The best intentioned efforts of adults are often sabotaged by coercive climates of bullying among peers and conflict with adults. The solution is to create cultures where youth cooperate with authority and treat one another with respect. In this article, the authors stress the task of the staff to create a condition in which students see more benefit in cooperating than they do in combating staff efforts. They contend that empowering youth while still preserving adult influence requires using an "indirect approach" to guiding group interactions. Although the indirect approach is probably the most difficult thing for most staff to master, this practice is exceptionally powerful since it provides strategies to enlist young people in the process of creating a climate of where concern replaces coercion. The authors discuss the powers of an indirect approach and helping and describe how staff should view children in a strength-based philosophy. (Contains 3 endnotes.)