The Default State of Society
The other day I read a post on my company's intranet that stuck with me and made me think. I'll try to give it in my own words:
A teacher entered the class room and started to write equations on the board.
1x9 = 9
2x9=18
3x9=27
The class watched and there was only the usual murmur while the teacher proceeded.
4x9=36
5x9=45
6x9=54
7x9=63
8x9=72
9x9=81
10x9=91
On finishing the teacher turned to the class and noticed some murmurs and giggles. He paused for a moment and the giggles increased. Some pupils started to laugh and after a while others joined in until a majority of pupils found amusement in the teacher's mistake and joined the laughter. After a while, when the laughter dampened down, the teacher said:
"I made this mistake on purpose in order to demonstrate a point. I wrote ten equations on the board, of which nine were absolutely correct. Most of you however decided to focus on the one equation that was false. None of you gave me any praise or positive feedback for the nine equations I got right. Instead you made fun of my error in that one equation. This represents the state of our society: We live in a culture, where people are belittled and humiliated publicly by default for their failures. Instead of encouragement for getting things right and treating people with respect for trying to learn and to progress, our reward for failure is pure negativity. How do you expect to thrive in a culture that punishes the will to learn and to innovate?"
With that the lesson was over.
Personally I think the story is a little exaggerated if not outright cheesy. However, that does not change the fact that there is truth in it and a valuable lesson to be learned: Do we rather encourage people to make mistakes or do we leave them with a feeling of bitterness?
When my kids started to learn to write (they still do, but they got the basics), they made all kinds of mistakes. Still my wife and I were looking hard for the gold nuggets and spent long stretches deciphering our kids' writings. Every time they wrote something, e.g. a letter to Santa or the Easter Bunny, we praised them and encouraged them to write more.
If you're not prepared to fail you'll never learn
At work I went through a slightly different school. In hindsight I was mostly lucky with my bosses and colleagues. I seldomly had bad bosses or really challenging customers or colleagues, who would give me a hard wrap. However there was one superior, who would scold me even for minor formalities even when I got the most things right. Especially during my time in the military formalities were a big thing. One of my bosses demanded that all my outgoing emails go over his desk first. I was in my late 20s at the time and I felt outright humiliated every time he criticized me. It was not that he didn't have a point. It was just the way he made me feel - like an idiot. He did not show me how it was done right, he just pointed out my 'mistakes' and told me to come back when I had a better solution. I hated it. It made me regret even trying and I started to avoid the necessity to send emails as much as possible. At some point my productivity and my learning progress was so bad that I realized I had to change something. That's when I decided I would rather teach myself and others than to jugdge, even my bad boss.
Create failure zones
There are areas where mistakes are intolerable. Some areas are just zero failure tolerance areas. I spent 12 years of my career as an Air Force officer, I should know. But that is the reason it is all the more important to create areas where failures are supposed to happen. Create your own fuck-up zones. I created my personal failure zone by asking a senior colleague to review my important emails first before my boss would review them. It was a way where I was sure I had nothing to fear and could learn valuable lessons by actually testing different ways to write - mostly orders. Now when my boss scolded me, I even got some joy out of it, because I knew that another senior officer had already reviewed the text and had given his approval. Sometimes I had to fight the urge to grin upon being scolded, it was hilarious.
Be a teacher - or at least don't be a douche
Encourage people to try, to learn and to fail. Fail fast, learn fast and move on. If not, then at least don't be a referee with only a whistle and without any idea of a possible solution to the problem. If you do, you might easily become the problem yourself. Don't be someone who criticizes all the time without being able to show how it could be done well/right/better. Be the guy you would always have wanted as your teacher.
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