all the words of wisdom you
(01:09):
have to present to the audience today.
So if you don't mind starting with just giving us a little bit of background
about yourself, how you got started, and then we'll segue into what your business does.
Yeah, I started this company because it was something that I realized that I
had really needed when I was a young teen.
(01:30):
And I noticed this as I was a teacher for 20 years.
And during this time, there was, you know, I taught chemistry,
but my focus was empowering kids to know that they could do hard things.
If any of your audience was in chemistry and they heard the word chemistry,
(01:51):
chances are they probably had a negative reaction.
And it's because of some memory that they had where chemistry was really hard.
And so that was really where my leadership journey started with empowering young teens.
And I was, I wasn't, sorry.
(02:18):
When I was a teen, I played sports, but I wasn't the best at any of these sports, right?
I loved volleyball. I loved playing volleyball, but I wasn't the best.
So I wasn't going to be the captain of the volleyball team.
I had friends, but I wasn't super popular.
So I wasn't probably going to be nominated for any of the student government opportunities.
(02:43):
And so I saw those titles as leadership.
And when I graduated high school, I didn't have any of those titles.
So I guess I wasn't a leader.
That was sort of my mentality. I became a mom.
I became a teacher. I became a coach for volleyball.
I became an advisor to students, but I still wasn't a leader.
(03:05):
And that's because I didn't have a leadership title.
In all of those instances, all four of those things that I listed,
I was doing leadership things, but I didn't consider myself a leader because
I believed I needed a title to be a leader.
And so that was the awakening for me when I had a student say to me,
(03:28):
I'm not a leader because, and it made me reflect on all of the things that I said to myself,
I'm not a leader because, and I knew that if I had had somebody like me,
how me, when I was 15, 16 years old, that leadership isn't what you think.
Leadership is making a decision, leadership is working with another person,
(03:52):
then maybe I wouldn't have gone for so many years believing that I wasn't a leader.
So I, listening to you, I think a lot of it comes back to confidence too,
but maybe the confidence comes as you embrace leadership roles and not the other way around.
(04:13):
So why don't you tell me then what are some myths about leadership that you
think people kind of get caught up in their heads?
Yeah. So the first myth is that leadership is a title, right?
So, and what I have soon realized is that 10% of any organization,
(04:34):
10% of the organization can earn a title.
That leaves 90% of the rest of us not having a title.
And if we are believing that myth, that leadership requires a title,
that's 90% of your organization, 90% of your school believing that they're not leaders.
(04:54):
And when we believe that myth, we can't make decisions without having somebody
agree or confirm, and it slows the process down.
So that's one of the biggest myths. The other big myth is that leaders are perfect.
And that myth is perpetuated in a lot of different ways.
(05:16):
Number one, many leaders deny when they make a mistake. They hide them.
They blame other people.
And that happens all over the place. It even happens as a parent.
I found myself not wanting my kids to see I was making mistakes because I was their superhero.
But I've also learned that when I acknowledge a mistake that I've made with
(05:41):
one of my children, are in, it changes my relationship with them almost immediately.
And I always tell parents, like, if you're having a really hard time with your
teenager, go ahead and admit a mistake that you made and see if that doesn't
change your relationship almost instantly.
And then another myth that is sort of clouding how we see leaders is that leadership
(06:06):
is a skill that you're either born with or not born with.
And in fact, leadership, like self-confidence, is something that you build along
the way through practice, just like basketball.
Practice a coach, practice a coach.
Real life experiences like games, things like that.
It's not something that you're either born with or not born with.
(06:32):
Agreed. A hundred percent. I think that that's amazing. There's a couple things
that you said that I just want to go back to.
And one is the ability to make a mistake and then own it.
As a business owner, I have employees and even with my kids, the same thing.
I try to tell them that I have much
(06:53):
more respect for the person who admits
they made a mistake and owns it than the
person who won't doesn't want to fix it
doesn't want to own up to it because I'm a problem solver so if a mistake is
made we have to just admit that and then let's move forward and figure out how
to fix it but I also that ties into the other thing that you said is that I
(07:16):
went into business ownership thinking that everyone who owned a business knew
what they they were doing.
And I realized that nobody knows what they're doing before they're actually doing it.
But you learn from the people who've gone before you and have been successful
and success leaves clues and you learn from others.
So yeah, I agree with you.
(07:40):
And it's a constant process and we're always making mistakes,
but that's how we get better. Right.
So yeah. And, and I wanted to like go back and respond to what you said,
because those are really, really important things.
What I tell young teens all the time is when you make a mistake,
(08:00):
the mistake doesn't go away if you hide it.
The mistake doesn't go away if you blame someone else.
The mistake is eventually going to surface.
And at the point that it surfaces, it likely doesn't matter who was at fault.
And so nobody's really trying to point any fingers, but there's one person that
will always remember who was at fault, and that is yourself, right?
(08:24):
So if you hide your mistake, maybe nobody else knows that you made the mistake, but.
You will always remember that you made that mistake and it only bothers you
and holds you back for a really long time.
And, you know, we learn those lessons sometimes a really hard way.
And you also mentioned that as a business owner, most people like don't know
(08:49):
what they're doing until they're in it.
And one of the ways that we're learning how to do things is through trial And
every time you make a try, there's likely an error.
And that error is what we call a mistake. And when you make that mistake,
you learn immediately what not to do the next time.
(09:10):
And so when we make this myth of that leaders are perfect or that perfection is possible,
we're actually reducing the
ability for people to learn because they're so afraid of making a mistake.
When you're not going to learn unless you do make those mistakes.
(09:31):
A hundred percent. And I think we learn more from our quote unquote bad decisions
than we learn from our good decisions.
A hundred percent. So that's how you have to look at it too, right?
But I think, so I think some of that comes with age and experience.
So then tell me, how do we train young teens to maybe learn these things sooner?
(09:59):
Or what are some things you wish you knew as a teenager, as a young adult,
that you think would have helped you in the long run?
Well, I think it goes back to that comment about decisions, right?
So if I know that's the only requirement to being a leader, and that's one of
the things that I wish I had known, is that the only requirement, right?
(10:22):
And when I'm in a room full of people and I ask them what the requirements of
leadership are, there's an unlimited number of requirements that people are
spouting out, but they're really just qualities.
There's only one requirement, and that you make a decision. And like you said,
bad decision, good decision.
(10:44):
The only person that can evaluate whether that decision was good or bad is the
person who made that decision.
But often, as parents, as business owners, we are identifying that decision as good or bad.
And when we communicate that, especially to our children, they...
(11:05):
They absorb that evaluation from us as that they are bad, right?
I made this bad decision.
You think this is a bad decision. Therefore, I am bad.
And it is not the intention of the parent.
It's also not the intention of the kid to be in that situation.
So what I try and encourage young teens and hopefully parents who are in their
(11:31):
orbits is that we have to understand that every decision we make has a cost and a benefit.
And I love to give the example of like oversleeping, right?
So my child oversleeps and I deem that as a bad decision, mostly because it
(11:51):
impacts me, right? Right now I'm late for work or whatever consequences happen impacts me.
But I don't honestly know what caused my child to oversleep.
Maybe they were up really late studying.
Maybe they had a situation with a friend that caused them an emotional sap on themselves.
(12:12):
And if they had gotten up on time, maybe they would have gone to school in a
really bad mood and they would have
snapped at a teacher. And so like everything has a cost and a benefit.
And what I like to try and encourage teens is, did that decision that somebody
deemed good or bad for you, did that take you in the direction that you are going?
(12:36):
And if it did, what is your goal? Is it going in that direction?
Then it wasn't a bad decision. And like you alerted, you know,
that's where we're going to learn our mistakes.
What were the consequences? Were they intended? Did you know that they were going to happen?
What would you do differently? And really helping our kids, our employees,
(12:57):
our business owners to evaluate our decisions based on those metrics and not
the instantaneous feeling that you get from a quote unquote bad decision.
Right. And that ties back to what you said about the decision,
I mean, or the mistake, the decision, whatever, is done. It's already done.
So there's no sense in dwelling on that. It's just, what do you learn from it? What do you take from it?
(13:23):
There's a great quote, and I forget who said it, so forgive me,
but it was, the only bad decision is no decision, right?
Yeah. you know, staying in limbo when you're unsure of what to do,
sometimes making even the wrong decision, you're still propelling forward because
now you know what not to do, right? So I love this.
(13:46):
And so tell me about your programs.
Do you work one-on-one with kids? Do you do group settings? Do you do seminars?
Talk to me about your programs.
What I have learned is that one-on-one coaching really relies on two individual people.
(14:07):
And there's a limited amount of learning that can happen when you're limited to two people.
So I am approaching leadership with young teens in a group situation because
as a teacher, I learned that I am not the knower of all things.
And my students can teach me just as much as I teach them.
(14:31):
And so in these group programs, these students are given a task.
And sometimes these tasks are outside of their ability to do something, right?
We might say it's outside of their comfort zone or it's outside of their knowledge capacity.
It doesn't mean they haven't learned anything by coming back to the program
(14:55):
and saying, I didn't do that activity.
There's still a ton of information to learn by not doing something.
And if you're in a group and somebody else was like, I also struggled to get
that activity done, or somebody was able to say, at first I had that challenge
too, and here's what I did.
(15:16):
Now there's so much more community building, there's learning from each other,
and they can understand that they're not alone.
And I think so many of us and so many young teens really are feeling pretty
isolated because we don't see that other people are struggling through their challenges.
And it's become even more apparent that that's a problem with social media and
(15:42):
everybody just posting their perfection.
And so if I can bring kids, and I say like the age that I I want to work with
is a young teen because when kids move into their junior year of high school.
Their time becomes so finite. They're so busy.
(16:05):
Every decision they're making is impacting their future.
And so if I can talk to them before they get to that pressure point of junior year,
then I'm able to give them, like we said earlier, a little bit of confidence
boost to see that leadership is happening in their daily routines.
(16:26):
So yeah, so I work with groups of about 15 and it's virtual.
So it doesn't matter where you live, you can access this.
And it's even better that it's virtual because then these teens are coming into
a group where they're peers based on age, but they're not peers based on daily life, right?
(16:50):
And I know that for many kids, doing something that is outside of their comfort
zone or risky is often too hard to do because they're afraid of what their peers
in their everyday life are going to judge based on that.
And we talked a little bit earlier about being afraid of making a mistake, right?
(17:11):
So if I make It's one thing, but if I make a mistake in front of my peers,
especially as a teen, that carries a lot more weight.
And so I'm going to avoid anything that challenges me if there is an audience
that's going to judge me.
And so my hope is that these teens are coming from different locations,
(17:34):
different communities.
They're coming together in this community to talk about something that could
be really vulnerable for them.
And there's not that judgment aspect of somebody who doesn't know what they're going through.
I love that. I wasn't sure, actually, to be honest with you,
how your program worked as far as if you went into a school or if it was more
(17:58):
of a private type of environment.
So I love that because there is a sense of anonymity, right?
Amongst these kids, they can be themselves, hopefully.
So is this a one-time session or is it a... So tell me how this works. Yeah.
So it's the program that I'm running right now is a leadership level one.
(18:20):
So that's the first level of leadership.
And all of these kids are going to come in and they agree to a four month program.
And it's we meet twice a month virtually for about an hour.
We talk about what we did and didn't do. We get our activities for the next session.
And and it's four months. So at the end of those four months,
(18:43):
they have the opportunity to decide, do I want to take this to another level
of leadership? And that would be level two.
And in that level two, it becomes a train the trainer model.
So now they're going to work with me and train.
Build a cohort. Either it's another virtual cohort with me, or they're going
(19:04):
to take what they've learned and build it into some aspect of their own community.
And then it doesn't have to be virtual for them.
Maybe they're in Boy Scout troop, or maybe they have a church group and they
want to bring this into their smaller group.
It could even be a classroom in school.
So there's There's a lot of different ways that they can join again and continue
(19:28):
to build on that leadership model.
I do work in schools. It's just a smaller impact on a smaller community.
And I love doing that because then kids are actually, we play a lot of activities that are game-based.
And when kids play games, their guards come down a little bit.
(19:51):
It's a little fun. And so there's laughter.
And when I make a mistake, it doesn't feel so impending.
And so we see each other making mistakes. They see each other making mistakes.
And all of a sudden, making mistakes doesn't feel so terrifying.
Okay. And so then your ideal window for age would be like 12 to 15,
(20:17):
13 to 15, something like that? Yeah, it's prior to their junior year.
And so if kids are more mature, they could come at a younger age.
If kids are struggling in their maturity or their relationship with kids their
(20:38):
age, they could come as an older student. And it really, you know,
originally I was like, this is a sophomore program.
But I also realized that that busyness that I alluded to in the junior year
really becomes a problem in the spring of their sophomore year.
So I can't, I've decided not to restrict my population to just sophomores,
(21:01):
but to like that age group. And often our sophomores are overlooked.
They're like the middle children of high school. And so giving them something
to work on during that sophomore year is an incredible boost to their self-confidence.
Perfect. I want to touch on one thing as far as it's kind of a generalization,
(21:24):
but what do you say to either the parents or the student themselves,
the child themselves, who identifies as an extrovert who probably doesn't need
this because they're outgoing enough?
Or the introvert who is never going to be a leader because they're too shy. So how would you...
(21:48):
Embrace those generalities for these kids.
Yeah, I think the only person that this program doesn't work for is the kid
who is already doing so many things.
It would work for them, but they're already so busy that putting one more thing
into their schedule is counterproductive.
(22:10):
I think that we we
really label introverts as not leaders and and i know that i did it as a teacher
i know i did it as a parent and also we we label kids and once we label them
they carry that label as if it's like their badge.
(22:32):
And so really redefining how we define a student, right?
So in this situation, the student may be introverted, but in this situation,
they may be more extroverted.
And so I know that I often labeled kids shy and therefore not a leader.
And since working with students more and more and being able to observe what they do.
(22:59):
Our shy student who is not vocally contributing in the classroom is one of our best observers.
They are an incredible listener.
And if you need somebody to tell you what's happening, they're the people to
look for. And that's leadership, right?
(23:21):
So I think that what I try to provide for all kids in this program is the opportunity
to see themselves outside of the box that they've been placed in.
And I, you know, I will admit that as a teacher, my classroom management,
(23:42):
the word management has really been something that I've evaluated.
When I manage kids, it's putting them in boxes. So I, as a group of students
walks in my door, I'm evaluating their behavior.
I'm evaluating what they're saying. I'm evaluating the way they look.
I'm doing all of those initial evaluations, and then I'm managing them.
(24:05):
And I realized that when I manage kids and I put kids in boxes like that,
it's really hard for them to get out of a box that I put them in.
So that's the other thing that I really try and encourage parents and teachers
and students is those boxes serve a purpose, but they're not the be-all end-all.
(24:29):
Agreed. And I think, too, sometimes kids don't know what lights them up. Adults, too, I guess.
You don't know what lights them up unless they're exposed to a bunch of different things.
This reminded me, and I'm going to show my age, but when I was growing up and
going through high school and my older sisters and all that,
(24:52):
there was a book called What Color Is Your Parachute?
Do you remember this? I don't remember that one, no. So What Color Is Your Parachute
was this book that you would fill out these questionnaires and then it would spit out for you.
I mean, if it was done online, this is what would write. You'd fill out an online
questionnaire and then, boop, all this, you know, information would spit up
(25:15):
where it would tell you what career you're best suited for.
And I remember a lot of the questions
had to do with characteristics of an introvert versus an extrovert.
And I feel like it was putting kids in these boxes.
And it may be in areas where things might come easy to them.
(25:37):
But to your point, how do we know what they're actually going to do and enjoy
and what, you know, what would really make them light up in their life unless
they're exposed to it? So I love this.
So how often do you run these programs and how would somebody get enrolled in
(26:00):
it? Yeah, the program runs concurrently.
So once I get a group, I will start a new program after.
So I just started one group.
I had an info session with a variety of ages of teenagers.
And the purpose of that info session is, I as a parent, I really want my kid to do this.
(26:24):
My kid wants nothing to do with what I want. So how do the kids know that this
is the program for them? So that's what we do, the info session.
I tell them what it looks like, how often we're going to meet,
when does it work for them. I get their buy-in.
And so now that this cohort has been formed, I will now start building a new cohort.
(26:46):
So if a parent is interested or a kid is interested on my website, peers-not-fears.com,
there's a button at the top and it's high school leadership cohort and you just
click on that i will get your email and then i will connect with you to let
you know when the next info session is and.
(27:10):
I learned a lot of lessons in this first round.
Kids don't read emails anymore. And, you know, as a parent, I'm like,
seriously, how can you not read an email?
But they don't. They, you know, my own child, I sent them a text message.
They don't read text messages.
So he was like, if you just Snapchatted me, mom, I would have read it.
(27:31):
And I was like, is this the problem?
These kids are not getting my emails. They're not getting my text messages.
I need to go where they are. So I learned that Snapchat is the way for me to
communicate with kids, with young teens.
And yeah, so it's been, like I told you, they teach me just as much as I teach them.
(27:54):
And so that's what I love about the program is that kids are sharing information
with me and I'm like, oh, got to write that one down.
That's a new piece of information. And it's really beautiful.
And when I take, when I took myself out of the expert role as a teacher,
and I allowed that, that flow of information and energy to go in both directions,
(28:18):
it opened up a world of relationships with students that I didn't even know I could have.
And so that's the kind of thing that I try and embody with my leadership programs
is that there's a flow of information, a flow of knowledge and we all have it.
So let's use it together.
Perfect. I'm already planning on signing my daughters up for this. I love that.
(28:43):
So people can attend an info session before they commit.
And is the info session primarily for the child or do the parents participate
in that info session? Or what would you prefer?
Yeah. So here is what I learned after running the info session yesterday.
(29:05):
Having parents there is great because I had a couple of parents with one of
the teenagers and I knew that that teenager was super busy and she was like,
I don't think I can do it right now.
And when I reached out to her afterwards, she said, my parents are so excited
for me to do this, they don't want me to wait.
So it's like, it's a combination of the kids and the parents getting that same message.
(29:30):
But I'm also going to host an info session for parents afterwards.
And I think now that I've run this once, that info session will be.
So for the teens will be like the first half of the half hour and the parents
will be the second half of the half hour.
And then if that doesn't work for parents, I'm available to chat via text or phone or email.
(29:57):
Parents still do use email. So that's great.
Yes, we still read the emails that we're inundated with daily from the schools.
Yes. So any remaining last little nuggets of wisdom that you want to pass on
to the audience before we kind of wrap up here?
I think the thing that changed my view is that once I saw myself as a leader,
(30:22):
then my own children were able to see themselves as leaders.
And often if what we want for our kids isn't something that we can embody ourselves.
It's It's going to be really hard for our own children to step into those roles
if we're not willing to accept that we can be those things.
(30:43):
So when I wasn't willing to define myself as a leader, it was going to be really
hard for either of my children to see themselves as being a leader someday.
And so I had to embrace the thing that I was afraid of in order for them to
be able to step into the roles that I want them to be.
Love it love it why don't you
(31:05):
give us your contact information where to find you
one more time lorraine yeah everything tiktok instagram and facebook is at peers
not fears and my website is the same except there are dashes in between perfect
i want to thank you so much this was so informative.
(31:26):
And I think every child should go through leadership training.
And if for no other reason than just to have the confidence to know they could
do it, if they were ever even thrown into a leadership role.
Absolutely. Yeah. That's one of my missions is to really debunk those myths
(31:46):
and let every person know that we're already leaders because we make decisions every day.
Love it. Thank you so much, Lorraine. I really appreciate all of the information
you've given us and so happy to have you on the show.
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me too. It was really, really fun. Great.
Everybody else, don't forget to follow Hustle & Harmony wherever you listen
(32:09):
to your podcasts and be sure to follow me on Instagram at shaa underscore mom boss.
Music.
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