What Life Skills Are Not Taught In Schools?

#034 Many fundamental skills like networking, communication, negotiating, are not often taught in school. This is mostly due to the history behind the education system, which over time has continued to only focus on teaching the basic knowledge required in each career field. Unfortunately, most career courses even in university don't cover teaching these skills, even though they are practically critical for success in any field of specialty.
 
Mark Herschberg shares that even with 3 degrees from MIT, it was quite tough to properly manage his interactions within the workplace, and lost some opportunities because he lacked these very basic skills. Knowing he planned to become a Chief Technology Officer, he set out to teach himself and discovered that these skills aren't just for leaders but for all workers. MIT has also gotten feedback from companies, and other studies show a general scarcity in use. This is why Mark put together the program at MIT that teaches these skills and went ahead to write his book too. 

For full show note please go to Raising Financial Freedom.com

-       "If you just learn to negotiate… To be a little better… you can add 5 figures or 6 figures to your lifetime earnings" 

-       "Any good manager will tell you he or she wants to hire leaders, even for entry-level people"

 In This Episode:

·         [02:50] Meet today's guest, Mark Herschberg. 

·         [03:31] Why are there so many skills for kids that have been forgotten by the school system? 

·         [06:00] Do you feel that young adults are prepared enough today to step out into the real world?

·         [09:25] How was your transition stepping into the real world?

·         [11:46] How can a parent introduce their children to these skills, and when?

·         [13:59] About Mark's book; "The Career Toolkit"

·         [15:01] What action steps can parents take to get kids to learn these skills?

·         [20:43] Given only one choice, which one skill would you implement in your child?

·         [25:24] In the theme of health, wealth, and family, what advice would you give parents?

·         [27:05] How to connect with Mark

 Links Mentioned: 

• Mark’s Website: www.thecareertoolkitbook.com 
• Check out our website: https://raisingfinancialfreedom.com/
• Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RaisingFinancialFreedom
•  Like us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RF_Freed

Transcript

[00:00:00] Eric: Here on raising financial freedom, you stress financial literacy and finance and all the things money, I would say. But there are other skills that work hand in hand with financial literacy. Our guest today, Mark Herschberg is here to talk about what life skills are not taught in school and also his.

[00:00:20] The career toolkit, which talks about those same exact points, mark, as a seasoned university instructor and event speaker, and his book definitely brung up points, or I would say other aspects that I need to teach my child, not to stray off the topic too much. But as a parent, you will always like to know that what you're teaching your child is getting through to them.

[00:00:42] And that's the type of moment I recently had with my daughter. She came to me recently showing me. The debit card, a green light, and this is something she took upon herself to go look about because she was interested. I told her to look up some more information and come back to [00:01:00] me. I already knew a little bit about the card, but for her to go about it on her own was like an enlightening moment for me, because it just showed me that Hey, directly and indirectly what I'm telling her and showing her about money and financial literacy is rubbish.

[00:01:19] On her in more ways than one. I just thought I would share that with you, other parents out there that what you teach counts. So now let's get back into the show and let's get this started.

[00:01:35] Host daughter: Come on, dad, stop playing around and play the music.

[00:01:45] Introducer: Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have it all financially do well off parents simply hand their children money or is there more to this welfare? Welcome to raising financial freedom. The park. We are here to talk about everything you never knew to teach your [00:02:00] children when it comes to starting their financial future, the principles behind wealth and methods that are out there to teach your child about personal financial freedom.

[00:02:08] There was no real trick to earning other than money. We are here to discuss, teach and grow with you. Raising financial freedom, the podcast with your host and concern pair. Eric yard. Let us get right into today's show.

[00:02:25] Eric: Welcome everyone. To another episode of raising financial freedom. I would like to welcome Mark Herschberg.

[00:02:40] Mark: thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. How 

[00:02:43] Eric: are you doing today? I am 

[00:02:45] Mark: great. Thanks for having 

[00:02:46] Eric: me on. So mark. Now the book I read it and I loved some of the key points you had in there. Now the book to me spoke out to like basically a [00:03:00] Swiss army knife of skills that are forgotten and need to be implemented when a young adult steps out into the real world.

[00:03:09] So now my question to you. Why is there so much of no of these skills that I've lost? I'm not even lost. I would say just mainly for gotten by the school system, as of maybe saying negotiating and communication, stuff like that. 

[00:03:28] Mark: Right. Even really fundamental ones like networking, which we all grew up hearing from our parents and teachers and everyone talks about network.

[00:03:37] But no one actually steps to teach it to us. And the reason for that is the history behind our education system. The modern education system in the U S really grew up about 150 years ago. It's as we transitioned from working on the farms where we could just learn what we needed from our parents to an industrialized society, where we need basic skills, [00:04:00] reading, writing, arithmetic, to be able to function in factor.

[00:04:04] And then it was turned into offices and just in society in general, but for those type of jobs, it was just being functional. You didn't need to be great at networking to work in a factory. There weren't leadership skills necessary to our school system. Wasn't designed for them. And then our university system where we think students are really going to prepare for those white collar jobs.

[00:04:27] They often fail because our university system is run by. And they're wonderful people. I work with them all the time. We teach at MIT and elsewhere, but the professors are focused on very narrow area. So if your son or daughter goes off to get a marketing degree, when they go to college, the marketing professors will.

[00:04:46] If you want to get a marketing degree, we've determined you have to take this set of classes, introduction to marketing, advanced marketing, social media marketing, pick a few others, and maybe take some general requirements of school requires if you [00:05:00] do all that, we're going to give you a degree. But what that degree really means is you have achieved a certain level of knowledge in marketing.

[00:05:08] That's all the degree says you have taken these classes. Just knowledge. It doesn't even say that you're good at marketing, let alone good at communicating or leading or teamwork, or that you're even a good employee. All it says is that, you know this much about marketing and that has been seen as a product.

[00:05:26] And that was okay. About 80 some years ago when we had the mid-century corporation, when today's world, where the nature of our work has changed, that is not sufficient. And universities have not yet. In your 

[00:05:41] Eric: opinion, do you feel that young adults are prepared enough today to step out into the real world 

[00:05:47] Mark: prepared enough in that they can.

[00:05:50] Certainly they can function, but additional preparation can have a huge impact. And let me give you a concrete example. Let's take [00:06:00] negotiating. So consider that you have a student coming right out of school. And that's doing Kips offered a job for $60,000. If that student knows how to negotiate, instead of accepting for 60,000 student, goes back to the manager and says, here's why I'd like to get 61,000, then negotiate and you get a thousand dollars more.

[00:06:20] Now we can all imagine a thousand dollars. That's not a huge raise. That's not some master negotiation tactic. You could probably go from 60 to 61. If that young student does nothing else in her career, if she stays in that job the next 40 years, that one, five minute negotiation just got her $40,000 over her lifetime paid $40,000 in five years.

[00:06:44] But of course you're saying that's unrealistic. No, one's going to sit in a job for 40 years. No, one's going to say that salary for 40 years you'll have promotions and raises and other jobs. And you're probably going to negotiate for more than a thousand dollars. If you just learn to negotiate, not [00:07:00] again, to be the world's greatest negotiator, but just to be a little better than the nothing that we teach them, you can.

[00:07:07] Usually five figures, even six figures to your lifetime earnings. Now I give negotiation as an example because the math is very easy to see, but the same thing is true. In our networks with our leadership, with our communication. If we just get a little bit better, it's not that someone's going to say you're a better leader.

[00:07:26] Here's a thousand dollars more, but just being a little bit better, opens up new opportunities gets you faster. Promotions gets you better jobs, and we'll have that same five or six figure impact on your life just by getting a little. But unfortunately the baseline is near zero. So the good news is you don't have to go very far to get better than the baseline zero.

[00:07:50] Eric: Wow. And I could tell you, in a matter of fact, that negotiations is definitely not a topic in schools, not a topic in college, [00:08:00] which I feel is a definite skill that is needed in order to advance yourself because using the negotiations is. And in almost every aspect you could think about your life when for a bill, for a, for not just only getting a job, but by also just talking to people and doing contracts and others, 

[00:08:24] Mark: you are spot on.

[00:08:26] Not only we do it when we're negotiating a job or perhaps selling to a customer or dealing with a vendor. When in fact, the people we often spend the most time negotiating with are our coworkers. And we're trying to figure out how to divide up the project. And who's going to have the boring piece for the hard piece and how we can work together and how your team can work with my team.

[00:08:47] So we negotiate all the time. The example I gave was just about salary, but you are absolutely right that we get even more benefit by being a better coworker, a better employee, a better leader. [00:09:00] By learning to negotiate with our own team members. 

[00:09:03] Eric: Hmm, definitely. Definitely. How was your F your time stepping out into the real world?

[00:09:09] How was that transition? What skills that you have and did not have that you wish you could have implemented? 

[00:09:16] Mark: It was a tough one for me now. I graduated from MIT with three degrees and it was a.com era. So fortunately I was able to pretty easily find a job, but I quickly found out. I was bumping up into things, not intentionally.

[00:09:31] And thankfully I have some good natured coworkers and a great boss, but I didn't have these other skills. And I would say the wrong thing, or I wouldn't build relationships effectively. In fact, back in college, I was introduced to Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the world wide web, my thesis advisor, brought me into his office and said, this is mark.

[00:09:50] He just did this really amazing thesis. Here it is. You guys should chat. I chat to him for five hours. And that was it. I never spoke to him again, but here [00:10:00] was the ability to create connection with an amazing man. And I had no idea how to capitalize on it. I did that many times now I realized early in my career that these skills were important.

[00:10:12] In fact, I knew I wanted to become the CTO chief technology officer. So that's the person in charge of all the engineers. And when I thought about what that meant, I understood it didn't just mean being the best programmer. I knew how to be a programmer. It meant being a leader. It meant building teams and hiring people and negotiate it.

[00:10:32] And no one taught me. So I set out to develop these skills. I had to teach myself and realize these skills. Aren't just for leaders. They really are for all of us. In fact, any good manager will tell you he or she wants to hire a leaders, even for entry-level. But we don't teach this to our students coming out of college.

[00:10:51] And now, after putting together a program like this MIT, it turned out, had gotten feedback from a number of companies when they do their [00:11:00] surveys. And the company said the same thing. They are looking for these skills as well. And I can tell you, it's not just MIT. I've seen similar research for a number of universities.

[00:11:08] Companies want these skills, but they are not finding it. And that's why we put together the program at MIT that I've been teaching for 20 years. And I subsequently now release the book that covers the same topics. 

[00:11:20] Eric: Okay. So now we've just covered that in fact, that the schools are not covering these essential skills.

[00:11:27] How can a parent introduce some of these skills to them? Um, child and when should they start introducing 

[00:11:36] Mark: it? It will, of course vary a bit by the nature of your particular child. For many of these skills, you can probably start targeting them around middle school as they become a teenager, maybe preteen some things I think you can start to develop even younger.

[00:11:54] So networking skills, for example. Networking is just relationships with other people and [00:12:00] your children of course emulate your behavior. If they see how you engage with other people. And are you friendly, do you reach out, try to help other people or just sit back and we'll maybe if I run them to his personal talk to him, otherwise I'm not going to make that outreach.

[00:12:14] I'm not going to engage with them. I'm not going to ask how they're doing and what's going on in their lives. Might do see them somewhere outside the student's going to pick up on this. So that's when you can probably start. But called these other skills, like leadership, you can talk about with your students or with your children as they engage in activities, as you see them, as you see other students and children, and you can ask them, how do you think this went?

[00:12:40] Did you notice tiles? What did you like or not like about Kyle's behavior of Kyle just exemplified some leadership. Is that something you could do? Hey, you just tried this. How did that go? How did that feel? What worked, what didn't work. And so really the way to learn. Yes. You could give them books. You can have them listen to podcasts and read, but [00:13:00] it's a lot like basketball.

[00:13:01] You can't just say here's a book on basketball. Great. Now you have to actually be out there doing it. So have your son or daughter do it and then talk to them about how it goes. Ideally now the way we teach our students at MIT and the way top business schools do this is you create peer learning groups where they talk to each other.

[00:13:20] And if you could do this with a few different kids, get some other parents, the parents of your son or daughter's friends, and altogether work on this and have your kids discuss it with each other. They're going to get a lot out of that peer discussion and that peer learning and you can help to facilitate and really start them down this journey.

[00:13:41] Eric: The book, the career toolkit. How did it get started and why did you start? Did 

[00:13:47] Mark: you publish really? I thought I should write up some notes for our class, the class that I've been teaching for 20 years, it's a very interactive class. We're not simply lecturing at the students. We have [00:14:00] them engage in activities and get that learning experience firsthand.

[00:14:05] I think one of the downsides is they get really engaged and excited, but they're not taking a lot of notes. They do this during the semester, or they forget it. Months later, where they go off into an internship, I thought we should just write up some notes for the class. I really thought I was going to write up about 20 pages of notes with 20 pages became 40 than 80.

[00:14:23] And pretty soon it became a book. I thought, okay, you know what, I'm going to take all this. We're going to take some other topics that we don't always get to cover in the class, but that we know. Desired by companies. And I'm going to turn it into, as you describe it, a Swiss army knife of really the tools we need to be successful.

[00:14:41] Eric: No, as a parent, right? How, what are some surefire action steps I can take when engage in mind? Child in order to get a sample of these skills into them. 

[00:14:53] Mark: One thing to understand about these skills is that they all have an important mindset [00:15:00] shift from what we unfortunately stereotype these skills to be.

[00:15:04] Let me give you two examples. When we think of networking and we meaning most adults, we have that vision of the salesperson who walks into some conference happy hour and 30 minutes later comes back with a dozen business cards. Oh, okay. That person master networker, look at all the business cards he got.

[00:15:22] That's not networking. That's going out. Shaking hands, collecting cars. Those aren't relationships. Saying someone whose business card you got is now in your network. It's like saying someone who just swipe right on you on a dating app is now your significant other. That's not a relationship that's maybe the start, but really what networking is, it is building relationships.

[00:15:44] That business card might be the first step. We just have to go and meet and engage with people. And when you get this mindset shift, I have to collect business cards. I have to add connections on LinkedIn. I have to have a big Rolodex for those of you parents who might remember Rolodexes, that's not the [00:16:00] right way to think about, but when you think about it as building relationships, which can be done, one-on-one, doesn't have to be done at large.

[00:16:06] I just think, how are you? Let me get to know you. What's important to you. You change how you approach networking, and you're no longer worried about how many business cards did I get today? Likewise, when it comes to career St. People think the way to teach our children and our students about careers is just shotgun them with a bunch of careers.

[00:16:26] This is a fireman. This is a doctor. This is an astronaut. Here's all the jobs. Would you like to be a fireman? And that's it. And this students will look and say, I don't like the unit. Which let's face it for a nine year old. That's a valid part of the decision making. And so they just look for, do I fit?

[00:16:42] Yes or no, but in fact, the way we want to think about our careers and the way we want to teach our children to think about them is what might be of interest. And most parents already know, oh, my student is my child's interested in. Or in math. Okay. If you're [00:17:00] interested in math, focus them on sticks careers, but we can go even further.

[00:17:04] Do they tend to like, to meet new people? Do they prefer to really be more solitary? Do they like structure or do they like to set their own process and path? And when you get down to these job components, That's going to help you better understand what job, not just what industry, but what type of job might be right for you where you might say, I like this industry.

[00:17:27] I like this work, but I want to do more field sales because I don't like being tied to an office. I like to meet new people versus I really like working with numbers and spreadsheets and sitting quietly by myself for hours on end. Okay. Maybe accounting might be a better path for you, but we do it based on the components and not, this is an accountant say yes or no.

[00:17:51] Eric: I, what you just said there, brung, brung back some memories. And I feel that basically what you talked about, there was [00:18:00] the very first chapter in your book, which is a career plan. I feel that should be a definite class. The 11th and 12th grade of high school for a child. And when I was in high school, I didn't receive a class like that said, Hey, where are you think you going with?

[00:18:21] What career do you think you like? Let's explore it. And I think the last two years of high school, it should be a definite class like that. And maybe two classes like that, but I never got into 

[00:18:34] Mark: one. We definitely need to expose them to how to think about careers instead of just here's a set. And here's a problem that we see with a lot of college students.

[00:18:44] A lot of college juniors and seniors are very focused on their first job out of it. I've been through a couple of recessions. Now we've had the.com crash. We've had the great recession and now of course the COVID recession and what happens every [00:19:00] time is students at the time of that recession, they say, oh, the jobs in this industry suddenly have dried up.

[00:19:07] Therefore I'm going to pick a different industry. We saw, for example, the number of people going into finance. Took a massive dip around 2000 8, 9, 10. And so what it means is that the student choices it's being impacted by these external events. We know that there wasn't suddenly something in the water for that certain year when they were born, that changed their preferences.

[00:19:29] They were responding to externality and granted for some folks, especially if you've been. Uh, taking out a lot of college debt. If you have family obligations, you might say, I really need this job that pays me today and I can't wait around. But what happens when students make decisions about who's just going to hire me right out of school, they tend to put themselves on a path.

[00:19:50] That's going to last them for decades. And in chapter one, I talk about how you think about your career plan down the road and how choices you make today can [00:20:00] impact. Then it open up or remove options later. And unfortunately, our students never think that way. They're thinking really in the next one to three years, And making choices that will have a longer term impact, but being totally unaware of now 

[00:20:14] Eric: my favorite skill others' book was basically negotiations.

[00:20:19] And I guess career plan will be right behind that, but it was negotiation mark. If you had a child and you had to pick one skill. Which one would you look to implement onto your child? 

[00:20:33] Mark: It's hard to pick just one, but I would probably go with communication. Communication, really underpinned. A lot of these other skills and communication is a broad topic.

[00:20:45] You could read 20 books on communication and they all cover something different. I focused on really the fundamentals of communication. So let me describe what that means. Think about a basic model. Left-brain right-brain people [00:21:00] imagine someone who is extremely left brain, almost stereotypically comically left brain.

[00:21:06] If you need to communicate an idea to this. Like be your boss, your friend, your son, or daughter, if you needed to communicate that idea, how would you. You'd probably do so in a very rigorous, formal structured process. Now think about that same person, but being very extremely, they're not wanting to sit through a 17 point logical argument, that person and wants to be emotionally inspired.

[00:21:32] You want to use storytelling, you want to use imagery, you would take a very different approach in how you engage that person and how you might communicate to that person in the chapter. What I do is break down those concepts. I create a couple larger models and just this two-step model I described.

[00:21:51] Right. And really give you the framework that you can create arbitrary models, but recognizing that we all have different communication styles and learning how [00:22:00] to communicate with people who have these different styles really can make you significantly more effective in your personal and profession.

[00:22:08] Yeah. 

[00:22:08] Eric: Communication. Yeah. That is definitely a foundation. Yeah. Or the skills that I read in the book, the career toolkit, once it was published, how did you, 

[00:22:18] Mark: I was pretty excited to get out there. I've gotten wonderful feedback from readers, from people who've come to my talk. And by the way, if you ever read a book, authors really appreciate that.

[00:22:31] When I teach in a classroom, I engage with the students. I see how they're feeling about I can judge, are they responding? Is it sinking in as an author? Of course we're blind to all of this. And so it's always so wonderful to hear how something is doing if it worked, if it didn't, that's helpful. So we can of course revise it.

[00:22:51] When we put out another edition of the book. But it's really been great to see how this has been doing and how it's been able to really help people lead [00:23:00] more successful, happier careers and laws. Yes. This 

[00:23:03] Eric: is definitely a book that you book more put bookmarks in your in depth pages, your highlights, certain lines to come back to because, um, once again, these skills is forgotten now these days, and it's overlooked, especially negotiation.

[00:23:20] I've 

[00:23:20] Mark: actually helped to do some that worked for you. You can of course take that highlight or bookmark the page I encourage you to do, but if you don't want to do that work, you can also download the free companion app, the career toolkit app it's available in both the Android and iPhone stores. This has the key tips, the key quotes, the salient points of the book.

[00:23:42] And when you download onto your phone is completely free. Doesn't record any information. It just sits on your phone and each day it's going to pop up a reminder. It's almost like a daily affirmation, but with these tips, because we know that when you read a book like this, you forget it [00:24:00] three weeks ago.

[00:24:01] You forget, most of them, certainly our students do because they're focused on so many other things. So by having it as the app, it just pops up each day. This is a technique known as spaced repetition, which has been proven to help increase retention. And so just each day you set whatever time you want to come up, you get that reminder about networking or negotiating or whatever tip you want, and then you swipe it away and reinforced it.

[00:24:24] Or if, for example, Your child is about to go into a psychology interview. You can go to the interview tips, open up the chapter and just flip through those things. And quickly get that refresher. So you can use this in different ways to supplement what you're learning in the book and really create that retention because I'm not in the business of just selling books.

[00:24:47] I'm in the business of trying to help you be more effective. I think the app is a useful companion to the book to help you 

[00:24:53] Eric: do that. Thank you for that piece of information, because I did not know about the app. I didn't even know. [00:25:00] Wow. Okay. So now in the theme of health, wealth, and family, what is the best piece of advice you could give the parents?

[00:25:10] When 

[00:25:10] Mark: you are meeting someone else and you're thinking, okay, here's someone, I know nothing about this person. I don't know how to engage, how to connect, how to try and create a relationship between the two of us. These are three things. They were inspired by Keith Ferazi. He uses health, wealth, and children.

[00:25:30] I do it as health, wealth, and family as a larger set, because these are the three things that are unique. These are the three things that are universal health. How are you doing? That's how we start conversations, especially these days with COVID. How are you feeling? Is your family healthy? Are you doing okay?

[00:25:46] Wealth really comes down to our jobs, our career and wealth. We can take broadly. It's not just financially. It's are you happy and successful? Whatever that means to you because that's something we all care [00:26:00] about success. However, we define it. And then family, of course. Our children, our parents, our spouse, our extended families, even our close friends are meaningful to us.

[00:26:11] And so showing concern and interest in them helps foster that relationship. So when you meet someone new and you say, I know nothing about this person, You can always start asking about health, wealth, and family, and that will help you create that connection. 

[00:26:26] Eric: Sounds good. That definitely sounds good. When I read that in a book, I was like, yeah.

[00:26:31] Yeah, definitely. It makes sense. It definitely makes sense, mark. I want to thank you for. Coming on the show and sharing with us about your book, the career toolkit, let us know what other projects you may have coming out and how we could get in contact with you in order to continue this conversation.

[00:26:52] This fall, 

[00:26:53] Mark: I'm beginning to do some work on additional books. And for that, I would just love feedback on [00:27:00] this one to know. Are there things that I missed? Are there other topics that weren't covered as I think about where to go with additional books, you can find me on my website@thecareertoolkitbook.com.

[00:27:11] You can certainly get in touch with me or follow me on social media. Learn more about the book, including where to buy it. Amazon, of course, as well as your local bookstore. Or libraries were now getting picked up by a number of libraries. And then you can also go to the app page. That's going to take you to the Android or iPhone store where you can download the free app, or you can go to the resources page where it lists a number of other books, as well as free online resources and some free downloads to really help you with your own career or that of your child to really develop these skills and be successful.

[00:27:45] All of this at the website, the career toolkit book. Mark 

[00:27:50] Eric: once again. Thank you for coming on the show and I'll definitely look out for anything you have going in the future. 

[00:27:57] Mark: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure [00:28:00] 

[00:28:00] Eric: talking to mark. You can see there other skills that work hand in hand with money negotiations alone, is this telling me, man, I got more to teach her other than what I'm doing right now.

[00:28:13] Negotiation is, is big for me. If I. Man. I would have been negotiating all my jobs, but once again, I didn't know anything about negotiation and I was never taught about it, but that is going to change when it comes to my daughter. And as you see, as a parent, teaching them about money, just doesn't have to stop right there.

[00:28:32] Keep it going. Add on build. What do you have to lose as always, I would like you to share, tell other parents about the show, email texts, share on your social. This will definitely help the show and spreading the word as always stay safe. 

[00:28:52] Introducer: We really hope you enjoyed this episode of financial freedom. The podcast stay connected with us directly through raising financial [00:29:00] freedom.com.

[00:29:01] You could also join the discussion on social media, which you can also find links on our website. If you would like to speak with us, please send us an email to info@raisingfinancialfreedom.com. And as always thank you for pushing your mindset towards a better reality. This concludes the most thought provoking portion of your day.

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