Warning - this episode uses a specific curse word - a lot. And once we started using one, we started using more of them. So…if f-bombs, sprinkled like salt are not your cup of tea, this is a good episode to skip!
My guest today is Rebecca R Block, PhD, who is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.
She also wrote a book with the word “Shit” in the title…or Shit, with an asterisk where the “I” goes, which actually makes her book a bit hard to google!
The book is titled “Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life,” and she teamed up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator.
In the opening quote Becca outlines the ABCs of Motivation. These ABCs are true for children and adults - we’re basically the same species. And the work of luminaries such as Peter Senge and Amy Edmondson make it clear that great working environments are great learning environments - places where we can create and sustain positive feedback learning loops with ourselves and others. So it’s essential for anyone leading or managing others (or themselves!) to understand how motivation really works.
We also talk about Becca’s essential values when it comes to co-creation - that is, making a systems change along with the people in that system who will be affected by that change. Co-creation is not just a good idea… it leverages the truths about motivation that Becca shared in her opening quote. People are much more likely to want to participate in change that they’ve taken part in forming, rather than going along with something forced on them.
Two Levels of Systems Change
We also talk about the need to work on at least two levels when engaging in systems change:
Helping people, now
Helping make a bigger shift, over time.
Given that Becca knows how challenging it can be to transform a system as complex as education, she focuses her work in this book on helping people, now, to work to create change for themselves, within the current system. This perspective is helpful for anyone leading a team in a larger organization or anyone leading an organization within a larger industry they are hoping to transform.
Listen in for Becca’s deeper breakdown of the ABC’s of motivation, as well, summarized here!
The ABCs of Motivation
Ability
Belonging
Choices
Ability: In any situation where you want someone (or even yourself!) to have sustained motivation, you need the Ability to do (or learn how to do) the things you want to do. Indeed, whenever you find that someone isn’t doing something you have asked them to do, it’s important to ask - is this an issue of Will or Skill? In other words, can they do the thing? If they can’t yet, do they have the confidence in their ability to learn the thing?
Belonging: Real relationships help us accomplish things. I show up for my Spanish lessons (partly) because I’ve paid for them, and partly because I’d feel bad for standing up my tutor, even though the classes are online. Ditto for my exercise classes. Real relationships create real motivation. In a recent episode, I spoke with Robbie Hammond, Co-founder of the High Line, who talked about how his relationship with his Co-Founder Josh David kept him going through a difficult decade of bringing their dream to reality - talk about Relationships = Motivation!
Choices: Having real choices means you have the autonomy to determine for yourself what you are going to do. “Liberty or Death” isn’t much of a choice - although it is one many have taken. Becca suggests that dysfunctional workplaces create crappy or fake choices, and functional ones enable everyone to see how the work fits into their own personal why.
I connect these ideas to my recent interview with Ashley Goodall, author of “Nine Lies about Work” and most recently “The Problem with Change." Ashley says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” This is what every human (and teenager!) actually really wants, if they can connect to the ABCs of motivation.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
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More About Becca Block, PhD
Rebecca R Block, PhD, is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.
In her recent book, Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life, she paired up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator.
As such, she can talk about any of the following topics:
Education: Why there need to be more resources about education driven by what students say they want and need–and why meaningful learning requires them to have meaningful choices, belonging, and a continually growing sense of their abilities.
Motivation: How researching teen motivation caused her to learn some surprising truths about her own motivation (and sometimes lack thereof) as an adult, parent, and member of the workforce.
Research methods: Why ethnography and participatory design informed her approach to this particular book, and how those methods can help more workplaces and schools.
Parenting students: What to do if you’re worried about how your teen engages in school–whether they’re apathetic or so high achieving they risk burnout–and why these two reactions are just different sides of the same coin.
Parenting as a researcher: How listening to young people’s stories made it easier for her to connect with her own kids (an elementary schooler and a middle schooler).
AI Summary by Grain
Becca discussed the importance of involving students in defining and solving problems related to their learning experiences and highlighted the concept of sustained motivation based on self-determination theory. Daniel emphasized the importance of designing with stakeholders and including diverse voices in the design process to create more inclusive outcomes. Both speakers emphasized the importance of self-reflection and assessing motivation levels before interacting with others, especially in a parenting context.
- Becca shares the inspiration behind writing a book aimed at helping students care about their education, emphasizing the need to involve students in defining and solving problems related to their learning experiences. 3:24
- Becca explains the concept of sustained motivation based on self-determination theory, emphasizing the importance of autonomy, belonging, and choices for individuals to feel motivated and succeed in any context. 6:06
- Becca discusses the significance of engaging in meaningful conversations with young people to empower them in their learning process, contrasting the common approach of talking about or to teens instead of listening and including them in decision-making. 9:00
- Daniel responds to the previous discussion, emphasizing the importance of designing with stakeholders and co-designing solutions with those closest to the challenges to create meaningful insights and drive impactful change. 17:48
- Becca highlights the significance of including diverse voices in the design process from problem definition onwards to avoid perpetuating inequities and creating more inclusive outcomes. 21:50
- Daniel discusses the importance of unlocking motivation through ability, belonging, and choice, seeking advice on how to remember key concepts for better implementation. 26:51
- Daniel and Becca emphasize the importance of self-reflection and assessing motivation levels before interacting with others, especially in a parenting context. 28:48
- Becca discusses the inefficiencies and shortcomings of the current educational system, highlighting the disconnect between preparing young people for adulthood and engaging them effectively in problem-solving and critical thinking. 35:42
Full AI Transcript
Daniel Stillman 00:00
And now we're really live. And now I can officially welcome you to the conversation factory. At last. Becca block. We made it. All the conversations that we've had in our entire lives that have led us to this moment. I'm, like, thinking of, like, from this moment, it's. Sorry. I'm just. My brain. You just create a space, Becca, where I just feel free to be myself. So I hope you feel the same way. I'm really excited that we're going to be.
Becca Block, PhD 00:26
I do.
Daniel Stillman 00:28
Amazing. So, okay, first of all, what are your favorite conversation types? Like, what's your favorite kind of conversation?
Becca Block, PhD 00:38
Oh, gosh, I love having any conversation that. Well, one that fits the bill that you just described of, like, someone's actually saying what they actually think, and we are engaged in talking about what we mean rather than what we don't mean. But I especially love conversations that both Fitzhe that bill and fit the bill of. Furthermore, we're discovering something about what we think or what we mean or how we engage with the world and each other by virtue of the conversation. Right. So I used to be a writing professor. I used to talk to my students a lot about the difference between writing to learn versus writing to perform. I love conversations that are conversing to learn rather than conversing to perform. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 01:20
Saying the thing this is, like, this is. Sometimes they call this the negotiator's dilemma. Like, we feel like if we say everything that we're thinking about something, then it will expose us. And so we don't always. We dance. We do the dance. And I love this definition of, like, a conversation where we're here to learn versus one that to perform. It sounds exhausting, even for those of us that are, you know, love a little bit of performative in our conversations. Yeah, it's not the best. So you wrote a book. We talked about this in our pre conversation that has the word shit in it. So there's gonna. I think even though it has shit with a big asterisk in it, if people try to google it, they need to google it with the asterisks instead of the eye. Yeah, right, exactly. Sh. Asterisks or, like, you know, t. And it's a book about teenagers for adults, written with a young adult. And so bold choice to use veiled profanity. Can you help us give a shit about your book? Why on earth a did you write it? What? In your life? Who hurt you? Why did you decide to do this hard thing, which. I write a book. What brought you here? Like, what's your origin story. And, like, how did you get to this moment where this is the book that you wanted to write and put into the world? Very big annoying question.
Becca Block, PhD 02:48
Yeah, no, not a big annoying question. Just mostly going to have to. You should rest the mic away from me if I start rambling on about my childhood or something. Daniel, there's a lot of history that goes into this. The most immediate history is that one of my colleagues and dear friends was teaching a class on executive functioning, study skills, academic motivation to a group of high school students. And she had asked them, what do you want to get out of this class? And had them all anonymously be able to write on, you know, blank worksheets and turn it in. And one of the students wrote on a piece of paper, can you help me give a shit about high school? I want to, but I just don't know how.
Daniel Stillman 03:24
Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 03:24
And she came to me and one of my other colleagues to say, what do I do, really? My specialty is executive functioning and all the study skills and time management and task initiation, all that stuff. And, like, how do I help her give a shit? And both my colleague and I knew a fair amount about positive youth development and those kinds of things, but also, I realized I went to find good resources for her. And there were not any books that centered students answers to that question. And that really pissed me off, because as a participatory designer, I think it's really dumb to want to solve a problem without involving the people who are actually most experiencing the problem in defining the problem, first of all, and then ideating and iterating on solutions to it.
Daniel Stillman 04:11
Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 04:12
So that's. That's really what sparked me wanting to do it, is I said that I want to go talk with a bunch of young people all over the country about what their experiences have been in school and what. And under what circumstances has allowed them to actually give a shit about what they're learning.
Daniel Stillman 04:24
Yeah. And you've been thinking about this problem for a while, right? Like, long before you wrote this book, because you've worked as an educational consultant for a long time. What are the kinds of problems with the educational system that in general, you have been trying to solve, have been solving, or still need to feel a need to solve in this system? That is like trying to create, as I put it, like civilization. Like one child, one teacher, one school at a time.
Becca Block, PhD 04:59
Right, right, right. Trying to create civilization still based very much in, like, industrial era culture models of what is it that we're trying to train citizens and civilization for? Right. What's wrong? And what inhibits motivation and meaningful learning and actual preparedness for engaging in your life, whether it's your life in the moment or your life. Of course, my throat decides to dry up right as I'm trying to talk with you, Daniel. Sorry. Let me grab a step.
Daniel Stillman 05:26
I'll take a sip, too.
Becca Block, PhD 05:26
So, yeah. So what inhibits being able to feel motivated in your learning in school, as a high school student, college student, middle school student, is pretty much the same as what inhibits your ability to engage and learn meaningfully in really crappy work environments. Right. And that was something that I didn't fully realize the parallels of until I started digging in and doing this research and seeing how many parallels there were to the many years that I've been a manager and leader in various organizations, in the types of workplace environments that allow someone to actually meaningfully engage and feel motivated and learn and develop and do quality work. Right? And it's not rocket science. This is something that there have been psychologists doing research on motivation science for decades and decades. Pretty consistent findings, all kind of under the aegis of self determination theory that basically says, hey, you know what? For humans to, like, sustain motivation over a decent time period, they need to have meaningful autonomy, which I describe in the book as choices. Because autonomy doesn't tend to stick in people's heads. They feel like they can make meaningful choices about what it is that they're doing in relation to goals that they have. They need to feel like that they have real relationships. In the literature, it's referred to as relatedness. I think that's a really awkward word, so I call it belonging. And they need to feel like that they are competent, right? That they have the ability to do or learn, importantly, the skills that they need to be able to perform to achieve whatever goal it is that they're setting out in. And these are not just generic, free floating things that just are a contextual. You need to have those things in any given context in which you are operating in order to feel any kind of sustained motivation to succeed in that context. And surprise, surprise, most high schools are not designed in the least to cause students to feel like that they have the abilities, belonging, and choices that they really need to sustain motivation, and instead is very much designed on the like, exhausting, extrinsic form of motivation that's all about run away from this punishment, run towards this reward, run away from this punishment, run towards this other reward that just really tires people out.
Daniel Stillman 07:39
Yeah, the ability and something in the choices I missed the thing in the middle.
Becca Block, PhD 07:45
Ability, belonging and choices.
Daniel Stillman 07:47
Belonging. Yeah, it's interesting. I love the subtitle unlocking team motivation in school and life. And I think you're basically paying the picture. And we all were high school students at one point. Anybody listening to this? I mean, it's possible that there's, like, a ten year old listening to this seems very unlikely if you're in the car, you know, I don't think middle school is that different than high school. Sorry, that sounds like a really depressing thing to say to a ten year old, but it is different.
Daniel Stillman 08:18
We all know that feeling of, like, why do I need to study this? What is this for? Where am I going? And it's really hard as a kid to imagine your life or to feel like there's a real goal that you have. And so it sounds like you've learned something about what it is to have a conversation with a young person to help them figure out what their meaningful choices are and what goals they really have. And it sounds like that's a conversation that you're hoping more people have with the young people in their lives and in their classrooms and in their schools, presumably. Is that fair to say?
Becca Block, PhD 09:00
I think that that's completely fair to say. And it's, you know, while I know that, like, education and teens is not, like, topically, how does that relate to the conversation factory? Right. That's not an obvious fit, but the conversation piece is the key piece, right. That you're. That you're landing on is that we tend to talk about young people or anyone who's. Some aspect of their identity is at the marches. Right. And young people are one of those groups. We tend to talk about them instead of with them. We tend to talk to them instead of listening. Right. And so all the ways in which we engage in conversation don't actually include them in owning their own learning. And then we're, like, so surprised when teens are super apathetic school, it's like shock. What is shocker, right? Yeah. When's the last time that you were given a mandatory training at work that you saw absolutely no value in? You didn't think it was going to be relevant for your current or future career development, but you still were told you needed to spend a couple hours on it and you were like, yes, I am so jazzed about that. Right? Like said, nobody ever said nobody ever. Right? And usually those types of mandatory trainings are few and far between and are, like, regulation based in the workplace, but it's the entirety of many young people's educational experience.
Daniel Stillman 10:20
Right. And this is the joke is that, you know, quote unquote andragogy. The principles of adult learning, I don't think are fundamentally different than the idea of pedagogy, the teaching of children. Like, they also need to see a reason to do it and value in it for them. So the question of like, how to make this relevant for everyone. Now, obviously, anybody who's listening to this, who has a child person, their lives that they're trying to control. The secret is like with any negotiation is find out what they want and what they value. Hahaha. The answer is candy. In this case, I'm guessing. But here's the question that I wanted to. I feel like we talked a little bit about this and I want to just really underline them. These two ideas of like, one, your book addresses a very specific theory of change one, and I'll just earmark that. Like, instead of addressing a book at like an academic book at administrators, because systems take a long time to change, you're addressing this at like, parents and teachers because they want to have a change now, and it takes a long time to change a system. We can talk about that. And then there's this other piece which is like, you just the general idea that co design is better than designing with and decentering self is better and more interesting and more effective than designing for. And we haven't really talked about the fact that you co wrote this with a young person, which is like a crazy, much harder thing to do than just like writing a book and also probably in some ways easier. So I think those are the two things that, like, everyone who's listening probably needs to think about all the different layers of a system that they want to address to create transformation and which ones are addressable in my theory of change. And two, like, co design is something that everyone could be doing more of, but it is hard to do. I agree with you that it's important to do, and I'd love to just like address both of those things if you can rant about those.
Becca Block, PhD 12:31
Mini rant on each. All right, we'll try to do mini rant a and then mini rant b, and you can interject, throw an elbow in wherever you need to. Right. So on the systems piece, I really struggled with that one initially, right. Because I do think we need systemic change. I do think we need policy change. And I don't think that the people who are the most motivated, who are experiencing the pain of things the most right now are the ones that are best positioned to think about policy change first. Right. So the people that I have talked with and seen that are experiencing the most pain right now are, first, young people in themselves, and second are the teachers and parents who actually care about them. Right. There's some swath of adults who don't care. Right. They just don't care. But, like, there is a very large group that actually care, and they are seeing young people suffering right now. And the most obvious version of that looks like apathy. But I would actually say that the super high achieving, burned out high school students are the flip side of that coin. And there's been a number of actually great books written about that topic recently. Um, but I think it's the flip side of the same coin. Right. Both is when you experience a lack of ability to meaningfully influence a system that is boxing you in, then you have two reactions. One very good defense mechanism is to go for apathy. Right. It's a very good protective mechanism to go, like, I don't have any control here anyways, so I'm just not going to care.
Daniel Stillman 13:55
Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 13:55
And the flip side is to go, I have no control here. Therefore I'm going to, like, hyper achieve. I'm going to add a bunch of things to my plate that I can control and still also excel on the thing that I can't. And then, like, become super, super burned out, which is a whole nother thing. I won't go into that rant. How that relates to the system mini rant is if those are the people that are the most suffering, they're either seeing the young people that are burning themselves to a crisp, or they're seeing the young people who are completely checked out, disengaged, apathetic, hiding in their basements, and they're going, oh, my gosh, I'm so worried about this. They don't have time to wait for system change because they're looking at someone who's suffering right now. And so when I looked at that, I thought of a metaphor that a former colleague of mine used to discuss when we were talking about education in general. She would talk about if the river's poisoned and there are sick people on the banks of the river from drinking the poisoned water, you've got to deal with the poison in the water. And I was like, yes, but you also need to treat the people who are sick on the banks of the river. Right. And so when I was picking a place for this book to focus, I was like, there's lots of great policy books out there. There are lots of great books for administrators out there. I am not seeing lots of great books out there that are actually aimed at helping the parents and educators who are like, no, but what do I do right now? What can I do this week? And especially not any that we're taking it from the perspective of actually listening to and empathizing with and learning from young people about what I can do right now this week rather than from expert to send it on high with their special opinion that they just got from Harvard.
Daniel Stillman 15:28
Yeah. Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 15:30
So that's minirant A. Shall I proceed directly to Minirant B, Daniel?
Daniel Stillman 15:34
I think that's, yeah, I mean, it's a really, I think it's actually really challenging to hold both of those and to decide where because obviously you can, you work on the, usually on the systemic level. Right. And so I guess what I'm feeling into is an itch to make sure that people can get that immediate help, that they need that relief or a way to sort of find a way to shift the experience of an individual, young person and this constellation of people around them. Now, while you work on detoxifying the water system. Right. It's like you can do that work and that's what people hire you for generally, is to innovate and to really think differently and to design different systems. But that takes time. Like the pace, the pace layer of change, I think was the concept we were talking about last time. That takes time and that time is like potentially longer than one child's school year and maybe their entire high school career to create that kind of impact.
Becca Block, PhD 16:52
Right, exactly. Unless you're someone with the luxury of so much capital that you can just be like, I'm just going to airlift my child out of this public school system and drop them into this private system that is working the way that I want to. Right. The number of people who have those kinds of resources for basically like changing the system their young person is in is very few. Right? That's not, most of that's not me. I can't do that. And that is probably part of my own motivation is like, I have a kid in middle school now, another kid in elementary school. I'm looking at what I can do. I'm involved in the district and doing things here and I'm also looking at the pace of change in the district and that it took us twelve years in the school district just to change to healthy school start times. Twelve years. And I was like with lots of parents advocating for it, I was like, oh boy. All right, so we need some other strategies that can be used with a little bit less lead time.
Daniel Stillman 17:48
Right? Yeah. And so that's definitely a good answer to rant one, rant two. Like, anybody who's listening to this probably has the opportunity to design with instead of for. And I, I mean, I can't believe we're still having this conversation on some level, that the idea of, like, getting out of the building, or in this case getting into the building and like, talking to the people who are closest to the challenge in order to create insights about what to do differently. Not shocking to me, but like, what is your actual recommendation for people who are reading this to think about co design in a different way than they are maybe thinking about it now or if they're not aware of it?
Becca Block, PhD 18:36
Yeah. So I'm going to talk first to the people because I suspect most of your listeners would be most likely to be aware of it and the challenges they're running into are getting institutional or organizational buy in to deploy it. Right. And that's certainly what I've witnessed as both a consultant and a full time employee is even when organizational leaders are like, yes, it's so equitable. Design is so important. Participatory design, co design collaborative. Wow. Yay. And then when the rubber meets the road and it's like, cool, we're not going to roll this out. This idea that you just had, person in the organization with more power than me, we're not going to immediately jump into rolling your idea out. What we're going to do instead is first validate with the stakeholders that this is intended to actually benefit, that that is a problem that they're experiencing and learn with them what kinds of solutions they're looking for. Not in the classic Henry Ford. If I ask people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Haha. Like I needed to come up with a car. Right? I think that's one of the things that people frequently turn to. Either I've directly had that quoted at me before when talking about co design, or that is kind of tacitly in the back of the mind of like, well, people don't always know what they want. That's true. People don't always articulate what it is that they want and need, because, like all of us, we're humans, we go for whatever the mental model that is like, easiest at hand when we're first asked about something. But that's not the same as it not being possible to collaboratively design with people meaningful solutions that actually help. It does take more time upfront. The main strategy that I have found in getting the buy in for that time upfront is the amount of time and money it saves you on the back end, right? So for people who are, who are primarily motivated by arguments related to financial sustainability or income, pointing out that your likelihood of success with the audience that you are trying to put something with, whether it's a social impact space where they're going to be the users that need to experience impact, you're going to demonstrate that impact to philanthropists to keep paying for it, or whether it's a direct to consumer or to business, hey, the same people that are getting this benefit are the ones paying for it. Either way, you are more likely to get to the results that you want faster. If the people who need that problem solved actually got involved in validating that, yes, this is the solution because they see themselves in it. You get built in early adopter high advocates because they help to create the thing and you've created it with people who are directly experiencing the problem. So the likelihood that the solution is helping solve the problem is way higher because they're not going to continue to use something in your iterative design cycle process that's not actually working, right. They are experiencing that problem right now. So those are the framing and argument that I found most helpful in getting more buy in for participatory co design collab, you know, whatever word you want to use for it. In organizations that really value equity and inclusion, it becomes that much more crucial. Right? The stereotype for designers is still very much a bunch of white cis hetero dudes sitting in a room, right? And while the people who participate in design have expanded, it's still useful to remember that that's where the history is coming from, right? That's where all of this stuff is coming from. The set of practices, the set of norms, the things that we've just picked up and maybe didn't think too much about. And if we don't actively work to get a range of voices in the room from the beginning, not just from the stage of ideation, but from the stage of problem definition, then the likelihood that we are going to continue to perpetuate the inequities that give us exactly the stuff that we're in right now that are creating all kinds of inequitable outcomes, it's just gonna keep happening, right?
Daniel Stillman 22:39
Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 22:40
So am I being too abstract in my mini ranting here?
Daniel Stillman 22:42
This is one where, I mean, well, I think it's, it makes sense to me. And I think a lot of people who are hearing this might be thinking some yeah, buts, or especially with regard to their own situation. And I think some of the yeah, buts I think about is, like, a lot of people say, like, yeah, but it's low. Yeah, but it's expensive. Yeah, but we probably have a pretty good idea already, or yeah, but we know better. And those are some of the yeah. Butts that I think I've heard. Are there any yeah, buts that you've heard that I haven't. Haven't enumerated?
Becca Block, PhD 23:19
I think. No, I think they all. I think they all could fit into. I've heard them expressed different ways, but yeah, I think they all fit into the categories that you just laid out.
Daniel Stillman 23:27
So when you hear those, I mean.
Becca Block, PhD 23:29
Maybe a little bit the, like, yeah, but we already know better. Is like, a different version of that. Is that. Yeah, but is it really necessary? Right. Like, people think that it is for the sake of performing inclusion rather than genuinely being inclusive.
Daniel Stillman 23:48
Performative inclusion is. We could just do a whole. Write that book. People would really. That would be a winner. And I think the other piece is like, if this is something that's being driven by stakeholders, they have a hypothesis or another way or maybe an axe to grind, a theory of, this is how education should be. And anybody listening this could be reading like, this is how we should make the thing right. And being wrong is hard. Like, being. Opening yourself up to being wrong is challenging. And so I guess my question is like, yeah, how do you. It's very easy to say, and I agree with you, this will save us time, money, and resources at the end, it's the classic Frank Lloyd Wright quote. You know, it's like, it's the different costs between an eraser at the draft board and a sledgehammer on the construction site. Like, it's a huge. It's a ten x or a hundred x savings, but it takes, I think, a certain amount of bravery and also curiosity, I guess. Curiosity and the eagerness to be wrong, I think, is a kind of bravery.
Becca Block, PhD 25:01
Yes, I think that is what I've seen, because it's pretty easy to get past the logical obstructions. But this will slow us down. This will cost us money. Well, let me walk out for you exactly, actually, how it will ultimately save us time and save us money. Okay, okay, okay. But that last one that you're talking about is the real barrier. It's very hard for anyone who comes up with an idea, whether you're the designer leading the process or whether you're enacting a thought idea question whatever that was sort of passed on to you from someone else in the organization. It is so hard for us to actually believe any data that goes against our confirmation bias. Right. As human beings, it is one of the hardest cognitive biases to overcome.
Daniel Stillman 25:53
I don't believe that that goes all against my fundamental mental knowledge.
Becca Block, PhD 26:00
And that's where it's really brutal, because especially if you are doing the co design in lean and manageable, like, small sample size ways, then, of course, the most obvious and immediate conclusion for anyone to jump to when the results come back is anything other than, guess what. The exact thing that you already had in mind is totally what people want is to go, you must. Those people that you got. Are you sure? Like, that's a really small sample size. I think that we should go ahead because, you know, like, I've heard that kind of thing so many times, and I'm sure anybody listening is gonna be like, mm hmm. Right. Like, it's so hard for us to believe the evidence in front of us when we're engaged in co design, if that evidence does anything other than affirm what it was we were hoping to find.
Daniel Stillman 26:51
Yeah. So our time goes nigh, which is shocking. If we were to. If you were to just write the blog post of your book, which I feel like is the most hilarious critique of most books, it's like, if you're just like, tattoo, the message that you want people to walk away with, the three key is if we were to unlock teen motivation and motivation in general for ourselves, for the other people that we collaborate with. You talked about, you know, ability, belonging and choice. I'm wondering, are there some. What is the. What is the thing that I need to be keeping in my mind that if, like, I. That after I read your book and forget it, I will remember, like, the two things that will actually help people do this thing better?
Becca Block, PhD 27:47
Yeah. Yeah. Can I give a couple versions of this for different kinds of audience members?
Daniel Stillman 27:52
Yeah, yeah, let's check. Can I cheat 100%? Yeah, yeah. Let's back into this.
Becca Block, PhD 27:57
So, yeah, yeah. So, for parents, right. Which I know is not your main audience, but I'm gonna start there.
Daniel Stillman 28:03
No, I mean, I think a lot of people listening are probably parents.
Becca Block, PhD 28:07
Also happens before I benefit. Yeah, yeah. So for parents, the most useful takeaway that I keep reminding myself of as a parent, every time I have one of those moments, especially with my older, you know, preteen, like, right about to cross over into teenage years child, when I hit those moments where I'm like, just, would you please, God, just do the thing that I can clearly, obviously see you just need to do, right. It's to go, okay, you know that's not going to work, right? Like, you literally know, you know, from all of your research, from all of your time in educational systems, from your work as a designer, all that. It's not going to work. It's never going to work. It's never going to work. No matter how frustrated you are, it's literally never going to work.
Daniel Stillman 28:48
Leading force and badgering are not a.
Becca Block, PhD 28:50
Theory of change, amazingly, no. But they are great for confirmation bias. They are great at making you feel really justified in how angry and pissed off you are with your child or your spouse or your employee or your boss or your. They're great at that. What has been most helpful for me as a parent is to pause and go, okay, right now I'm not feeling particularly motivated, right? Right now I'm feeling really frustrated and not motivated and like, I just want to toss my hands up and walk away. So let me pause and do a little audit on myself at first so I can model it, and then maybe I can help my kid do the same thing. Right? So first is right now, am I feeling like I have the ability or could learn the ability that I need to solve this particular problem or address this particular goal? Right now, am I feeling like that I actually belong with the people here, in this case, with my kid? Right. Am I feeling like we have a good relationship right now, in this moment? Right now, am I feeling like I have any meaningful choices about the way that I'm engaging with my kid as a parenthood? And if my answer to one or more, and usually it's more than one of those, is no, then I need to shut the fuck up. Like, I. That's. That's literally my.
Daniel Stillman 30:10
Aren't you glad I made it okay to curse on the podcast?
Becca Block, PhD 30:12
I am glad that you made it okay to curse on the podcast, because that's. That's lit. Like, that is literally the mantra that plays through my head. Is it okay? You need to shut the fuck up? You need to do your own diagnosis of what will allow you to feel like you've got the abilities or can identify what you need to learn, what will allow you to feel connected to your kid, and what will allow you to feel like you've got some meaningful choices in the situation before you continue this conversation. And then once you've got those things, then. And this is how I talk to myself in the second person. It's very weird. Probably a therapist would have a field day with it, then I can go back and then engage with my kid from that perspective of like, hey, I noticed that I was shutting down in XYZ ways and I realized blah blah blah was happening and I was feeling phenomenally demotivated. And instead I was just getting angry or just getting frustrated or just getting apathetic. I'm wondering if. Cause usually you can observe as a parent, you have a pretty good idea what's missing there. But not making the assumption, saying like, here's what I'm noticing, here's what I'm wondering. Does any of this resonate with you? And then having a conversation, hey, what can we do? Here's what I'm going to do to try to build my own motivation. What are the things you feel like you could use to feel engaged and interested in us solving this problem together or in me supporting you as you solve this problem yourself? Right? Because especially my kids are still young enough that mostly it's more of a together. But each, every six months as they get older, it needs to move more and more towards I'm in the passenger seat. I'm becoming an increasingly optional navigative assistant. And they are the ones driving, right? That's the kind of scaffolding. Because I don't want my kids to still be living with me when they're 30 and asking me how to make decisions. Right? Yeah. So as a parent, that's my. Still long for a blog post, but probably if I could edit it afterwards, I could get it to blog post length of like main takeaway.
Daniel Stillman 32:05
Can I say before we move on to the next thing, what I heard, which may leverage us to the next thing, I feel like I understand belonging in a different way now. Because when it's all your fault, right? Or I feel like you're over there and I'm over here and I'm trying to, like it's. And I'm trying to fix you. The direction is there, I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me. Like I'm trying to force you. And it feels like if there's a moment where I don't feel like we are in this together, then it's a time to pause and ask, what am I forcing here? And in a way, like the belonging, the lack of belonging sort of cascades down to the lack of choices. Like, because like I'm. I've got to yell at them. They just won't listen any other way. Right? I have to force them. I have to talk over them. And if you notice that there's a lack of an ability to feel like you are in command of yourself, these are also good times to pause and step back and say, like, wow, how do I make sure that we are in a conversation.
Becca Block, PhD 33:12
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 33:13
Together.
Becca Block, PhD 33:13
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 33:14
And not a, like.
Becca Block, PhD 33:15
Right.
Daniel Stillman 33:15
Me forcing you again. Force is not a really good theory of change.
Becca Block, PhD 33:20
Right.
Daniel Stillman 33:21
Because people aren't people. As people are not pieces. People are people.
Becca Block, PhD 33:27
Yes.
Daniel Stillman 33:28
Yeah. Sorry, there was more to you.
Becca Block, PhD 33:30
No, I just. Yes, I just. I was just gonna say, like, I don't. I want to make sure that in that I am not conveying the lie that positional authority doesn't matter. Right. Because that's going to apply to the other, you know, for people who are designers, for people who are thinking about this for the workplace, it applies in all those cases. Right.
Daniel Stillman 33:46
Yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 33:46
Positional authority is real. It does play a role. It is part of the dynamic. As a parent, you have a different job than the job that your kid has. Right. Lying about that is not at all what I'm trying to say. Right. Belonging is not synonymous with we're all the same and all have equal amounts of power. Right. That's one of the things that. That tends to create lies when we were talking about inclusion before, that tends to create lies in communities that are going across lines of difference too. Right? Of, like, let's. We're all the same here. Like, no, we're fucking not. Right? Like, let's not lie about this. I'm just taking your curse word thing to the farthest extreme that I possibly can. Yeah, just like Athwam's everywhere, like, sprinkled like salt. But. So it's not about lying about the fact that you have more power than your kid does, but it is about stopping and going, okay, I'm do have more power, but is this the way I want to be using it? Is this the model I want to be setting? Am I actually helping scaffold my child towards independence in the way that I'm engaging with them right now? Is this even effective? Right. And usually the answer, there is no. Usually every time I'm actually trying to use my power to accomplish something rather than just, like, acknowledge that, yes, it's true, I have a different job than you because I'm your parent. It's not effective anyways, and it just ticks us both off.
Daniel Stillman 34:59
Yeah. And with these sources of power, there's a whole chapter I wrote about this. There's, like, many theories of how many types of power there are, but reward power or punishment power are very limited sources of power because the power of not giving a shit is tremendous. That's actually not in the six types of. I forget. It's like, the theorists who are behind it, but, like, I think it's French and this other guy. The power of not giving a fuck. Anarchic power. The power of, like, you know, how hard it is to lift a kid that doesn't want to be lifted. It's so strange. Like, they're heavier than just a bag of rice. That's. That's.
Becca Block, PhD 35:42
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 35:42
For some reason, they're. They are resisting. So I think that's the force against force is not a really effective way to unlock true motivation. And I think what you're saying here is that true intrinsic motivation, finding a way to unlock goals that they have and meaningful choices that they can that are open to them, is a more durable source of transformation. And it's not just with teenagers. It's with anybody that we have any kind of positional power of. Or any kind of power. Somebody we want to have more influence with.
Becca Block, PhD 36:24
Right? Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And that's where the metaphor that applies to the various iterations of the blog post. For designers who are seeking to influence up and sideways to shift to co design practices, or for leaders and managers who are seeking to figure out, how do I help employees right now within the system we have inside this organization, that is not optimal yet, and we're working on optimizing it. But in the meantime, I need my employees to feel as motivated as they can be currently. Right. That same metaphor applies across all the situations. We tend to treat teenagers like they're a different species and they aren't. They're just uniquely good at because of the stage that their brain development is in, at questioning everything that we take for granted in culture, inventing a whole bunch of new terms for it that totally baffle adults and make us feel really old and deploying that anarchic, apathetic power. Right. Apathy is a very definitive power that is reserved uniquely for those who are able to not care and not buy into all the cultural norms and then therefore not care about the power that you can deploy on them, because all of them are based in a set of norms that teenagers are primed to resist, question and say things should be different, and therefore, I do not care at all. And in fact, we want that system to set up.
Daniel Stillman 37:48
We want them to be able to do that.
Becca Block, PhD 37:50
Right? We want things to get better. Right? We want them to. So it's one of the reasons that I get the most offended at our current educational system. Sorry, last little mini rant that I get the most offended by our educational system is because we say that this is a public good. We are investing our tax dollars and our time and our attention into school boards and into legislation, all these things because public education is intended to be a public good that sets young people up to be productive members of society, contributing citizens, contributing members of the workforce. And yet what we do inside those environments and the way that we engage with young people while they are young people in no way is preparing them to actually engage in the work of being a productive, to be a productive member of society. You don't sit around and wait for somebody else to tell you what problems you should solve. And also, by the way, here's how to solve them. Right? You don't do that in the workplace either. You don't have people tell you what the things are that you need to do even though you see no relevance in them whatsoever. And you're just supposed to continue to plug and play an industrial era economy. Maybe, but that's not the model we live in anymore. It's changing even more rapidly every year with climate change, AI, everything, right. But we just keep going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make all those choices when you're older. Right now, just do this thing that we've always done. That, by the way, is totally boring for you right now, is wasting your time and energy and problem solving abilities right now, and also, by the way, will do nothing to prepare you for adulthood but do it anyways, right? Good luck, have fun, maybe. And just hold your breath for like twelve years.
Daniel Stillman 39:30
Yeah, it's dark and that's why you're working hard to make it better. So we are quickly running out of time. There's two questions I have left here. I feel like I'm just giving you both questions. I have been giving you bulk drops. One, I want to make sure that you tell people where they can go to learn more about you and your work. And also I feel like there's probably something else I haven't asked you that I should ask you. And if there's something you feel like we have not touched on that we ought to touch on, I'd also. You can use the remaining moments we have to let the people know that thing too.
Becca Block, PhD 40:17
I appreciate it. The list of that ladder thing would probably be too large if I opened up my imagination on that one. So I'm going to lock it down and just say, follow up with me if you have a question. And the way to do that is to go to beccablock.com dot. So I have a contact form. There you can find the links to where to buy the book. You can also find the links to where to listen to my podcast, which has the same name. Can you help me give a shit? Which is in all the places. But there I respond to questions from parents and educators about particular things that they want to address with various people from all over the place. So please go check out the book. Go check out the website. Go check out the podcast. Tell me your questions. I am always down to talk with anybody about how we can make education better and also how we can make design better.
Daniel Stillman 41:01
Yeah, that was very succinct. Now we have extra time.
Daniel Stillman 41:11
What do you feel like people will miss in your book if they don't read it very carefully?
Becca Block, PhD 41:17
I think the thing that I'm most concerned people might miss is that they just kind of skim and skip to the actionable takeaways and don't pause to really listen to what the young people are saying. So the book goes heavy.
Daniel Stillman 41:36
Cause there's a lot of stories. There are stories from several young people that are sprinkled throughout the book.
Becca Block, PhD 41:41
Yeah. Yeah. So it's very heavy on stories from young people on purpose, because that is not what most books in this area do. They do like a lovely anecdote to open the chapter, and then they get into all the specific advice that experts have to say about that topic. Right. That's the typical framework for books in this genre. And so I think that makes it hard. I'm, as a. As a write, former writing professor, I know that anytime you're working against genre conventions, you're setting readers up for confusion. Right. I know that. I'm still doing it on purpose. I'm still doing it on purpose because I think that we're getting it wrong when we use young people's voices as the decoration rather than as the core message. And so I think that's the thing that I'm most concerned that people might miss, is looking at the stories as, like, cute illustrations rather than as something to really wrestle with and engage with. Some of those stories contradict each other. Some of those stories say things that I found very hard to hear that don't match the things that I think should happen in the educational system. Right. Some of those stories challenge various cherished beliefs across organizations that I respect or across organizations that I disrespect. Right. Like, I deliberately did nothing, sanitize the stories, and that's the thing that our brains want to do. We want everything to have a coherent, singular narrative. And I think that's the thing that people would be most likely to miss if they did a quick reading, is their brain would kick into default coherent narrative sanitizing mode, rather than actually being able to maintain that productive tension of, like, not all these stories agree with each other, and not all of them agree with the kind of accepted wisdom out in the world.
Daniel Stillman 43:22
We're so hungry for an actionable, digestible, coherent narrative. We need it to survive. Like, it's such a human core need. But it sounds like the call you're making is for people to wrangle with and to sit with the complexity and diversity of needs and just. I used to call it taking a bath in the data, which people don't want to do. They want to know the net. Net. So I really appreciate you going to all the effort to pull these stories together and then to invite people to actually contend with them. It's awesome.
Becca Block, PhD 43:58
Thanks.
Daniel Stillman 43:59
You're welcome. We are literally out of time. Did everything feel includable? Do we need to bleep anything out, or is that all? Are we all good?
Becca Block, PhD 44:08
If you want to reduce the number of times I dropped the f bomb, you can feel free to. But, yeah, no, everything felt includable to me, so.
Daniel Stillman 44:14
No, no, no. I'm, in fact, paste in extras. I'm gonna have my editor.
Becca Block, PhD 44:19
Some more seasoning.
Daniel Stillman 44:20
Yeah, yeah.
Becca Block, PhD 44:21
Some more seasoning throughout. Yeah, yeah. No, I think the only thing that the editor will probably have to catch for is, like, I think there was one point that there was a background noise here, and I didn't notice it until too late. So, like, some of that I didn't hear.
Daniel Stillman 44:34
I think your microphone did great.
Becca Block, PhD 44:38
Okay.
Daniel Stillman 44:38
I didn't notice anything. Well, I will call scene. And I really appreciate you making time and energy for this conversation.
Becca Block, PhD 44:48
I really. I really appreciate you making the time and energy for it. Daniel, I know that it was a little outside the norm for your podcast, but I really enjoyed these kinds of conversations, so I appreciate it.
Daniel Stillman 44:57
Thank you. We said the thing. We said what we meant. I think we both learned something. I learned something. I don't want to say that you learned anything.
Becca Block, PhD 45:06
I did.
Daniel Stillman 45:07
And I think the. The one truth that I know is that all conversations have something in common with each other. And if we're talking about teen motivation, we're talking about human motivation and human influence, and I think that is everyone can. This is not left field. This is. This is. This is center field. Like, everyone can learn about something from this. It's super important.
Becca Block, PhD 45:29
You should use what you just said as you're like, you know, blog post, headline.
Daniel Stillman 45:33
Yeah, I might indeed.
Becca Block, PhD 45:35
The post that you do.
Daniel Stillman 45:35
We're still actually recording all this, so.
Becca Block, PhD 45:38
There you go.
Daniel Stillman 45:39
There we go.
Becca Block, PhD 45:39
There you go.
Daniel Stillman 45:40
Thanks, Becca.
Becca Block, PhD 45:42
All right.
Daniel Stillman 45:43
Talk to you soon.
Becca Block, PhD 45:44
All right. Take care, Daniel. Thank you.
Daniel Stillman 45:46
Thank you.
Becca Block, PhD 45:47
Bye.