What does it take to succeed? Apparently a whole lot of failure. Paul Tough, in the New York Times, reports educational leaders who believe that knowing how to fail is the secret to success.
When things get outside their comfort zone, or they first encounter people more capable than they are, they have no skills for dealing with it. We talk a lot about hard work, but school grading generally ends up being based on how well you did on the test, not about how much effort it took to get there or how persistent someone was.
But wait, don’t we want to hire those people who are naturally brilliant and don’t need a lot of hard work to be successful? Well, sure, except that if they don’t know how to fail they are going to be awfully difficult to work with.
The ability to bounce back from failure is a key point. But, what if you’ve never failed? What if your parents fix every problem you ever have? What if you never gain this valuable skills? Then you’re far less likely to have true success. If you’ve never had to try again and again, are you going to assume that the problem is unsolvable if you fail the first time?
Lots of people live charmed lives as long as their parents are pulling the strings or they put themselves in places where success is almost guaranteed. Except that anyone in the working world today knows that failure is not only a possibility it’s a high probability. Businesses fail. Entire divisions get laid off, regardless of how brilliant any individual employee was. Sometimes it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what the problem in the darn code is. If you’re a one try and you’re finished type of person, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you won’t succeed.
And what happens if you’re one of those people who has never failed? Never had to face disappointment and pick yourself up by your own bootstraps? It can be disasterous. But, to succeed you must be able to fail and recover from failure.
That means you must be willing to take risks, listen to others, and admit where you could improve. Arguing over a performance appraisal instead of listening to what your boss is trying to tell you are key indicators of someone who is unwilling to learn. (Not that all bosses’ assessments are accurate, but those appraisals tell you what your boss is looking for. Disregard that at your own peril.)
Perhaps even those of us who are long finished with school can learn something from people who are trying to educate our children.
