Saturday 13 December 2014

10 ways to encourage young people to embrace failure

I was once fortunate enough to be the organiser of a conference where the keynote speaker was Professor Carol Dweck. Professor Dweck is famous for the development of the 'Growth Mindset' which has become very prevalent in a lot of education institutions and popular across a range of domains. During her talk she said something which has stuck with me ever since...she said, "if we really want to become great at anything...we need to learn to love the struggle"..."we tend to avoid people struggling...we want to help them...we don't like to see them struggling...we don't seek opportunities for struggle, we don't prize it...nobody comes home from work and says, 'honey, I had the most amazing struggle today'". 

In his now famous TED Talk, Major General Stanley McChrystal talks about how he learned about leadership through experiencing failure. The quote that really resonates with me is his line which says "...true leadership is allowing people to fail without making them feel a failure". 

I have been reflecting on how some of my best learning experiences have been such massive failures... 

I failed my A levels when I was 18. I remember being crestfallen when I saw the letters D, E and U on the slip of paper that came in the envelope. All of my friends were celebrating and talking about where they were going to university and I was the chump that was considering going through the university clearing process to get into somewhere, anywhere just so I didn't have to feel that I had completely blown it! To be honest I should have known what was coming...I had been cruising and had gotten involved with some people that were not all that good for me. The writing was on the wall as they say. 

I took stock and and after a few days I decided that I would retake the whole year. It was tough, all of my friends went off to their respective universities and I was left behind, questioning whether I had made the right decision or not. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made, I knuckled down and worked hard and got way better grades than the 1st time that got me into my first choice university. My mantra throughout the whole year was 'fail to prepare...prepare to fail'. It was a big learning moment about the value of preparation and putting in the work that as stayed with me throughout my career. 

My other big fail was when I tried to start a business with a friend of mine. We both had other jobs at the time and were trying to build it up enough so that it could be our main thing. It was a brilliant idea and it got a lot of media coverage, we were also invited to do an event for TV with a number of top golfers but ultimately we couldn't make it work and we had to mothball it. My big learning from that was that if you are going to do something you need to be all in and fully committed. Ironically the main reason that I didn't quit my job and go all in was that I had mouths to feed at home and I wasn't prepared to take the risk of it not working. The failure came because of the fear of failure!

From a coaching point of view my biggest failure came ironically after my most successful period as a coach. I had had been working with a club team for a number of years and we had won back to back league championships which took us into the national league. In our first season in the nationals we had secured a strong top 5 finish when everybody expected us to struggle. I then decided to step down from that role as my work life was becoming quite challenging and I had a young family at home that needed my attention. That summer my home club came calling as they were without a coach and they were desperate for me to help out, the helper side of me took over and I agreed, even though I knew it was going to be a challenge. It turned out to be the biggest challenge ever as within 2 seasons that team had been relegated! 

I learned a whole lot from that episode, it was probably a turning point in my coaching career. The 2 big learning points were;
  • Do not take coaching roles through a sense of obligation.
  • If I am going to take on a job then I am only going to take that job if I know that I am going to be totally committed and can give my full energy.
Many young people are afraid to fail. They grow up in a world where a lot is expected of them and they expect a lot of themselves. Many come from environments where failure is discouraged...failure is seen as a lack of application or a sign that they might not have what it takes. As a result they either play it safe and stay within their limitations or they fail to explore opportunities for development because their creativity and imagination are stifled.

To me failure is really important for learning and that is why I am so passionate about finding ways for me to create a 'failure rich' environment where players are free to be expressive and explore the choices in front of them to determine what is the best option for them. I talk about failure and struggle much more..."what was the best failure team?" "What did we learn from that?" Or "who wants to share the struggle they had today". 

I have often said that I evaluate my sessions not by the smiling faces and 'great session' comments I get from the players but by the air of 'slight disgruntlement' that is in the air. Ideally I have got the the players to a place where they love the struggle and the challenge and so they still recognise the value of the session and have enjoyed it but I definitely don't like seeing players that are totally comfortable as I know that I haven't stretched them enough.

I like to use words like 'stretch', 'reach' and 'strive' liberally to surround the players with language which points towards the process of learning and really try hard to avoid giving outcome based praise like 'that was brilliant' or 'awesome skill' which feels nice short term but creates a world where the players are only interested in the outcome and avoid failing for fear of not being identified as successful. 

So how can create an environment that embraces failure and struggle? What practical steps can we take to guide young people to challenge and stretch themselves? 

Here are 10 top tips to create an environment which encourages failure...
  1. Avoid labels - "you are smart", "you are clever". Focus instead on the work that goes into what they do "how hard did you work to be able to do that".
  2. Get them to explain their process "tell me more about how you did that, what was the strategy you used?
  3. If they do something that is easy for them and they are expecting praise, offer them an 'opportunity' to stretch themselves by saying, "I want to give you the opportunity to show me how well you can learn".
  4. Apologise for creating a game or practice that isn't challenging enough for them.,,,"I'm sorry, I didn't give you enough stretch with that activity...let's work on how we can make things more of a challenge.
  5. Ask them if they want the easy task or the harder one. Use this as a test to see if they are embracing struggle.
  6. Use the 'horizon strategy' to keep the achievement of the task just out of reach but still visible. Give them checkpoints so that they can still see their improvement.
  7. Explain that 'learning happens in the ugly zone' - if a player is telling you how good they are...ask if they can 'fail harder'
  8. Create an award for the 'top struggler'. Reward the person who has tried the hardest and had the most fails. Give out 'failure points'. 
  9. Always explain that you can't make things easy because easy isn't fun. You want them to have fun and the fun comes from working hard at something.
  10. Remind them that F.A.I.L. stands for First Attempt in Learning. 










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