Do important people respect me?

Do I belong here?

Am I seen as competent?

These internal questions shape how young people hear and respond to feedback.

The Staff Coaching Challenge

If you’ve supervised camp staff in the past few years, perhaps this is a familiar scenario: you offer thoughtful feedback to a counselor, something small, like reminding them to be more present during cabin cleanup or to use a warmer voice tone with campers, and the response is tears, defensiveness, or complete withdrawal.

Today’s young staff come to camp with many strengths, often including a genuine passion for making a positive impact on campers. Yet, many also arrive less practiced at handling discomfort or hearing feedback. When they encounter obstacles such as conflict, fatigue, or constructive criticism, they can get overwhelmed quickly and struggle to persevere.

It’s common for those of us in older generations to respond judgmentally, shake our heads, and compare “kids these days” to those who came before. Sharing this frustration with other camp leaders does have some value. Knowing that others are struggling with the same issue, that you are not alone in your frustration, reduces our distress. But it won’t solve the problem at hand.

To improve our programs, we need to consider adjusting both our mindset and our methods when working with fragile staff. Let’s consider two recent books, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People by David Yeager, as we seek to understand Gen Z with the goal of helping them better receive constructive feedback and become more resilient at camp.

“Kids These Days”

It is easy to roll our eyes at Gen Z, but it’s far more useful to understand how they got here.

Perhaps you’ve caught yourself thinking, This generation just can’t handle adversity. And while generational trends never apply to everyone in that cohort, in Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, he makes a compelling argument that Gen Z’s well-documented increase in rates of anxiety and depression (roughly 150 percent for both sexes across all races and social classes) is correlated with the rise of smartphones, social media, and the shift away from play-based childhood.

Haidt explains that starting in the 1980s and 90s — as a result of rising fears around safety and decreasing trust in other adults — “fearful parenting” increased supervision and decreased free play. When kids play freely, they learn to manage risk, to challenge themselves, and to regulate their own fear or disappointment. When parents reduce opportunities for real-world experiences, kids grow up to be less self-confident and more fragile (Haidt, 2024).

With a nod to pioneering researcher Jean Twenge, Haidt points to the rise of smartphones and social media as a massive shift in the childhood development of Gen Z. In what he calls “The Great Rewiring,” between 2010 and 2015, he shows how significant increases in daily screen time on social media began to disrupt adolescent development through social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. (Haidt, 2024).

If some Gen Z staff struggle with lower levels of coping and resilience, it’s not because they don’t have the ability; it’s that they haven’t yet developed the capacity through skill building and practice. Understanding the differences in their developmental environment is not about excuses — and certainly not about lowering expectations. It’s about adapting our mindset and our methods to the situation in front of us.

The Fragility of Adolescence

Behind every defensive reaction is a brain still learning how to manage social threats.

David Yeager, PhD, in 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, illuminates recent shifts in the scientific understanding of the developmental stage of adolescence, bolstered by functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) brain scan technology and well-designed psychological studies by researchers like Ron Dahl and Adriana Galvan. Roughly between the ages of 10 and 25, testosterone in both boys and girls spikes. This flood of hormones “contributes to adolescents’ hypersensitivity to signs of social status and respect,” which becomes a primary motivator for their behavior. (Yeager, 2023).

During this developmental stage, earning social status and respect is accomplished by demonstrating competence or offering value to the group, which then leads to feeling a sense of belonging. Put simply, “When young people have something of value to contribute to a group — when they’re competent and accepted — then they’re accorded status and respect. That’s earned prestige.” (Yeager, 2023).

Young people’s brains are constantly asking, “Do important people respect me? Do I belong here? Am I seen as competent?” This affects the way they hear feedback, especially when delivered by someone of higher status in the group, like a supervisor.

As Yeager explains, when a person of higher power and status offers constructive feedback, young staff don’t process the content until they’ve subliminally answered the question, “Does this person who has power over my life think I’m competent?” Through this lens, fragile responses are defense mechanisms, because young adults are so intensely attuned to social status and respect, which is at risk when receiving feedback.

Many young staff haven’t had enough real-world practice receiving face-to-face, constructive feedback to know it’s actually good for them. That’s where we come in as coaches to our staff. We can employ methods of delivering feedback and scaffolding resilience that better align with Gen Z adolescents.

The Mentor’s Dilemma: Feedback Without Shutdown

Transparency builds trust by transmitting respect.

Yeager offers concrete tools for addressing what he calls the “Mentor’s Dilemma,” saying, “It’s very hard to simultaneously criticize someone’s work and motivate them, because criticism can crush a young person’s confidence.” (Yeager, 2023).

In the Wise Feedback model, developed by Yeager and colleagues, leaders use two critical pillars of mentoring — High Standards (which transmit respect) and High Support (which builds connection) — to accomplish what he calls the “Mentor Mindset” (Yeager, 2023).

Specifically, he shows how transparency statements can be used to increase emotional safety when delivering feedback. Delivered simply in one or two sentences before the feedback, transparency statements explain the reason for giving the feedback (“I’m trying to help you grow”) and confirm competence (“I believe in your abilities and your potential”).

Instead of saying, “You need to be more engaged with your campers,” we might say, “I think you’ve got a lot of natural leadership in you. I want to share some notes that could help you connect even better with your campers, because I believe you can be one of our strongest counselors this summer.”

By addressing the unspoken question in the staff member’s mind, Does this person think I’m capable? and pairing respect with both high standards (“You can be even better”) and high support (“I’m here to help”), we can create a foundation of safety and trust that enables the staff member to receive feedback openly.

Every experience of receiving direct feedback, even those that don’t go as well as we’d like, becomes practice that builds the staff member’s ability to be vulnerable and respond resiliently. We can further scaffold this growth, and build a culture of feedback, by reflecting on the process afterward.

“Hey, really quick, last week when I gave you that feedback about your cabin, I really appreciate how open you were to hearing that, and I can see that you’re already incorporating that into your work with your campers. Well done, and thanks for being so receptive to feedback.”

It’s important to note that the Wise Feedback model requires both high standards and high support to be effective. For so many camps, providing high levels of support for staff is a financial and logistical challenge. Perhaps you just don’t have the leadership needed to offer the support your staff are asking for. Or perhaps you are offering what you consider to be a high level of support, but staff are still complaining about being undersupported. In most cases, the quality of the support is more important than the quantity — and the quality of the support depends on the quality of the relationships.

Emotional Safety Through Relationships

Safety at camp is built more directly through relationships than through policies. Staff will be most open to feedback when they feel confident that they can make mistakes, receive corrections, and still belong. Leaders can’t just deliver this feeling to staff like a can of soda (although they love that too!); it’s a two-way street of connection that must be built through authentic interactions.

Here’s a simple analogy to help us manage and navigate the professional relationships at camp. In Empty the Cup, educational psychologist Ernie Mendes, PhD, describes the relational bank account. Every time we listen, praise genuine effort, offer a compliment, or show empathy, we make a deposit. Every time we make a request or correct an action, we make a withdrawal. Withdrawals work when we have made enough deposits to have a significant balance in the account. If we withdraw more than we deposit, the relationship suffers, and withdrawals no longer work. The goal is not to avoid withdrawals but to keep enough balance in the account that a hard conversation doesn’t overdraft the relationship.

Tools for Building Resilience in Staff

Resilience is not a fixed trait; it’s a skill we build.

Beyond providing feedback for staff, our goal should be to increase their resilience. Resilience is the ability to overcome obstacles, and research shows it is a skill that can be developed. We’ve already addressed the primary factor that promotes resilience: a caring, connected relationship. Let’s examine the two others — high self-expectations and opportunities to participate and contribute — and connect them to Yeager’s work (Benard, 1991).

One tool that builds the caring, connected relationship while also fulfilling the high support pillar of Wise Feedback, is an oversimplified analogy to help staff understand their own well-being. It can be visualized as a balance scale. On one side we have stressors, anything that is weighing on us: internal (a bad mood, lack of sleep) or external (friction with a coworker, difficult campers). On the other side we have coping mechanisms, both healthy and unhealthy strategies for dealing with stressors. Supervisors can use this framework with staff who are struggling to help them identify their points of leverage.

“Where can we reduce stressors or increase healthy coping mechanisms to improve your well-being and functioning here at camp?” The camp job comes with many stressors, but the camp environment also includes many of the most powerful healthy coping mechanisms.

Coping Mechanisms

Healthy	Unhealthy
Sleep (adults need 7–9 hours) Nutrition and hydration Exercise and physical activity Nature, being outside, natural light Social connection Personal hobbies Spiritual connection (prayer, mindfulness, mediation, yoga, or other practice for meaning, relaxation, and calm) Connection to meaningful work Helpful self-talk (name it to tame it) Outside support	Denial/avoidance Blame or defensiveness Numbing Drugs/alcohol Compulsive or impulsive behaviors Eating, spending, scrolling Gossip Self-harm

 

The second protective factor of resilience, high expectations, is already naturally embedded in the Wise Feedback model, through high standards. People who have high expectations for themselves and their own work are more resilient. As camp leaders, we can transmit high standards through our messaging to staff throughout the camp experience, in hiring, onboarding, training, and ongoing feedback during the program. Young adults interpret high standards as respect. The key is pairing those standards with coaching that feels supportive. “We have really high standards here, which can be a lot, but I’m confident you can reach them, and I’m here to help you do that” sends the message that you think they are capable and motivates them to try harder when success in the job equals the earned social status and respect they crave.

The third protective factor, opportunities to participate and contribute, is interlaced with the experience of belonging at camp. Staff who meaningfully contribute to the camp experience naturally earn social status and respect in the community, which leads to authentic belonging and increased resilience.

We can intentionally facilitate this process by finding ways for staff to participate and contribute to the camp experience according to their passions, skills, or strengths. Consider elements of your camp experience that already serve to celebrate staff and campers. Campfire performances or special activities can celebrate unique talents or skills. Big group announcements offer space to recognize and appreciate contributions. Peer-to-peer shout-outs can take many formats, reinforcing high expectations and relationships. These are the places that already bestow “earned prestige” on people by highlighting their competence or value to the camp community.

“Belonging stories” are another tool camps can use to increase staff belonging and resilience. Developed through experiments by Yeager, psychologist Greg Walton, and others, this intervention has had amazing success at increasing belonging and success in college, and even improved well-being years later. Such successful stories share four elements:

• Struggle is normal. This is hard, in different ways, for everyone.
• Change is possible. Things can get better; hang in there.
• Take concrete actions to start change. There are specific things you can do.
• There is a snowball effect. Once small actions initiate change, momentum builds quickly until the situation significantly improves (Yeager, 2023).

Ask returning staff to highlight these four elements as they tell their own authentic stories of adjusting to camp their first year. Increased belonging can lead to stronger interpersonal connections at camp, and therefore increased resilience on the job.

This is a great example of operationalizing growth mindset, a concept first introduced by Carol Dweck (2007). When staff expect struggle and growth, they are better prepared to be less fragile in the face of difficulty.

Young staff these days may be generally less resilient than the generations before them, but judging them as fragile, entitled, or soft only drives disconnection and won’t improve their performance. Helping our staff find ways to contribute meaningfully to the camp experience can drive competence, belonging, and resilience in a reinforcing cycle of connection and growth. And at the end of the day, that’s what camp is about.

Photos courtesy of Cheley Colorado Camps, Estes Park, CO; Summer Adventure Camp, Camp Fire Alaska, Anchorage, AK; Lutherhaven Ministries, Coeur D Alene, ID; Camp Oty'Okwa, South Bloomingville, OH.

References

Benard, B. (1991). Fostering resiliency in kids: Protective factors in the family, school, and community. San Francisco, CA: Western Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities.

Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

Mendes, E. (2003). Relationship-building activities to promote effective learning environments. Carlsbad, CA: Mendes Training & Consulting, Inc.

Yeager, D. S. (2023). 10 to 25: The science of motivating young people. New York, NY: Crown.

Dave Brown is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked in nonprofits, public schools, and, since 2010, as a director for Mountain Camp near Lake Tahoe, California. At camp, he supports staff and camper mental health, well-being, and development. Outside of camp, he runs Fence Post Learning, an online staff training resource, and maintains a small telehealth therapy practice from his home in the Bay Area. Learn more at fencepostlearning.com.