Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
25 is the magic number
|
Do you know how car insurance rates drop when you turn 25? Why that’s the moment an insurance company decides you are a fully formed adult who can drive a car safely enough to not charge you an arm and a leg? It is worth thinking about this when you are looking at your staff. That drop is not arbitrary. The actuarial nerds at the insurance company are not guessing. They have decades of crash data showing the brain piloting the car at 21 is meaningfully different from the brain piloting the same car at 26. So your premium drops. The myth and science have long been debated on this topic. Many still believe that around 25, on a biological level, the prefrontal cortex finishes coming online. That is the part of your brain handling risk assessment, long-term planning, and impulse control. It starts wiring around age 12 and doesn’t finish up until your mid-20s. Which means the 19, 20, or 21-year-old standing in front of you in a counselor t-shirt is still under construction. Camp says it is in the youth development business. The campers count, obviously. The staff count too. Adolescence does not end the day someone signs a camp hiring contract and gives you their social security number. The brain runs through three states as it builds. Survival state in the toddler years, when the only question is “Am I safe?” Emotional development state through elementary school, when the question is “Am I loved?” Executive development state, the long one. It runs from 12 until around 25. The question becomes, “Can I figure this out and make a plan?” That last state is still wiring well into the years your staff is working summers for you. Remember how your feedback might make staff crumble? This is part of why. If a 19-year-old does not feel safe in the conversation or cared about by the person delivering it, the executive part of their brain does not get to drive. The emotional state takes the wheel. And the conversation goes off the road. Once you know this, the leadership move is simple. Stop saying things to your staff implicitly. Start saying them out loud. “We want to take care of you the same way you're going to take care of the kids.” Say that to your staff this week. Mean it. Then go do it. This is not about lowering the bar. Your staff can run a great cabin, hold a high standard, and also be 21 and still developing. Both can be true. The car insurance company already figured this out. The camps that figure it out next are the ones whose best staff stay on the road with them. Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
Immersive1st
Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
A director in his ninth summer at a camp gets a phone call in the middle of July. It’s about the investors and the ownership structure. It’s about a possible sale nobody saw coming. The call ends. He has 600 campers on the property who are expecting a great summer. You probably already know which situation I am talking about. It has been about as close to national camp news as anything in the space gets. I am not naming names here. The specifics matter less than the leadership question...
Let’s take a look at some numbers from the summer: 15 states 5,120 miles behind the wheel 10,000+ air miles across three round trips to Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona 80+ meal stops at Chipotle, Starbucks, and mom-and-pop taco places This wasn’t one planned mega-trip or anything like that. It wasn’t even family vacation! It was visiting camps all over the map. And yes, I catch some flack from my accountant who looks at my expense reports every quarter and says something along the lines of:...
Visit and consult with enough camps, and you learn to pay attention to the small stuff. At Camp Turner in the Buffalo area, two small things told me almost everything about their culture. An archery shed. A bulletin board in every cabin. Walk into the archery shed and you’ll see the bows labeled and the arrows stored properly. If you were just passing it, I doubt it would stand out compared to so many other great facilities. But whoever set that shed up cared about it. Whoever uses it every...