Helping Students to Balance Judgment and Tolerance
By Tim Elmore You may remember watching the movie, Mean Girls. It was an iconic film for Millennials back in 2004. The story was about mean-spirited high school students…
How to Simplify Students’ Lives Without Making Them Easier
By Tim Elmore Jamie teaches English Literature to high school seniors. She’s also a mother of two teens, so she sees the stress levels of young people today from…
The Connection Between Portable Devices and Substance Abuse in Teens
By Tim Elmore In the past few years, there has been an alarming rise in substance use among youth in the U.S. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics…
How to Turn Frustration into Fascination as You Lead Young People
By Tim Elmore Jason couldn’t believe what he heard from the young job candidate. She became irritated twenty minutes into the interview and exclaimed in a loud voice that…
How to Stop Imitating and Start Originating
By Tim Elmore Years ago, social researchers revealed how little the average person thinks on their own. They reminded us that the law of diffusion is constantly in effect…
Creating a Game Plan for Educators and Parents on ChatGPT
By Tim Elmore If you haven’t yet heard of ChatGPT, you need to look into it. It is a new app from Open AI, a Silicon Valley tech company…
My Early Take on ChatGPT: What’s Amazing and What’s Alarming
By Tim Elmore My friend, Don Yeager, recently attended the National Speakers Association convention. In one of the sessions, an author stood on stage reviewing the content and writing…
A Conversation You Should Have about Grit with Your Teens
By Tim Elmore Max just told me about the project he completed for his Industrial Engineering class. This 19-year-old freshman at Louisiana Tech University had begun the assignment last…
What Generation Z Wants in a Leader
By Tim Elmore In this last midterm election, I met a young 25-year-old candidate for city council. He was a first-time candidate and seemed to have the ear of…
How Social and Emotional Learning Can Help Kids Mature
By Tim Elmore I remember the day the story broke. Tiger Woods had cheated on his wife and family. In November 2009, tabloids reported Woods was having an affair with…
What Do We Learn About Culture from TV Viewing Habits?
By Tim Elmore Every year, both the media and social media reveal to us how our culture is evolving. From the shows people watch, to the awards programs people…
How Parents Steal from Their Kids
By Tim Elmore I recently met with the faculty of a high-performing public high school. In our discussion, teachers mentioned how much parents got involved in their kids’ routines.…
Assembling a Team of Voices to Reach Your Teens
By Tim Elmore Like most mothers, my wife shared a common objection when our kids were teens. She’d make requests of them, repeatedly, but get no response. To be…
A Fresh Strategy for Students to Beat Anxiety
By Tim Elmore The numbers keep climbing. Both adults and students are suffering from anxiety levels that are worse than any period we’ve ever seen, including the Great Depression.…
The Shift Away From Instagram and Why It’s Happening
By Tim Elmore I could hardly believe my ears. Six freshmen college students participated in a conversation I hosted informally on their campus. I brought up the popularity of…
What Can Betty Robinson Teach Students about Grit?
By Tim Elmore You may have never heard the Betty Robinson story, but it’s worth knowing. It informs our work with students today. Betty was a kid who grew up…
Four Ideas to Help Today’s Kids Delay Gratification
By Tim Elmore One of the best decisions my parents made was during the summer of my eleventh year. I begged them to let me go to Bobby Leonard’s Sports…
How to Help Students Stop Making Excuses and Start to Grow
By Tim Elmore I was in a coaching session with a college freshman, who explained to me how she just wasn’t “a math person.” This launched a conversation about…
The Seven Best Books I Read Last Year
By Tim Elmore The Seven Best Books I Read Last Year Each year, I enjoy posting a list of my favorite books I read in the last twelve months.…
How to Have a Self-Aware Holiday
By Tim Elmore When I reflect on past holiday seasons in my life, I see that I suffered from acute low self-awareness. It wasn’t so much that I ruined Christmas…
Three Essentials to Leading Someone from a Different Generation
By Tim Elmore Three Essentials to Leading Someone from a Different Generation I continue to hear stories of Boomer or Gen X managers who become frustrated at the audacity of…
Seven Strategies to Influence a Student’s Choices
By Tim Elmore A college dean recently acknowledged to me an obvious truth. He said, “The older I get, the more different students become.” He said this,…
Don’t Allow Your Young People to Settle for Happiness
By Tim Elmore I know a young couple who recently got married, but shortly thereafter, one of the partners decided she didn’t want to stay married. Her reasoning? She wasn’t…
The Difference Between Rookies and Veterans at Work
By Tim Elmore Do you see stereotypes at work today? You know what I mean, don’t you? On the one hand, Millennials and Gen Zers assume that Baby Boomers are…
A Dozen More Gen Z Terms You Should Know
By Tim Elmore Something’s happened since the spring of 2020 that needs to be addressed. Many of us, especially those under 21, lost some of our communication skills. The lockdown,…
Ditch the Niche: An Exercise to Mix with Multiple Generations
By Tim Elmore The ebb and flow of our economy has been bad news for millions of families. The recession and the inflation that followed has created uncertainty. During…
Is It Possible to Assess Our Ability to Connect with Other Generations?
By Tim Elmore Janet experienced trouble at work just two weeks after she hired Rory. In their weekly meetings, Rory began expressing his distaste for the department’s current strategies. He…
Who’s Smarter These Days: The Young or the Old?
By Tim Elmore Last month, Janet called Rory into her office. She’s the department manager and Rory, a young professional, serves on her team. She did not appreciate his disrespect…
Ten Ideas to Keep Your Best Generation Z Talent
By: Tim Elmore Ten Ideas to Keep Your Best Generation Z Talent Tim Elmore / GrowingLeaders.com / TimElmore.com “Eighteen months,” declared my friend over lunch last week. “That’s about how…
How One Mom Kept Her Teen Off Social Media For Six Years
By: Tim Elmore How One Mom Kept Her Teen Off Social Media for Six Years If you watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, you know firsthand the challenges…
Skills Today’s Graduates Need to Succeed
By: Tim Elmore I graduated from college with good grades, but not straight As. Part of the reason was, I worked two or three jobs every year of my college…
Three Ingredients to Help Students Recover Following a Pandemic
By: Tim Elmore Today’s kids were already facing mental health problems. Now they feel delayed by COVID-19, and it’s added to their anxiety levels. According to Barna’s research, 82…
The Story of the Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee Bean
By: Tim Elmore A young girl went to her grandmother and complained about how hard life had become for her. She did not know how she was going to make it…
“Phoneliness”: A New Term Defining Reality for Generation Z
By: Tim Elmore Jared and Tabitha dated for ten months. They met on an app, and the first four months of their relationship was limited to online interactions. When they chose…
How Parents Must Correct Our Overcorrections
By: Tim Elmore A mother approached me recently after I spoke at a parents’ conference. She told me how much she cared for her 13-year-old son, yet many of his teachers…
Candles and Brush Fires
By: Tim Elmore I lived in southern California for many years. Every year, it seemed we heard about another fire that broke out. The dry, warm weather coupled with a careless…
Lessons in Grit from Ernest Shackleton’s Voyages
By: Tim Elmore An incredible discovery was just made beneath the ocean’s surface. Underwater drones were used to discover Ernest Shackleton’s famous ship, Endurance, the one that set out to reach…
What Do We Do When Kids Show More Courage than Police?
By: Tim Elmore Did you hear what just happened? Last week, Girl Scouts of the USA posthumously awarded ten-year-old Amerie Jo Garza of Uvalde, Texas, one of the highest honors bestowed…
Five Ways the Pandemic Changed Team Members From Generation Z
By: Tim Elmore I distinctly remember interviewing for a full-time job with John C. Maxwell in 1982. John was not famous yet, except in certain circles, but he already displayed lots…
How to Make the Most of Your Brain Based on Your Generation
By: Tim Elmore I just made a discovery. For the first time in my life, I realized I know people who are from seven sociological generations. My aunt and uncle are…
The Connection Between Aspiration and Inspiration in Kids
By: Tim Elmore A boy named Norris began mowing lawns four years ago. I’m not talking about mowing his own lawn; he’d been doing that already. I mean he began…
The Most Tangible Shift Generation Z Has Made from Millennials
By: Tim Elmore An NFL football coach recently told me of the tangible changes in professional athletes today compared to 25 years ago, when he first began coaching. He mentioned that…
How to Lead a Kid Who’s an Underdog
By: Tim Elmore Even if you’re not a big Kentucky Derby fan, you’ve probably heard what just happened in the last race at Churchill Downs. To say the winner was a…
Do you speak Generation Z’s Language?
By: Tim Elmore It’s been over 50 years since the term generation gap was first coined by Life magazine editor John Poppy. During the 1960s, he noticed a gap between…
Eleven Challenges All Young Employees Can Grow From
By: Tim Elmore As I spot “Help Wanted” signs on the windows of many establishments today, I often consider the qualities young job seekers should learn. Too often,…
One Social and Emotional Learning Step That Matures Students
By: Tim Elmore “My students enter the classroom as if they’re customers. They expect me to serve them curriculum, make it fun, and work hard to ensure they make good…
Compassion and Consequences: Can We Lead Students with Both?
By: Tim Elmore Last month, a Chicago Metra train conductor was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight. Not long after, photos of the robbery suspect were released, and that’s when…
How to Teach Social and Emotional Skills Without Being a Therapist
By: Tim Elmore Last month, I asked a group of educators a question, and the answer was revealing. A group of 21 teachers who use our Habitudes for Social…
The Best Way to View the Pandemic, Two Years Into COVID-19
By: Tim Elmore The name COVID-19 is derived from three words. The first syllable, CO, is taken from corona. The second syllable, VI, is taken from virus. The D is…
Welcome to the Land of Tomorrow: Millennials vs. Generation Z at Work
By: Tim Elmore Last October, The New York Times ran an article called “The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them.” It was about how entitled millennials are…