Guiding the Next Great Generation: Rethinking How Teens Become Confident and Capable Adults

By Jonathan Catherman

It's cliché to say today's adults hope the best for the next generation, yet fear the worst. As the gap between generations widens and our shared experiences dwindle, adults find it increasingly difficult to connect with and remain relevant to today's young people. So the question is, what values can we pass on that will help them to become the next great generation? And how do we communicate those values effectively?

In this paradigm-shifting book, Jonathan Catherman shares with adults raised in the 1900s a fresh look at guiding 21st-century youth to become confident and capable adults. With relevant research and real-world examples, Catherman shows us the benefits of practicing and teaching four principles that will unite and empower us all:

- build bridges between generations
- transform raw talent into valued strengths
- practice stewardship before leadership
- live with purpose

Whether the emerging generation knows it or not, they need you. Their greatness tomorrow begins with your guidance today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781493421190

Jonathan Catherman

Jonathan Catherman is the author of the international bestselling book The Manual to Manhood, as well as Raising Them Ready, Becoming the Next Great Generation, and Guiding the Next Great Generation. He coauthored the bestseller The Manual to Middle School with his sons, Reed and Cole, and The Girls' Guide to Conquering Life and The Girls' Guide to Conquering Middle School with his wife, Erica. Jonathan speaks worldwide about the principles and strengths that empower greatness in children, teens, young adults, and parents. Learn more at www.TheCathermans.com.

Book preview

"This powerful text serves as a road map to help guide the next generation toward current and future successes. Using relevant stories, proven models, and practical strategies, Jonathan Catherman offers the reader an opportunity to navigate the challenges faced in harnessing the unlimited potential of our teens. Moving beyond the traditional and often outdated notions of leadership, Guiding the Next Great Generation is a must-read to help inform and empower teachers, coaches, stakeholders, and parents to use strengths, stewardship, and purpose as catalysts to help guide and develop future leaders. This text will now be an integral part of our teaching and learning curriculum for years to come."

Matthew Ohlson, PhD, director of the Taylor Leadership Institute and associate professor in the Department of Leadership, School Counseling & Sport Management, University of North Florida

"We have no choice about aging, but getting old is a decision all humans make. Reading Guiding the Next Great Generation, I felt like a student and a teacher. Jonathan has created a must-read guide for generations of leaders."

Ron Kitchens, CEO of Southwest Michigan First and author of Uniquely You: Transform Your Organization by Becoming the Leader Only You Can Be

"Jonathan Catherman presents a compelling case about the potential for today’s youth to become the next great generation. With chapter after chapter filled with practical tools and insights, this book is a must-read for parents, teachers, and coaches, as well as any adult who is in a position to support, guide, and positively influence young individuals, helping them discover how to live a life of service and purpose. After reading Guiding the Next Great Generation, you’ll be inspired to do even more to equip young people in your life with the skills needed to solve the challenges of tomorrow and prepare them for greatness."

Nicole Suydam, president and CEO of Goodwill of Orange County, CA

Books by Jonathan Catherman

The Manual to Manhood

The Manual to Middle School

Guiding the Next Great Generation

Becoming the Next Great Generation

With Erica Catherman

The Girls’ Guide to Conquering Life

The Girls’ Guide to Conquering Middle School

© 2020 by Jonathan Catherman

Published by Revell

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.revellbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-2119-0

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.com.

Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Dedicated to my sons, Reed and Cole—

may my ceiling be your floor.

Contents

Cover    1

Endorsements    2

Half Title Page    3

Books by Jonathan Catherman    4

Title Page    5

Copyright Page    6

Dedication    7

Acknowledgments    11

Personal Message to Readers    13

Introduction    17

CHALLENGE 1: BUILD BRIDGES    31

1. The Space between Us    33

2. New Normal    43

3. Crossing Over    49

CHALLENGE 2: PRACTICE STEWARDSHIP BEFORE LEADERSHIP    57

4. Rethinking Leadership    59

5. Membership: Can I Join You?    64

6. Stewardship: Walk the Walk    72

7. Leadership: By Invite Only    86

CHALLENGE 3: TRANSFORM RAW TALENTS INTO VALUED STRENGTHS    101

8. View from 30,000 Feet    103

9. Talent: Value 1    111

10. Training: Value 2    118

11. Timing: Value 3    136

12. Treasure: Value 4    148

13. Strength    169

CHALLENGE 4: LIVE WITH PURPOSE    177

14. One-of-One    179

15. Vision Defines Your Where    185

16. Mission Defines Your Why    190

17. Goals Define Your What    197

Conclusion    209

Notes    213

About the Author    219

Back Ads    221

Back Cover    226

Acknowledgments

There are a handful of people I want to thank.

You are my family, friends, mentors, and colleagues who went before me, walked beside me, and had my back on the adventure of writing two books at once. Guiding the Next Great Generation and Becoming the Next Great Generation made it to print because of your encouragement, support, and push for me to never give up on what I can’t go a day without thinking about.

Personal Message to Readers

In 1997 Apple launched their Think Different ad campaign. In a sixty-second narrated video featuring some of the twentieth century’s most iconic influencers, Apple challenged people to believe they, too, are crazy enough to change the world for the better. In a series of short clips, now famous mavens including Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, and Amelia Earhart briefly appear in celebration of their disruption to our then-traditional ways of thinking. Over historic black-and-white images, the narrator pays tribute to their brilliance with the oft-quoted Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently . . . The famous manifesto goes on to celebrate how the very same people who were once described as crazy came to be recognized as true genius for their credit in changing the human race. The short piece ends with the statement Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.1

I’ve found the entirety of these words inspiring enough to commit them to both memory and heart. Just as Apple sought to impress upon consumers that their brand had examined and clarified who they were and what they stood for as a company, my goal in writing this book is to challenge us to think different about the significance of who we are and how we will change the world. Specifically, will our influence in guiding today’s young people help them discover their very best, empower them to do and be even better than us, and in turn, ensure they become the Next Great Generation?

Call me crazy if you like (I’ll take it as a compliment), but I believe today’s emerging generation of tweens, teens, and twentysomethings possesses more potential to do good in this world than any generation before them. Don’t believe me? Read on and I’ll do my best to convince you. Agree with me? Read on and we’ll do our best to convince our sons and daughters, students, and mentees that they can exceed the successes of parents, grandparents, and all the famous crazy people history now calls geniuses. But for them to become the kind of change agents who press the world ahead, we too must be crazy enough to think different about what they will need to succeed. Today’s new normal is truly unprecedented and requires us to revamp our old ways of thinking about the importance of stewardship, the development of strengths, and the significance of purpose.

Though I remain eighteen at heart, the years of my youth are falling further and further behind. As a dyslexic, I’ve spent my lifetime seeing things a little differently and not always fitting in. Turns out I’m in good company with other creative thinkers who have been richly blessed both personally and professionally because we think different. Today’s youth are preparing to launch into the independence stage of their lives. As they grow and go into what we may never know, I am confident they too will discover that their greatest contributions will come when they look at the world from new and different perspectives. I’m choosing to invest in a few basic recalibrations to how we’ve done things for years, in the belief that thinking and acting a little different will benefit the next generation as they set out to accomplish their hopes and dreams, goals, and plans of changing the world for the better. Care to join me?

—Jonathan Catherman

Introduction

It isn’t considered eavesdropping when someone is talking loud enough for all to hear. Considering the tone of voice and volume level, the middle-aged man’s conversation was probably overheard by almost everybody at the market. Standing beside a cart displaying fresh, locally grown vegetables, he waxed poetically down a long list of grievances. His obvious displeasure specifically focused on the faulty ways of the younger generation. The beardless youth . . . does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money, he openly scolded.1

Now before we let our minds imagine such strong condemnation cast in the direction of a fresh-faced twentysomething purchasing herb-infused organic honey from a farm-to-fork hydroponic horticulturalist, let’s stop and consider the actual date and place. This is not a trendy pop-up urban farmers’ market featuring live music, face painters, and tech-savvy vendors equipped with wireless credit card readers. Quite the opposite. This is Rome, first century BC. The poet and Roman senator Quintus Horatius Flaccus, popularly known today as just Horace, is upset with the lack of judgment and few capabilities of his day’s youth.

Déjà Vu

If you are thinking this first-century generational disapproval echoes what many are saying about today’s twenty-first-century youth, you are correct. The number of people who believe their children and grandchildren are falling far short of their potential has never been greater. Or has it?

Centuries Past

Throughout the ages, it seems nearly all elders have had something disapproving to say about the misguided ways of those following, not so closely, in their footsteps. Three hundred years before Roman aristocrats were selling their kids short, the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle voiced his concerns about the arrogances of the young.

They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.2

Step back another hundred years and we find that the great Socrates felt similarly. Cited by his student Plato, Socrates is said to have believed this:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.3

Moving east and forward over a thousand years to the 1300s, the Japanese monk Yoshida Kenkō penned his concerns in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness):

Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. . . . The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say, raise the carriage shafts or trim the lamp wick, but people today say, raise it or trim it. When they should say, Let the men of the palace staff stand forth! they say, Torches! Let’s have some light!4

Jump ahead to Great Britain in 1624, when British preacher and author Thomas Barnes published The Wise-Man’s Forecast against the Evill Time:

Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie. . . . The ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.5

Old English aside, it doesn’t sound like Minister Barnes held much hope for the sawcie (insolent, impudent, presumptuous, defiant) young people of his time.

In 1771 a letter was printed in Town and Country stating,

Whither are the manly vigor and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt.6

The 1900s saw little deviation from the opinion that youthful insufficiency hadn’t changed much in over 2,000 years. It seems history was once again repeating itself.

1904

Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline . . .7

1925

We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.8

1951

Many [young people] were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there