Suppose you have a young person on your team who is struggling to adjust to their work, while also dealing with personal problems. They may be working on a complex project that isn’t yet finished. How do you best help this employee address their issues while also ensuring that important work gets done for the organization?

A common response is to take care of some of the work for this team member. You may assure this person that they are valued and that their emotional well-being is primary. You or other team members may take on additional work to help get through the situation.

Another common response is to take a sterner approach. After all, young employees in particular need to learn to step up and get things done—even during difficult times. So, you may hold the line and demand their effort.

Which of these works best?

This issue is explored in-depth in an excellent new book, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, by psychologist David Yeager, who is a colleague of mine. In this book, Yeager covers his own research—as well as work by his collaborators and others—that addresses ways to motivate young people. Much of this work is also applicable to everyone, regardless of their age.

As Yeager points out, both of the strategies I described are problematic. Essentially, when engaging with other people, we can think about the level of support we want to provide them, as well as the standards we want to set.

The first strategy (which he calls the “Protector Mindset”) sets low standards and provides the person with a high level of support. In this case, the support comes from lowering standards in order to help the employee deal with their personal issues. The protector mindset has several problems. It doesn’t help people learn to find ways to be productive even during difficult times. It also sends a message that you don’t believe the person is capable of doing difficult things.

The second strategy (which he calls the “Enforcer Mindset”) holds high standards for the person but provides them very little support. The idea here is that people need to be thrown into the deep end of the pool. This strategy also creates problems. Without support, people often don’t know how to achieve their goals. They want to succeed, but feel like they don’t have the resources they need to do so.

As Yeager discusses, once you realize that these common strategies differ along the dimensions of standards and support, there is an opportunity to engage in a strategy that involves both high standards and high support. This strategy is called the “Mentor Mindset.” Much of the book 10 to 25 explores strategies for implementing this strategy.

For an employee struggling with personal issues who also has complex tasks to solve, that might involve discussing with them what aspects of the task they might be able to take on under the circumstances, or extending the deadline for a project but still having them engage in it. The idea is that acknowledging difficult circumstances and providing some support is comforting, but still requiring work and having standards for performance demonstrates confidence in the employee’s ability.

Instead, Yeager draws on research suggesting that authentic questions to which you legitimately want to know the answer can be valuable. Asking people their view of a situation and whether that view is helping them to achieve their goals can be valuable. In addition, asking questions designed to get people thinking differently about the situation can be useful for shifting their outlook on a difficult circumstance.

While describing the Mentor Mindset is easy, actually implementing it in your work can be difficult. Another great feature of Yeager’s book is that it has a workbook at the end that allows you to practice these techniques. I highly recommend this book to anyone whose success relies on their capacity to motivate others. These techniques are likely to work well on people young and old.