It might sound funny to say that the path to success is paved by setbacks but it’s true.
I don’t mean to say that we should set out to fail, but that making mistakes is a fundamental part of how we learn and grow, and when we’re open to exploring new things and continuing onwards despite setbacks, we’re much more likely to succeed.
The psychologist and researcher Carol Dweck calls this the Growth Mindset, “the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift.”
When I coach directors and managers, I’m often asked “I just don’t want to mess up. Can you help?”
I get it, of course, nobody wants to make a mistake, and especially not one that’s considered HR-related and could get them or the company into trouble.
During coaching conversations, I often just remind supervisors that they’re not looking for perfection – if such a thing were even possible with managing human interaction – but to do a ‘good enough’ job when engaging an employee.
Yes, I’ve had to intervene in difficult progressive discipline conversations when a director had become flustered while talking to their direct report and was starting to lose the thread of what we had prepped before the meeting, but my goal is always to empower supervisors to do ‘good enough’ and then provide feedback about how things can be improved afterwards.
In a super fascinating TED Talk by Dweck, she talks about the “power of yet”, where brain scans of school students who failed at a task but had a growth mindset showed, “their brain is on fire with yet. They engage deeply. They process the error. They learn from it, and they correct it.”
In other words, they aim for ‘good enough’ rather than perfection; they allow themselves to fail, they learn from their mistakes, and they understand that ‘not yet’ still leaves the way open to success.
Writing this blog came to my mind this week when I was out rollerblading, and even more precisely, when I nearly ate dirt for the third time while skating on one of the bike paths created from disused railway lines here in the Boston area.
At almost 40 years old, despite a summer fad with skating as a kid, I’m basically brand new to rollerblading. While I’m not yet a good skater, it occurred to me as I managed to stabilize one of those wobbles that usually would’ve sent me to the ground, that I’m improving.
If I expected myself to be somehow naturally gifted at skating or was too afraid to make a mistake in front of others, I would be hobbling my ability to learn and limiting myself with what Dweck calls a “fixed mindset”, i.e. the opposite of a growth mindset.
In brain scans of students with the fixed mindsets, she says “there’s hardly any activity. They run from the error. They don’t engage with it.”
When a senior manager I was working with was separating employment from an underperforming employee, I noticed that they began to visibly shake during the meeting. Their voice crackled from their dry throat and while they explained where the employee had gone wrong well enough, they didn’t actually say the crucial words: “I’m sorry, but we’re terminating your employment.” The employee was becoming defensive as the conversation progressed without clear resolution.
This was another occasion where I stepped in more directly as an HR manager – separating employment is never easy, but you need to ensure that the employee being let go leaves with their dignity intact and a clear resolution – and it was no big deal ultimately, but what stood out to me was how the senior manager portrayed their readiness to me beforehand.
During our preparatory coaching conversation, this manager was adamant that they were good to go and projected an air of confidence and readiness, and they didn’t want to rehearse, roleplay, or ask any questions.
Of course, “acting as if” you’re already confidently handling a difficult conversation may be helpful to actually doing so, and is an established cognitive behavioral technique, but I think based on this and previous interactions with this senior manager that they were stuck in one of Dweck’s fixed mindsets.
Dweck refers to this as the “tyranny of now”, where an individual is not embracing the learning or the growth mindset, and in this instance the senior manager may have been overly concerned about appearing competent rather than allowing their guard down enough to accept support and the developmental opportunity.
Could it have also been a case where my role as the HR manager comes across as scary, intimidating, or like the judgmental gaze of the organization watching the senior manager’s every more?
I would certainly hope not, though of course it may have – it’s part of my own growth and development to ensure that I continue to learn from every setback.
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