The Cost of our Cultural Fear Around Struggle

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Many people prematurely give up on their dreams and goals, on other people, and on themselves, simply because they internalize that experiencing struggle means they are somewhere they shouldn’t be.

I'm concerned that, as a consequence of this cultural bias around struggle, individuals, our society, and our organizations are moving further away from learning the character traits and skills necessary for greatness.

The reason I say this is that patience with suffering and struggle over time is biologically required for building skill, and thereby achieving greatness. If we shy away from struggle, or attempt to hide it, we are moving away from learning, growing, building skill, and becoming great at what we do. If you'd like more information on that claim, I encourage you to seek out Daniel Coyle's book, The Talent Code. It's an enlightening read.

In organizational life, leaders can easily (and often) chafe against mistakes; insisting people stop making them and punishing people when they do. This approach to mistakes simply drives the mistakes into the shadows, because people are afraid to talk about them. This diminishes the leader's awareness to what's not working; until, of course, the mistakes blow up and the damage is far worse than if the mistakes were dealt with much earlier.

When people don’t feel safe, trust and cooperation disappear; replaced by blame and other forms of self-protection. Creativity and innovation is always hard, but it’s made nearly impossible inside any organization that has no patience with honest struggle. Failing to deal constructively with mistakes is the one failure we all ought to be most afraid of.

What's to learn here?

First - The best way to deal with mistakes is to catch them early. That means, sharing them and talking about them.

Second - If you are serious about growing the competence of your organization, then you must become serious about dealing constructively with mistakes. That means learning from them and figuring out how to mitigate them along with any damaging consequences.

Third - Mistakes are not a sign of failure; failure happens when people don't feel safe to share their mistakes, and then learn from them together.

What would you add to this list? ? Please comment below...

Excerpt from the ?How To CRUSH That Career Thing, by Kirk Anderson: www.sfcsuite.com

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KirkAnderson-SFCSUITE/featured

ActionPointe LLC Website: ?www.actionpointe.net? ?