Responding to Failure
We have made a habit of doing put ups and gratitudes at my current institution. It is essentially a semi-formalized process of affirming others. We are often uncomfortable verbally affirming others or expressing gratefulness so having a forced process to do this is helpful. Awkward? Sure. Takes time to develop? Yes. But a good way to build a healthy team environment and really just a positive life habit to develop. Further, it forces everyone to see each other as people and not just athletes.
Here are some examples.
I know these types of things can be acquired taste and many think they are silly. I was there once. Now, they have grown on me. Celebrating the success of others or building them up is a life skill we should all have. AND, I am convinced they build team chemistry, improve trust, and lead to improved team performance in competition.
Here is an interesting story that is related to this that happened to one of our teams.
Awhile back, we had a student-athlete that had multiple chances to close the game out for his team and failed. The student is a good player that should have gotten it done but didn’t. The next day at weights, during a put-up time at the end, one of his teammates put him up. He expressed how much the guy that didn’t get it done cared and how he appreciated his passion. I think he then said he knew he’d “get it done” next time.
This was put on Instagram. Most thought it was a cool moment of picking up a teammate. However, one person ridiculed it. That person essentially mocked the person and program because they were putting up someone that failed. It was done in a manner that was rude and in poor form, but it got me thinking.
How should we handle failure? Especially when the failure happens in a big moment and the person doesn’t perform when they are perfectly capable of doing so. Should we really celebrate that person and encourage them? Or should we belittle him like the Instagram responder did?
I really did think about it quite a bit. Because winning matters. You play to win AND the impact of our work, while not determined by how much we win, winning certainly helps. The last thing we want to do is tell people that its ok. We put a lot of work into our sport. That work, in part, is so that we can perform in the moment and win.
How coaches, and their teams, respond in these moments is crucial. The goal is to perform and after a bad moment, how do we respond to get better and perform in the next moment? I think three things:
1. The context of the situation and the people on the team matter. There is likely a time to be hard on individuals and the teams. If getting on them snaps them out of a bad place or helps them stop being selfish, then that is certainly appropriate. However, it is never helpful to respond like the guy did on Instagram.
2. Most people beat themselves up enough, they don’t need their team to pile on. Expressing confidence (if genuine and authentic) in the person that did not perform is likely helpful. I know it would have helped me. And the reality is that that person probably feels worse than anyone about not performing.
3. This kind of situation and moment goes back to each one of our “C”’s at the Impactful Coaching Project.
a. Competence- what fundamentals does the player need to revisit to perform next time.
b. Care- in a moment of difficult public failure, individuals need to know you care about them.
c. Constant- be prepared to respond in a helpful way that is consistent with your stated values, culture, and environment. As a coach, don’t blink in this moment.
The kid that failed at the end of the game kept showing up. I was proud of him.
The idiot that posted the negative comment on Instagram? I looked into his background, and I will take our guy every day of the week. I would also say this to him:
“It is not the critic who counts not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt