PART TWO

HOW TO TEACH THE MISSING BASICS TO TODAY'S YOUNG TALENT

Part Two of this book is dedicated to helping you teach the missing basics—complete with step-by-step lesson plans. The missing basics are organized into chapters based on three old-fashioned categories:

How to Teach the Missing Basics of Professionalism
How to Teach the Missing Basics of Critical Thinking
How to Teach the Missing Basics of Followership

All of the exercises within the lesson plans are exercises we have developed and tested over the years in our “career skills” and “managing your boss” seminars with young people in the workplace, following this basic teaching strategy:

Make them aware: Name it and describe what the skill means to the organization.
Make them care: Explore what the skill means to them.
Sell it: Explain the “self-building” value of the skill.
Break it down: Spell out exactly what they need to do, step-by-step.
Make it easy: Use ready-made lessons and exercises.
Involve them: Give them “credit” for self-directed learning.
Make it practical: Spotlight opportunities to practice on the job.
Follow up with coaching style feedback to reinforce the lessons whenever possible.

All of the exercises and lessons are designed to be highly flexible and easy to use:

They can be given as “take-home” exercises to any individual or group;
They can be used to guide one-on-one discussions with direct reports;
They can be conducted in a classroom as written exercises or as group discussions;
Almost all of them can be done easily inside of an hour within a team meeting or an extended one-on-one;
Some exercises may be such a good fit for the needs of a particular individual or for your team as a whole that you may find yourself returning to them over and over on a regular basis.

Not every lesson or exercise is for every team or individual, of course. Feel free to modify any of the lessons to fit your needs. Spend time every day or every week building up the soft skills of your team. Send a powerful message. Make them aware. Make them care. Help them learn the missing basics one by one—one exercise at a time. Build them up and make them better. They will be so glad you did. You will be, too! Not to mention every manager they ever have for the rest of their careers.