Soft skills activity

The adolescent brain

In this topic, we’ll continue to explore what it means to help young people develop their soft skills. Your first task is to watch the video below¹ ‘The Adolescent Brain’ by Dan Siegel (4:36). This video is suitable for both youth and youth workers to watch. It can be used as a tool to help young people during times when they are being encouraged to take on greater autonomy.

How can we help young people become more independent adults?

The theory of self-determination explains the three basic psychological needs of people:

1. Autonomy, or the need to feel free to choose our own behaviour
2. Competence, or the need to feel capable of effectively interacting with our environment
3. Relatedness, or the need to feel close and meaningfully connected to others.

It is important for these needs to be supported in adolescence. These needs help young people evolve and develop in a healthy way. Adolescence is the time when youth begin to separate from their parents, they find their own identity, and begin to think independently. If an unstable or negative family environment or community influence has been present, this can hamper healthy psychological development.

There can also be an early onset of autonomy in young people who have experienced trauma throughout their lives. This may be displayed through anger, self-reliance, or a lack of respect for the rights of others. We can work with young people to help them build more healthy forms of autonomy in their everyday lives by surrounding them with support and giving them space to practice taking responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Encouraging autonomy

Emotional autonomy relates to emotions, personal feelings and how we relate to the people around us. During adolescence this shifts from relying on parents’ support to getting more support from others such as friends and peers. Often it can mean we suddenly become aware that our significant caregivers are just people who have faults and their own problems, as well as showing strengths. Relationships move away from parent/child and towards stronger relationships with friends. Young people also begin to develop intimate relationships.

Behavioural autonomy is related to behaviour and refers to the ability to made decisions independently and follow through with actions. During the adolescent stage young people develop more critical thinking skills and start comparing one choice to another. There is a risk that once youth stop following the behavioural norms of their parents, that they may follow the behaviours of their peers in a harmful way, and not fully develop their own behavioural autonomy (giving in to peer pressure).

Value autonomy is having independent attitudes and beliefs towards politics, morals, and spirituality and the way young people see the world around them. This can take time as they consider what is important to them and what they really value. Allowing them this freedom gives them the opportunity to come to their own conclusions rather than accepting the values their friends or families encourage or influence them to follow.

There are some strategies that can be used to encourage young people to develop greater autonomy:

Allow teens to make choices – support their personal development

• Help them identify community role models. Support them to identify the strengths and positive attributes of their chosen role models. Accept their choices even if their role models might not have been your first choice – perhaps the young person sees something that you do not. Support them to continue to build their own networks.
• Establish self-inspired boundaries so youth learn to understand safe spaces, and the necessity for having boundaries to protect themselves in all situations. Let them set the limits of what they will tolerate, and what they won’t, based on their own experiences. However, be aware that they may have a different perception of what is safe and what is not. If they have had significant experiences related to being unsafe (resulting from abuse, for example), they may have an altered perception of what a safe space truly looks and feels like.
• Complete a skills gap activity with them. Highlight the areas of their life that can be filled with learning opportunities and new skills. The Zone of Proximal Development in the last topic can be used to establish personal learning steps with youth.
• Personalise their futures, after all it’s all about them.

Respect the struggle – support a growth mindset

• Focus on what they do well to support their self-esteem and confidence. When you start with what they already know and can do well, it allows you to expand and encourage them to ask further questions, such as ‘Where am I now and where do I want to be in the future?’ ‘How will I get there?’ ‘What do I need to know, learn, or do?’
• Allow them to make mistakes and self-evaluate. Understand that this will not happen in a day, a week, or maybe even in a month or a year. Change takes time. Accepting responsibility for one’s actions involves courage, support, safe spaces, and growth over time.

When they have a problem, do not be too quick to give them solutions – provide the right tools

• Let them figure out and own the ‘how’. Adults do not like to be told what to do, and neither do young people. Respect a young person’s right to discover solutions for themselves. Respect their struggle and be ready when they ask for assistance.
• If there are restrictions, guidelines, regulations, or laws around what they want to do – remember to be clear about the necessity to consider these in any decisions and choices that youth make. This is a good opportunity to introduce costs and consequences for other people as well as themselves.
• Finding solutions from other resources, people, and organisations is a great motivator, so remember to give them the tools and contacts (or help them find the right phone numbers) that they need to increase their levels of success.

Let them do it for themselves – step back

• Give them ‘do not disturb’ time to work on plans or projects by themselves.
• Allow youth to build confidence through developing independence of thought and action. Process-related resources and flow charts to follow would be helpful for mapping out answers to questions such as “What am I doing?” “What do I do now?” “What do I do next?” “How will I know when I’ve done it?”

Do not take away hope – create and communicate a clear vision and purpose

• Vision informs decisions. Keep hope alive, and guide youth to act in a way that transforms hope into goals and delivers gradual achievement.
• Allow youth the time to consider what the future of their decisions might look like. What are the costs to self and consequences for others – both positive and negative.
• Communicate vision and purpose clearly for each decision. Create links to their role models where appropriate or have them find new role models. Seeing examples from role models in real life can help youth to gain a deeper understanding of words such as vision and purpose and what this could mean for their own life.
• Talk about competence, what is it and how it can affect a positive mindset. Encourage youth to acquire a growth mindset, which means you understand that your skills and talents can be developed through hard work and good strategies. For example, Elliot, Dweck and Yeager (2019, p. 140) discuss a study of adolescent students studying maths that were split into two groups. One group was told “Studies show that people’s mathematical ability does not change much throughout life” while another group were told “Studies show that people acquire math ability through learning and practice, people who learn as they work develop higher ability.” This second group benefitted from a growth mindset and they achieved better results in the long-term.²

Let teens speak for themselves – encourage them to speak and think more broadly

• Help them articulate what they really want – what matters most, what are they driven to do?
• Encourage youth to express feelings and emotions effectively using words and not behaviours, especially where behaviours may be threatening, or anger driven.
• Allow for flexible thought as they navigate a new way of living. It is a tumultuous time and logical thought processes can be interrupted or sabotaged with feelings of ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I can’t do that’ or even ‘I don’t want to.’
• Link back to creating and communicating a clear vision and purpose to help them stay on their chosen pathway. Allow them the time and space to develop the literacy skills they need to communicate effectively and safely.

These points can all be drawn out and used to create a growth mindset in youth that helps them increase their motivation to engage, their resilience to carry on, and an ability to visualise a different future for themselves within their communities. Self-development and self-management will give youth strategies to use within the social networks that influence their everyday lives. The aim is to equip young people with the skills and confidence to become involved in decisions about the issues that affect them, rather than just supplying them with activities, projects, and services.

Championing a cause

Civic or citizenship education has been introduced as part of the school curriculum in the UK and USA since the early 2000’s to teach youth about community culture, politically significant current affairs, and political structures and processes. It advocates for a critical and active approach to encourage youth to find new forms of community involvement and approaches or actions for themselves. However, teaching a politically focused program that highlighted international issues such as terrorism and other extremist views made some teachers uneasy.³

The following quote comes from a former chief inspector of schools for England and highlights the dangers of doctored, unreliable, and dishonest information coming from online sources. Young people may not have sufficient understanding of the events that happen around their local communities or of what they see on social media and TV from overseas. There is a risk that their ideals, thoughts, and opinions can be hijacked or severely influenced and directed into actions that may have serious ramifications for them.

However, at the same time that this citizenship education initiative was underway, many young people in the UK were highly motivated to research, learn about, discuss, and protest the British Government’s support for the Iraq war. As Libby Brooks, reporting for the Guardian newspaper observed “These young people were organising and leading their own protests, leafleting at school gates, organising email networks and expertly working the media. Their determination to be heard was palpable.” (Coleman 2008, p. 190)³

In your work with young people, you will need to critically reflect on your own political views and consider the consequences of supporting (or not supporting) young people in their activism.

Keeping up to date and being aware of the online influences from international sources can be helpful when faced with confronting viewpoints in youth that we deal with, but also being aware of our own views and how we express ourselves is equally as important. We cannot hold young people to a different standard than we hold ourselves. Contributing fair and fact based reasonings to challenging conversations without judgement will present opportunities for research, to help separate truth from fiction and rumour.

Bremley Lyngdoh presented a paper⁴ to a UNESCO meeting on Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability in 2004 and she states:

Explore further

• The Youth Transitions Study followed a group of young people in New Zealand who faced high levels of risk during childhood and adolescence and tracked their transition from adolescence to adulthood across time.⁵
• Middle Earth has a mission of providing youth with prevention and intervention services to help them develop into responsible, self-sufficient members of the community. Read their article on Helping Your Teen Develop Autonomy.⁶

Task: Encouraging autonomy

Read the action points below, which are summarised from the Encouraging Autonomy section above, and use them to complete the following activity.

• Do not take away hope – create and communicate a clear vision and purpose
• Vision informs decisions. Allow youth the time to consider what the future of their decisions might look like. What are the consequences – both positive and negative
• Communicate vision and purpose clearly for each decision or action

Your task is to write an outline for a suitable activity that would allow young people to build hopes and dreams for their future. This activity can be designed for use with a single person or can be developed for a group interaction, the choice is yours. Identify:

• What the activity is
• Is it for individual use or a group activity?
• The rationale – what the desired outcome of the activity is
• How to introduce the activity to the young person
• What resources are required
• How it relates to each of the SAFE practices outlined in Topic 2
• The instructions required to complete the activity.

Watch this TEDxCushing Academy talk on problem solving through perspective change (6:24). In this talk, Zara Tarter explains perspective in an interesting way. She asserts that when we change the way we look at things, the things we are looking at also change. This youth focused talk offers insights into where problems can begin and strategies for breaking down these problems to change perspective.⁷

Task: Solving problems

Fill in the gaps in this statement from the video, to complete what Zara said about the way we approach problem solving.

Task: Zara’s three steps

Problem solving skills

Problems crop up everywhere from figuring out why your phone isn’t working, to how to get to where you want to go when you don’t have transport. Understanding how and why young people react the way they do, can help youth when faced with a problem. Problems can affect mental health and wellbeing and when the skills to deal with these are missing it can result in feelings of overwhelm, stress, confusion, and frustration. Building skills and learning about tools to help support decision making around problems can result in more successful solutions and outcomes. Making a plan for action to start the process can ease the mental stress and reduce the likelihood of reacting based on emotion.

Identifying the problem

• Think about how the problem began or happened in the first place. What caused it?
• Can the problem be written as a statement? Put more information around it to help give context and history to the lead up to the problem. Consider using the STARRS method that is explained below to help develop this.

Focusing on the issue

• Keep calm and use logic to help find possibilities – using the head instead of the heart to direct responses.

• Ask ‘What really happened? Am I looking at the real issue or a perceived one?’

Listening to others

• Get opinions and input from others who were either there with you or who can help and support you.

Generating a solution

• Break down the problem into manageable chunks.

Evaluating the solution

• What was the most likely cause and does the solution fix the problem?
• Test out the solution.

Putting the idea into practice

• Take action to address the problem.
• Evaluate the outcome.

Problem solving is closely connecting with the other areas outlined in this topic. Much success depends on a young person’s autonomy, their relationships with other people (and themselves), and their ability to make considered decisions. Often just taking one small action towards dealing with a problem is what helps increase feelings of being in control of the situation. 

STARRS method – breaking down tasks to help deal with challenges

The STARRS method helps us to reflect on the way that we have approached problems in the past. It helps us to self-assess and look at our past actions and solutions in detail. The STARRS method is effective as a tool in job interviews as a framework for providing comprehensive answers about times that you may have solved a problem or faced a challenge in the past. It can also be used to build confidence in young people when looking back to other situations that they have dealt with and to reflect on what they learned and what they did well.

Situation

• Explain the situation you were in.
• Aim to provide details of what/where/when, for example “I was on the way to the park when …” or “Last week when I got into an argument …”.

Task

• What did the situation require of you?
• Briefly explain your responsibilities and the main task(s) you had to carry out.

Action

• What did you do to try and alleviate the problem or complete the task?
• How did you do it? Include the skills or techniques used to take action.

Result

• What was the outcome?
• Did you make a difference?
• What changed because of your action?

Reflection

• What went well?
• What did not go as well as hoped?

Strengthen

• After reflecting on the problem, task, or issue – what could be done differently? What could you have done differently?
• What could have been improved to achieve success or even greater success?

Explore further:

Read How to use skills to logically solve a problem from the Youth Empowerment site where you can find more in-depth information around problem solving including links to other articles with supporting strategies for health and wellbeing around day to day problem solving for youth.⁸

Building relationship skills

Building appropriate relationships with youth and their communities is at the forefront of youth work and must be grounded in respect and mutual learning and based on professional values and principles. Where youth have had little or no previous positive interactions to relate to, the youth worker/young person relationship may be the first positive one they experience. This relationship is likely to be emulated as youth begin to test their own ability to create meaningful relationships with their peers, so your professionalism is crucial.

Societal attitudes and influences such as racism, classism, ageism, (thinking that youth are too young to have an opinion) and ableism (excluding people with disabilities or underestimating their capacity) can exclude youth from equal access to rights and opportunities such as education, employment, housing, health, leisure, and legal protection. Youth work offers alternative opportunities and assists youth to make sense of their circumstances and broaden their understanding of the options they have available to them.⁹

It is not only their relationship with themself that is important, but also developing their relationships with community, authority, organisations, and people of other genders and ethnicities. Having activities and trusted organisations that will support young people to learn relationship skills is important. Taking young people out to make appointments, find services suitable for their needs, and helping them understand how to get around their town or city can eliminate the fears or anxiety that young people may have normalised as part of these tasks.

Here are some key points to help with building and extending young people’s relationship skills:

Communicate clearly and honestly

Youth may have been told in the past ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’, ‘you’re too young to know’, or ‘you have nothing to say worth listening to’. As a result, there can be difficulties in just getting young people to engage in a conversation. Saying what you mean ensures there is clarity for them and no misinterpretation of the message you are trying to convey. Help take away the confusion of having too many instructions or messages at one time by breaking down discussions into small chunks so that understanding and uptake of messages can be tested or reinforced. Explain that getting to know someone is done by communicating wants, needs, expectations, boundaries, and the sharing of other important information.

• Allow youth to practice communicating their wants and needs using clear and concise language.
• Increase language and literacy skills through playing word related games, writing stories, and telling stories.
• Facilitate opportunities for youth to have conversations with different people.
• Identify and acknowledge their barriers to communicating.
• Respect and value their contributions.

Listen well

Listen to what the young person is saying. Encourage them to talk about their interests and concerns. Give them time to think and express themselves fully. If they feel hurried or not listened to, their understanding of language will not be the same and their ability to articulate their needs could be compromised. Recognise the differences in age, interpretations, and perception of the world as they see it.

• Listening to young people shows them that you think their views are important and demonstrates healthy communication.
• Playing the telephone game, giving them the responsibility of passing on whispered messages to and from each other, and having them reflect on how conversations can go wrong when people mishear or misinterpret messages.
• Give youth time to develop questioning and clarification skills so a clearer understanding of what is being said can be gained.

Cooperate with others

Cooperation does not mean giving up their own wants and needs. Ensuring their own interests are met while respecting the other person’s needs and wants is a juggling act that requires skill and negotiation. Being able to give with or without the expectation of getting something back in return can lead to a greater sense of self-worth and increase self-awareness. Keep in mind that some youth may be in a situation where survival has meant they had to take what they could get, with no room for consideration of the needs of others.

• Communication and relationship skills and asking questions can increase understanding around other people’s wants, needs and perspectives.
• Activities in groups, sports clubs, social facilities, and youth groups can help by increasing levels of trust, working alongside others, and having opportunities to share resources and time.
• Use self-management strategies to highlight learned behaviours around trust and mistrust.
• Understand that food insecurity, emotional insecurity, and threats to personal safety could be possible underlying reasons for non-cooperative behaviours.

Resist inappropriate social pressure

Navigating social compatibility and conflict is not always straightforward. The use of excessive control and oppressive behaviour as a means to move ahead in life and get what one wants can be tempting when life is tough. It can be difficult for a young person to resist social pressure in a community setting. What they are open to facing and talking about in a safe space with a youth worker may be ignored later on in the space where their friends congregate.

Not using judgement, and accepting that young people may be pressured to participate in risky behaviours, gives a youth worker the opportunity to introduce or reintroduce intervention strategies and support mechanisms. Strategies used here need to be age appropriate and suitable for situations where youth may find themselves in unsafe environments. Young people need to have strategies that support them as they say ‘no’.

It should also be remembered that some young people view challenges and risky behaviours as exciting. They may want to test boundaries and try out new activities. The goal here is to find a level of challenge and risk that is healthy and not too dangerous. Watch also for those who find challenges or risks stressful and overwhelming.

• When giving in to social pressure has become a habit, a youth worker may look to collaborating with their own peers and mentors to identify and address risks.
• Explore alternative realities with the young person – ‘What would happen if ... ?’
• Link into social-awareness and self-awareness learning.
• Try out some diversion activities – youth centers, sports activities, indoor games, different social networks.

Negotiate conflict constructively

The communication process can continue even when views are opposing. Youth workers can ask questions and check their understanding. It may take more than one conversation to explore each other’s perceptions. The aim is to ensure both parties are listened to, and their issues explored fully so there is learning on both sides. A youth worker should focus the exchange on the needs of the young person, rather than on their own needs and trying to win an argument. Allowing examples to be used and approaching conflict with a positive outlook helps break down tension.

• Ask the young person their opinion on community related challenges – listen and explore their thought patterns.
• Encourage participation in activities with other youth and adults, help youth be comfortable (and feel safe) in different surroundings where they may be challenged on their opinions and views.
• Help young people to be exposed to and learn from the stories and experiences of other youth in group settings – youth centers, social networks, cafés, keep fit classes, arts, or craft activities.

Seek and offer help when needed

Know the community that surrounds the youth you work with. Youth work is not always about taking young people away from what is familiar. Where young people need support and assistance, knowing where to go within their own communities to get what they want and need and to feel safe is essential. Civic and citizenship activities help young people to learn where close and trusted help is accessible. Access to shelters, alternative education, counselling, accommodation assistance and food should be easily accessible. Help young people to become familiar with these places and services so that they are less likely to fear asking for help when they need it the most.

• Find out who they trust and why.
• Create a circle of courage or a circle of support to help them visualize wrap-around support structures.
• Meetings with youth clients can be done outside of an office and taken into spaces where youth feel more comfortable, if appropriate. Try youth groups, sports clubs, cafes, or even bus stops!

Once mastered, youth will be able to use these strategies themselves.

Resources:

• Circle of support/Circle of courage in a New Zealand context¹⁰
• Citizenship activities¹¹
• Ministry of Youth Development – Youth development approach¹²

Task: Compile a list of local services and facilities

As a youth worker you may be working with young people from the ages of 12 through to 24. Young people are considered to be ‘youth’ up to the age of 24 in New Zealand youth program initiatives.

Compile a list of services and facilities in your immediate location that would be useful to assist young people in building healthy trusted relationships.

You can refer to the directory that you created for Assessment 3.1 in the previous module or ask to read a few of the directories created by other students.

Explore further

• Diana Divecha Ph.D. from Developmental Science explores parenting and children’s development. In this blog article, she discusses how adults may think our youth have a problem with respect, but it’s not actually what we think it is.¹³
• Madeleine Holden asks the question, Parasocial relationships are here to stay. Should we be worried? in this article for The Spinoff. Parasocial relationships are becoming increasingly significant for many young people. This article will help you to gain insight into this part of their lives. ‘Parasocial’ is a term used to describe the one-sided or uneven relationships that young people may have with streamers on Twitch and YouTube, and with celebrities (including minor celebrities on social media).

Work skills and why they are important

Getting a job is more than just having the right school qualifications. There are roles that require a certain level of education, but most employers are looking for people that have a variety of skills These are known as soft skills and include having a positive attitude, getting on well with other people, showing a willingness to learn. Other skills outlined as soft skills include:

Work skills are diverse and normally built on the competencies in the New Zealand school curriculum, but as a youth worker you will often be working with youth who are disengaged from schools and formal education. Using contextualised situations for learning can help bridge the gap. Learning through past experiences, involvement with clubs, community groups or on the job can be a catalyst for youth to get the evidence they need to describe the skills they already have. Practical experiences can add value and be utilised in a workplace even if the young person has no formal qualifications. Options such as gardening, site clean ups, volunteering in parks and reserves, creating murals, and recycling initiatives all incorporate a lot of the skills mentioned in the list above.

The successful culmination of working with young people is that they know their input, effort and focus can and will led to a meaningful future in whatever career they choose. Employers see problems faced on the job as challenges that can be overcome. They want to know how employees will deal with these problems. The STARRS method¹⁵ that you studied above can help youth make connections between their life skills and work-related skills. Remind them to approach their job search and training with a growth mindset. No matter our age or level of qualifications, we all need to keep learning, and we all continue to develop our skills, capacity, and abilities throughout our lifetime.

Task: Practical activities in local places

Activities to increase young people’s interest are important for building skills and increasing their confidence and interaction with the communities they live in. Read the questions below and write down your answers in a table (similar to the one shown) to record your ideas of where you could take the young people you are working with for visits or day trips. Add more rows to your own table to fill in the details for at least three or four potential locations in your area.

• Where could you take youth to visit, and what practical activities could you do in these places?
• How might the experiences or activities available at this location assist young people to develop work ready skills?
• What would be the broader outcomes or skills they might learn or observe in practice at these places?
• How might their social and professional networks expand by meeting people at these locations?

An easy to view sample layout for this information is in the table below:

Explore further:

These three New Zealand sites are useful for young people who are searching for jobs, who need to understand the skills required, and are working towards finding the job they want. These sites not only help youth find work, but also help with building a CV, getting assistance with interview skills, and finding short courses to bridge into work.

• Career advice for youth¹⁶
• Indeed – Find Jobs¹⁷
• YouthHub – How it works¹⁸

You are now ready to complete Task 1 and 2 in Assessment 4.4 and 4.5.

In these tasks, you will design and run an activity that supports young people in the development of their life skills.