Empowering the next generation with psychological resources is one of the most meaningful investments educators and career coaches can make. Burnout is a real and rising challenge among young adults as they transition from school to career. But the science of psychological capital offers hope and direction for those working to build workforce readiness and lifelong resilience.
This post explores how you can nurture psychological capital in high school students, college students, and young adults to prevent burnout, enhance work engagement, and ultimately set them up for satisfying, sustainable careers. By integrating evidence-based insights and simple coaching strategies, you can make a lasting impact on youth well-being and professional growth.
Work engagement is more than just showing up to a job each day. Organizational psychologists (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010) define it as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state characterized by:
When young adults experience work engagement, they:
High work engagement fosters:
For early-career adults, these qualities fuel motivation, commitment, and the desire to keep learning and contributing—even amid challenges. Educators and career coaches can play a crucial role in helping young people identify and cultivate engagement at each stage of their career journeys.
Disengaged individuals distance themselves emotionally, mentally, and even physically from their work. While temporary disengagement can sometimes provide necessary recovery during overwhelming periods, chronic disengagement can become a barrier to growth and success.
A 41-study literature review by Afrahi, et al. (2022) found several contributors to work disengagement, grouped into three categories:
Individual Characteristics
Job Attributes
Organizational Factors
Reflect on your own experiences as a coach or educator. Where do you see these factors affecting the youth you mentor?
Burnout is not simply exhaustion after a long week; it is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal work stressors. Mashlach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001) outline three dimensions:
When young people face burnout, they:
Burnout is linked to physical and mental health challenges such as:
From a workforce readiness perspective, burnout hinders performance, increases absenteeism, and may push young talent out of promising career paths.
Job demands refer to aspects of work that require sustained effort and can consume personal resources. Examples include:
When not balanced, job demands can impair health, leading to stress and eventually burnout.
Job resources, on the other hand, support goal achievement, personal growth, and well-being. These can include:
Research by organizational psychologist, Dr. Arnold Bakker, and others shows that job resources help buffer the impact of high demands and boost motivation, job satisfaction, and engagement. Encouraging young adults to seek out or advocate for resources is a key coaching strategy for sustaining well-being at work.
Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a science-backed set of personal resources that empower young people to thrive in the face of challenges. According to Luthans et al. (2007), PsyCap consists of four core components:
PsyCap reflects both “who you are” and “who you are becoming,” making it ideal for supporting high school students, college students, and early-career adults during transitions.
A robust body of research demonstrates that higher psychological capital leads to multiple benefits for young adults and the organizations they join:
Enhances
Reduces
Reflect: Which elements of psychological capital do you notice as strengths or growth areas among your students or clients? How can fostering these traits transform their long-term career satisfaction?
Optimism empowers youth to maintain positive expectations for the future—even during difficulty.
Helpful coaching strategies:
Practical Activity: Ask students to write about a setback they faced and identify three potential opportunities or lessons that emerged from it.
Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capacity to learn, grow, and succeed at challenging tasks.
Ways to enhance self-efficacy in youth:
Reflection Question: When did you last surprise yourself with what you could achieve? What helped you accomplish it?
Hope involves persevering toward goals and adjusting plans as circumstances change.
Practical coaching techniques:
Activity: Facilitate a goal-setting session where youth write a plan, identify possible barriers, and brainstorm ways to overcome them.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity stronger than before.
How to build resilience through coaching:
Tip: Incorporate discussions about healthy coping strategies and have students share stories of times they overcame hardship.
Coaching for psychological capital is ongoing, not a one-off intervention. Early alignment between personal strengths, values, and career choices (known as person-job fit) can energize young adults, increasing engagement from the beginning. But sustaining that energy requires continuous adaptation and growth as the novelty of new work fades.
Encourage youth to reflect regularly:
Practical Exercise: Conduct regular check-ins with young adults to assess engagement, sources of stress, and opportunities for renewed growth.
To foster career coaching mastery and make a lasting impact on youth:
Empowering young adults with psychological capital is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ skill in career coaching; it is essential for their resilience, satisfaction, and ability to thrive even in demanding environments. By focusing on these evidence-based strategies, you help foster the next generation of engaged, adaptable, and fulfilled professionals.
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