How Do You Coach Young Adults When They Don’t Know How To Be Coached?

Step one is coach them on coaching.

As I mature, I seem to find myself looking back on my various life experiences more and more. I call these 'points of reference.' It is these instances that we seem to store in our brains like data on a hard drive. When we need to complete a task, make a decision or figure out what is right and wrong, we access the information stored in our brains and wait as our internal microprocessor sorts through all these ‘points of reference’ to provide us with the information we need.

Think for a moment about an activity that may now seem routine and how complicated it initially was. I can see myself, my mother sliding on my shoes, I having no idea what the two strings opposite each other were suppose to do. But within seconds, through a series of intricate swirls, circles, over, under, pull two loops – voila! My shoe was tied. Then she repeated it on the other side, like magic.

When I become interested in football, I had no idea how to throw the ball or what position I would eventually play, despite always being the winning quarterback or wide receiver, when the game was on the line in the backyard. Little did I know that I would grow to be neither and was destined to be a lineman. Through a series of practices, and the patience and perseverance of coaches, I was taught the fine art of being an offensive/defensive tackle.

These are just a couple of the moments in my life when I have been coached.

When I look back, if it weren’t for the college recruitment of my two older brothers and eventually my own recruitment, I might not have known how to be coached about higher education. My parents did not go to college, my father was never recruited to play a sport in college, how could they coach me on something with which they had no familiarity?

Recently, while conducting a session of my after-school program, we were celebrating the news of the class ranking a few of my students had just received. One was beaming with pride that while she was an ‘undocumented’ student whom had only recently learned English, she was ranked first in her class with a 4.20 GPA. Another was ranked 65th with a 3.50 GPA and another ranked 68th with a 3.30 GPA. With a huge smile on my face and high fives all around, I asked, “You know what that means right?” As I looked around all I could see was blank faces and shrugged shoulders. They responded, “No, what?” I informed them they were eligible for special status within the California State University system for admission to college.

They were unaware; they were clueless. Of course they were. How would they know when they come from homes in which no one has attended, much less graduated from college? They have parents, similar to my own, to which attending college, the admissions process and everything that goes along with it, is a foreign concept.

They are in an inner city school system that has a drastic shortage of college counselors. And, they see teachers as just that – a teacher. So they let their survival skills kick in, the same skills they have been using for 17 years and literally just go through life day by day, using trial and error, living moment to moment, and never seeing the bigger picture.

There are so many young adults today that, unfortunately, do not have a ‘coaching’ role model in their lives. They are going about their days the best they know how. Many are stand-offish with adults, even ones they know. They don’t seek out any coach, much less a ‘life’ coach.

Young adults do not know how to be coached in or even to be coached because they are not in environments or situations to know what it means and how beneficial it is in life.

As life coaches our first challenge is to coach them on coaching—to help them understand what they don’t know and how we can help them navigate their way. We must show them what they have already accomplished in life with the help of those with more ‘points of reference.’

It is imperative that ALL people who have ANY type of interaction with young adults mentor them, role model for them, coach them on how to navigate through life beyond high school. We are all life coaches.

This is the way that they begin to develop those ‘points of reference’ which get loaded onto their ‘hard-drives,’ those that they will access for the rest of their lives, that will help them become successful individuals and that will make them positive contributors to our society.

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