Share your Mistakes with Students

The coaching theme for this month is - Mistakes

Evolution has one main tool for bringing about the rich diversity of life - mistakes.

What I am asking you to do may take you outside your comfort zone. I am going to ask you to share with your students some event in your life where you had to make a choice. It could be a choice that you are proud of , or not. The most powerful examples are when you have made a mistake and learned from it.

You will be giving your students concrete proof that adults make mistakes, and thus make it acceptable for them to make mistakes too.

You will also be showing them how you learned, and still learn, from choices that you make in life. Now that you are an adult you know what your values are and can live by them. Young adults are less sure of what their values are. They don't have the inner compass of knowing their values to support the choices they are making; and they are concerned about making the right ones.

Show them how you tripped up, landed on your face and got right back up again.

When we teach students we want them to expand their world beyond what it is now. We want them to grow out of the Comfort Zone and explore the Learning Zone.

I ask you to show them the way.

The same applies to coaching.

Transformation is seldom cozy.

Tell a true story

As teachers, we can share the lessons we have learned from our own mistakes in life. That's when we are being a role model and acting as a Mentor, a task that's often delegated to home-room teachers. Coaching skills are useful for mentors. In coaching, we don't share our personal experiences, but when teaching and mentoring, we do.

Martin’s Story, with Turning Points

This is my story about making money from other people’s mistakes.

My actions reveal my values at the time. Years later, I think differently about what I did, although I understand what made me do it at the time.

College students

I tell this story to college students as a way of beginning a discussion about how we can tell the right choices from the wrong ones. What often happens is that they also gain awareness everyone in the same class has different answers to the situation I describe.

Once upon a time...

Back in 1976, I ran a one-man business as an independent computer analyst. I would fix a company’s problems with their computers, for a price. In those days, computers were wardrobe-sized specialist equipment. Very few companies could afford them. The companies that had them were doing things like financial calculations, product inventories and sales projections. The computers were used to collect data, analyse, process, calculate etc.

But there were no games and no internet. I will give you a minute to digest that!

I was called out to a company that had experienced a sudden shut-down of their machine from time to time. The manager told me that it often happened at the end of the week when the travelling sales people came into the office to type in their sales reports via computer terminals. That information was needed for sending invoices and restocking the stores. They suspected one or more of the sales people was doing something wrong on their terminal, or there was a problem with the computer program, or there was a problem with the machine itself. All those problems were fixable. My job was to find out what was wrong so they could implement a solution.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and watched the sales people typing in their sales reports. I watched as the general office staff clocked off and went home. I watched as the cleaners came in and started cleaning. I watched as one cleaner unplugged the computer to plug in their vacuum cleaner. I watched as the sales team went crazy about yet another computer crash. They were furious that they would have to come back later and type in their reports all over again.?

At this point, I ask the students what they might do

I pondered for a moment. I was being paid by the hour and had solved the problem by observing for just two hours. I had not actually done anything. I would not be getting much money for my expertise. I felt the company could afford to pay me more. I felt I deserved more. As a company, I certainly needed more.

Again, I ask the students what they might do

I told the company manager that I would need the weekend to fix the problem. I told him I expected to be done on Sunday afternoon and the sales people could come in to finish their reports. During the weekend, I plugged the computer back in and restarted it. I then taped over the plug so that it could not be disconnected and wrote on the wall, “Do Not Disconnect”.?

Here, before I finish the story, I ask for their opinion of what I did

The sales team came back in on Sunday afternoon. They were delighted that the problem had been solved? and we chatted whilst they did their work. I told them what had been happening. I pointed out the plug, and my hand-written notice. They laughed their heads off.

I sent the company a bill for 48 hours’ work.

Here, I ask the students to name the Values might have driven my decision

Where next?

You can see that above story introduction can open up a discussion of personal values that in turn can lead to a individual mapping of students' values. It's useful for a teacher to know what's important to their students.

If you are looking for even more coaching ideas and activities to bring the benefits of coaching to your classroom, they are available online here and in paperback here.

INTERESTED: Speak with Martin about the 12 Steps, or other coaching questions, book your personal meeting here.

EDUCATORS: Become certified as an Empowerment Coach in the classroom or school, check out the nonprofit i.b.mee.

COACHES: Provide pro-bono coaching to educators as a part of a coaching in the classroom certification, join a Roundtable here.

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