When You Respond to Your Screenager, Are You Really Engaged?
When You Respond to Your Screenager, Are You Really Engaged?
Or are you over (or under) reacting in the eyes of your Screenagers?
Remember, when I say Screenagers, I’m including everyone because we are all Screenagers in this screenage where we are learning to deal with distractions and this new disease I will call, “Screen Distraction Disorder (SDD).”
One day my tandem instructor at Dale Carnegie, Steve Holland, told me something that I hope to never forget.
He said to me, “When you are responding to class members in the training room you act like they’re the most important beings on the planet, because during your response to them they are the most important beings on the planet. That is high value engagement.
We were practicing what Dale Carnegie taught which is to be genuinely interested in your Screenagers (actually, he said ‘the other person.’)
When you respond to your screenagers are you making them feel like they’re the most important beings on the planet?
One day while I had taken my almost Screenagers to local trampoline Park called, Bounce, I was sitting next to a parent who was complaining to (and for anyone in the massive room) about how his kids were not properly responding to him.
The interesting thing is when he was talking to his Screenagers he wasn’t looking at them because he was staring at his device screen.
Next time you go out and about, have a look around and you’ll see and hear it isn’t unusual to find parents not giving their full attention to Screenagers. How would you feel if you were one of those Screenagers?
And I see those parents who are really giving full undivided attention to their kids are getting much more interested responses.
Now, let’s look at how we respond and take it to the next step past our focused listening that we talked about yesterday.
We talked about wisdom is looking at the whole situation including motives, backgrounds, and circumstances, and then choosing a response you feel will most effective to experience engagement with your Screenagers.
Wisdom responding is just listening well, then saying and/or doing what’s appropriate to the Screenagers based on the conversation and situation.
Wisdom is going to be most supportive when it’s the point of you that you take when you are responding in an appropriate way that will help you show you care to your screenagers.
When I say listening, I mean looking and feeling the heart of your screenagers to engage their ‘come from’, point of view, or their worries.
Responding is not saying things like, “I told you so,” or “If you would have done what I told you,” or “This is what you need to do because…” Most important, that is junk engagement.
As human beings, Screenagers (that’s most everyone) will just shut down when they hear comments like that.
As Tim Gallwey talks about in his book the inner game of Tennis, our own interference (that we experience in our minds) slows us from our potential.
All this comes back to the question you will want to ask yourself before you respond to your Screenagers.
Ask yourself, “Is my response truly going to support that Screenager?”
Are you following Steve Holland’s rule of thumb by treating everybody who comes into contact with you as the most important Screenager (my word, not his) on the planet?
Ask yourself, “Do I care how important is this person to me? and “What do they need from me to show them care?”
It take a good deal of commitment to practice and rehearse to respond appropriately (not over responding or under responding) in difficult situations.
Because my training and coaching I gather a great deal of information from participants, they learn to see the value in their analytics of how they are currently responding and build better skills for more powerful responses for difficult situations.
As always, use your own best judgement based on the situation.
Respond with care empathy and wisdom you will build loyalty.
Remember, come join tomorrow to see more Improving Your Engagement with Screenagers and others inspirational experiences and ideas for Optimal Engagement in the ScreenAge.
Remember to engage tomorrow.
Following you then.
Keep it simple.
All the Best, Warren
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