How understanding the psychology of teenagers can help you become a better leader
Dr. Lisa Damour's "The Emotional Lives of Teenagers" gave me a new perspective on some challenging workplace behaviors and what do to about them.
“Mom, can you just stop?!”
I hear this about once every two days as I unskillfully parent my two teenagers.
What’s worse? Hearing it from my son is actually a win.
I see him so rarely, the few words he shares, no matter the meaning, feel like the first drops of rain on a dry, hot day.
Last month, instead of continuing to trial-and-error my way through these last years before they fly the nest, I finally decided to educate myself.
I belatedly followed a good friend’s recommendation and read Dr. Lisa Damour’s book “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents.” It was eye-opening.
I realized the psychology of teenagers mimics much of what I experienced as an employee and leader of organizations undergoing fast-paced, significant change.
I’m not a psychologist or therapist, nor do I want to equate your teenage children with your employees, but I couldn’t help but see the similarities between the transformation of a teenager and what people experience in an organization undergoing change.
I wish I had known this earlier in my career.
How adults in a changing organization are similar to teenagers
Dr. Darmour describes the teenage years as a time of tremendous change. Hormones, body growth, and massive brain changes. They’re incredibly difficult to experience, and even harder to make sense of.
When my kids dismiss me or look as if their arms are not coordinated with their legs, I remind myself that it’s because of all that change. Their bodies are growing so fast, it’s not all in sync. It’s also their first time experiencing it; they don’t have a manual to follow and guide them through it.
It’s honestly very similar in organizations.
When an organization undergoes change, many of its people do, too. They are trying not only to make sense of the broader changes but also of what they mean for them individually.
In many ways, the employees are reconstructing their sense of identity in the workplace, not dissimilar to how a teenager grows into an adult, figuring out how to use their longer limbs and making sense of their new mental abilities. (Dr. Damour notes that by the end of adolescence, around age 24, an individual’s brain has been “overhauled and upgraded,” and is “faster, more powerful, and more efficient than before.")
Any leader who has guided an organization through change (restructuring functions and roles, implementing new systems and processes, or merging and divesting) knows the tremendous upheaval it causes for people — emotionally, cognitively, and practically in their day-to-day.
The “mom, please stop” process of separation-individuation is critical to adolescents developing their own sense of identity. People whose roles or daily activities are changing have to do the same. Unsurprisingly, even though they are already adults, the change can make them irritable and prone to behaviors that are hard to understand.
What I wish I had known earlier
The entire book is worth a read. Dr. Damour writes in a non-jargony, highly relatable fashion. Her stories bring every concept to life. I can’t do them justice, and I won’t regurgitate her work.
Instead, I’ll highlight the concepts that felt most immediately useful and compelling for me, and that I wish I had known as a leader.
Externalization: It’s not about you
I had never heard this term before, but the visual is very illuminating: it’s when a person comes by and literally “dumps” their burdens on you — their complaints, their worries, their frustrations, their sadness.
It’s hard to tell what they're doing when it’s happening. As an empath, I often get completely consumed by the other person’s emotions. It can be helpful at times, but too often, it’s a distraction that I’m not even aware of. And even if you’re not an empath, you can be completely derailed by what someone shares.
For teenagers, this is often a strategy to offload their struggles. By sharing them with you, they are freeing themselves of the weight.
The same can happen at work. Importantly, you need to be careful that you don’t take on the burden unless it’s actually something you should be responsible for handling. I’m not saying you abandon the “see something, say something” motto. Or you stop supporting your team when they need you.
You just need to be careful about being swept away by someone else’s emotions without first understanding why they are sharing with you.
Not every conversation is a cry for help
In the same vein as externalization, high-agency people too often jump right to problem-solving. I know because I’m one of them.
For teenagers, as they are finding their own agency, they don’t always want or need us to jump in. They are sharing to connect.
Adults in the workplace do this, too. Before you jump in to offer advice or direction, check in with the person to find out what type of support they are hoping for.
Sometimes, they just need a listening ear. As a leader, this can be a relief. You can sit back and simply be present to what they are sharing. In fact, the act of listening actively might be the greatest gift you can give an employee or colleague. We often talk about the desire to be seen and heard. This is that moment.
And if you’re a leader committed to your team’s development, it’s essential that you resist the urge to jump in and instead pause to assess the strategic next step. You will never develop the next generation of leaders if you don’t let them lead (and occasionally, stumble).
Your job is not to make your employees happy
Of all the concepts, this was the one I wish someone had told me years ago the most.
When I was a high school student, I was known for being relentless and overly demanding. One of my nicknames was “warden.” I won’t even name the others.
As I rose in my professional career, I overcorrected. I wanted to be the empathetic leader who prioritized people and their needs above all else. That was neither a sustainable target nor the right one.
I went from demanding work at all hours of the day, 7 days a week, to letting my team off the hook for missed outcomes and contorting myself and others unsustainably to accommodate team members who were not pulling their weight.
A leader needs to balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the organization. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a constant recalibration. Anyone who tells you otherwise either hasn’t been a leader or is lying.
The challenge is gauging what your team needs. One of the markers I chose was happiness. I thought that if I could ensure employee happiness, I could retain top talent and accelerate business growth.
But the problem with happiness as a KPI is that you can’t control how someone will react. Happiness is driven by so many factors, many of which the company and the leader don’t control. Trying to hit it, I became distracted by every shift in employee temperament and lost focus on my strategic priorities for the business.
Dr. Damour’s guidance about teenagers was illuminating. Instead of assessing their emotional health through a lens of happiness and comfort, view it through the lens of whether they can self-regulate their emotions.
What that means is that if something highly disappointing happens, it’s actually a good sign that the adolescent feels upset and may even feel upset for some time. The key is whether their reaction feels in keeping with the scale of what happened and the impact it has on them.
Translated into the workplace, leaders would do well not to spend too much time overcompensating for decisions or situations that might leave employees feeling discouraged, irritated, or worse. Instead of trying to mitigate how they might feel, which you can’t control, it’s far more effective to focus on setting them up for success going forward.
For example, if you’ve made a difficult downsizing decision, it’s not helpful to dwell on the disappointment and fear your team might feel as a result. You can be empathetic in your tone, but nothing you do will change the impact of your decisions. Worrying about your team’s reaction, something I used to do, is usually time wasted. Instead, make sure you give them the information they need going forward: updated goals, helpful context, and any operational changes to their work.
People need to be able to express themselves productively
In contrast to overindexing on employee happiness, a far more productive goal is to create an environment where people feel their voices matter and that they have the skills to communicate effectively.
It parallels perfectly what Dr. Damour shares: one of the healthiest goals as a parent is to create an environment where your teens feel they can speak up and be heard.
Employees need this more than ever at work. And leaders need it too. The cost of silence is missed ideas, lowered trust, and increased stress.
You don’t want employees to bottle up their reactions or gossip about them. The key is to help your team understand how to communicate their thoughts effectively. This can be accomplished through establishing norms, training everyone on approaches that work, and then modeling these behaviors.
Importantly, you also need to give your team the room to miss the mark. When you combine teaching with practice (and the space to make mistakes), you’ve created a workplace where people become skilled at navigating difficult conversations, sharing their thoughts, and listening well.
Organizations that invest in these practices will be talent magnets, innovate with agility, and energize their people rather than drain them. It’s what I sought to create in every organization I led, and it’s the goal my clients aspire to today. And it’s possible if you take the time to understand what creates the conditions for a healthy, resilient team.
Your turn
Dr. Damour gave me so much more confidence in navigating this period with my kids. We only have a few more years together. I want to make them count, and I want them to leave with positive memories of how I showed up and not negative ones of how I fumbled our interactions.
Her guidance has become part of my playbook as I coach executives leading through tremendous workplace change. For that, I’m deeply grateful.
What's the concept you wish someone had handed you earlier — in leadership, or in life? I'd love to hear it in the comments.
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And wise leaders actually point that out. We had to let people go during a large merger. We prepared people for the future, like you recommended. Must move forward. Acknowledge the past, (and especially the achievements of the past) but move forward.
As a change practitioner for many decades, this rings true. Executives often plan change for months, then spring it on employees, throwing them into chaos. Life does that to teenagers. The analogy holds. Well written. Thank you.