Self-awareness is one of the most important leadership skills we can teach our teens. But how do we develop it? Discover two simple checks that help teenagers recognize when emotions and thinking traps are influencing their decisions, plus a practical 24-hour rule for handling setbacks with greater clarity and confidence.

I have recently noticed something fascinating about myself when I am working. I can be completely absorbed in a task, making excellent progress, until I encounter something that requires a little more thinking. Perhaps I cannot find the right words to express an idea, or I reach a point where I am unsure how to proceed. And almost instinctively, before I have even given myself enough time to figure things out, I reach for my phone. What fascinates me is that my phone hasn't n

Recently, during one of our Leadership Forsyth sessions, our presenter, Lloyd Knight, asked us to think about what makes an organization a terrible place to work. As we began sharing our experiences, several familiar descriptions emerged: dictatorship, micromanagement, aggressive communication, unhealthy competition and a lack of collaboration. I imagine most of us have experienced at least one of these environments during our careers, and we know how difficult it can be to t

Part 1 of a series on staying connected with your teenager Over the past few weeks, while meeting parents at parent information sessions, I noticed that one question kept coming up. Although every child is different, I heard it so frequently that I decided to investigate it further. “My child used to tell me everything. Now I barely know what is going on in their life.” Some parents describe a teenager who comes home from school and immediately disappears into their room. Oth

Imagine your daughter walking into high school. She is excited about the freedom ahead of her, beginning to think about college and careers, joining clubs, playing sports and slowly discovering the person she wants to become. We tell her to work hard, speak up, take opportunities, manage her time and distinguish herself, because these are the years when the world begins asking more of her and when some of the choices she makes start shaping what comes next. At almost exactly

There is something about starting high school that feels intimidating, both for students and for parents. As much as I wish families could simply look forward to the new freedom, the choices, and the gradual journey toward independence, high school often arrives with a long list of expectations attached to it. Students hear that they need strong grades, difficult classes, clubs, volunteer hours, leadership positions, extracurricular activities, and a clear idea of where they

When I first started Frolific, I knew I needed guidance from people who had already built businesses and understood the road ahead. There was one local business leader I especially respected, so I asked him if he would mentor me, but he said no. I asked again after six months, and the answer was still no. I asked again close to a year later. I was not trying to wear him down or force him into saying yes. I simply knew what I needed, and I kept looking for a way to communicate

I spend a rather large part of my life immersed in leadership. I teach it, read about it, write about it, think about it, and am always hungry to learn more about how people solve problems, make decisions, recover from mistakes, and learn to trust themselves. So when I come home and sit beside my fifth grader to work on math, it is actually a pleasant change for me. Instead of emotional intelligence, communication, or design thinking, we are talking about decimals, fractions,

When I was little, my dad used to say, “Nothing succeeds like success.” For the longest time, I would roll my eyes whenever I heard it. It sounded like one of those circular parent sayings that adults seem very impressed with and children are expected to somehow understand. Of course success succeeds. What exactly was I supposed to do with that information? It took me a surprisingly long time to understand what he meant. Success changes the way we approach the next challenge.

There is a point in almost every school year when the engine starts huffing and puffing a little harder. At the beginning of the year, students are often optimistic about staying organized, keeping up with assignments, and perhaps even avoiding procrastination altogether. Then school gets into full swing, homework increases, tests begin overlapping, projects appear on the calendar, activities become demanding, and an ordinary Tuesday evening suddenly feels much shorter than i

The beginning of a new academic year can feel exciting from the outside. There are new classes, new teachers, new schedules, new activities, and the possibility of starting over in places where last year's labels no longer matter quite as much. For many teenagers, however, one of the biggest questions has very little to do with academics: Who am I going to hang out with? Even students returning to the same school can suddenly find themselves looking at a completely different

Over the years, I have had the honor of watching hundreds of students move through high school and graduate. I have been even more fortunate to know many of them personally. We have celebrated acceptances, leadership roles, improved grades, new friendships, and moments of courage, but we have also worked through overloaded schedules, disappointing results, difficult course choices, and the uncomfortable realization that there is not enough time to do everything well. Because

Every semester, our Frolific students take a deep dive into one question: how can we make the middle and high school experience easier for students coming after us? They speak with other students, compare experiences, look for patterns, and try to understand what makes some students settle into school faster while others spend months feeling as though they are still trying to find their place. Every semester, they uncover a few golden nuggets that adults may easily overlook b

Sometime around the middle of July, summer begins to feel a little like Sunday night. The freedom is still there, the days are still long, and no one is setting an alarm for 6:00 a.m. just yet, but the feeling that Monday is coming slowly begins to creep in. As August approaches in Georgia, the back-to-school displays become harder to ignore, school emails begin arriving, and parents start mentally preparing for early mornings, packed lunches, carpool lines, and the return of

We are halfway through summer in Georgia, which means the first burst of “we are going to use this summer well” energy is slowly being replaced by humidity, late mornings, and a very convincing inner voice that says, “Let it slide. It is summer.” No matter how disciplined you are, summer has a way of wrapping you around its finger. It starts innocently enough with one late movie night, then one lazy morning, then one “they worked so hard all year, let them sleep,” and before

When parents come to me and share that their child is sensitive, what they usually mean is that their teen takes things deeply to heart, replays conversations in their mind, and sometimes struggles to separate a passing comment from a statement about who they are as a person, and if you are raising a teen like this, you are not alone because this is one of the most common emotional patterns I see in adolescents today. In most cases, sensitivity is not the problem, because sen

Summer has a way of slowing us down a little. The weather invites us outside, and if we allow ourselves, even for a few minutes, nature has a way of making us think about things we were too busy to think about during the year. One such reflection came to me recently during a morning walk in the woods with my dog. As I walked, I found myself thinking about a question I hear often, sometimes directly and sometimes hidden inside a conversation. What does it really mean to find

Summer always arrives with such good intentions. After weeks of all-nighters, last-minute submissions, performances, recitals, and packed calendars, summer arrives like a warm breeze of relief, at least for the first few days. Then, not too long after, that warm breeze starts to feel hot and unbearable. The house gets messier, the snacks disappear faster, and teens are somehow both bored and unwilling to do anything suggested by a parent, and many of us parents have the same

Why Even High Achieving Teens Need Speaking Tools Every semester at Frolific, I get to work with some of the most high achieving children I have ever seen. They are intrinsically motivated, diligent, thoughtful, and humble. They care about doing well, they take their responsibilities seriously, and they often walk into class with the kind of competence that makes you think, “This child is going to be just fine in life.” And then we begin our communication module. More specifi

Part 2 of our student-created series, How to Nail High School Co-authored by Frolific Innovation for Leadership Students: Allen Peralta, Basheer Qutob, Ishika Sujith, Jessica Kochhar, Nandana Krishnan, Navya Neelam, Pranay Srikantapuram, Priya Mathur, Shree Doshi, Srilasya Sanivarapu, Vihaan Joshi. In our Innovation for Leadership module at Frolific, students solve a real-world problem that is directly applicable to their lives using Stanford’s design thinking approach to pr