The Success-Failure-Resilience
Workshop for Schools and Organizations
Rationale
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How do people in my workplace (or school) generally feel about and react to mistakes?
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Why and how do I want to I share my failures and successes with anyone?
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How can reframing failure improve the quality of my work?
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How can it make my work more satisfying?
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What are some ideas for action on this? For example, how can I/we deal more effectively with mistakes and failures, both personally and as an organization?
These are some of the questions we address in SFR workshops.
For some of us, mistakes and failures tend to confirm the uncomfortable feeling that we are not doing as well as we should. This can be almost unconscious; we might simply feel uncomfortable or disappointed: "I'm having a bad day." Or we might feel guilty: "I didn't try hard enough." Or we might externalize the responsibility: " (Insert other person or people) made me do it."
Further, if we interpret our mistakes as reflections of our fundamental deficits, we can feel profoundly discouraged. That interpretation can lead to hiding mistakes and even to dropping out of school, changing a job, or giving up on a career path. In a sense, we can’t be resilient when our beliefs about success and failure won’t let us. Sometimes, failures are just failures. But sometimes what gets us into trouble is our implicit interpretation of them.
But--and this is a big one--there are different kinds of failures, and there are ways to fail well. When we do that, many failures actually become excellent opportunities for innovation, learning, and enjoyment. So, the questions become, “How do I create this kind of resilience in my work?" "What can people in power do to shape this work environment to promote resilience?"
The Context for Trust
SFR workshops create a collective experience to deepen and expand participants’ repertoires for dealing with the real life mistakes and failures that constitute good and even excellent work. Ultimately, this kind of change increases satisfaction with work. However, discussing our mistakes doesn't come easily for most of us, and, for the workshop to be effective, sufficient mutual trust has to exist. Via careful listening and identification of issues, participants’ genuine concerns can emerge and provide a foundation for increased trust and meaningful steps, benefiting both individuals and the groups in which they work. Depending on the individual context, it can be valuable to hold separate workshops for people at different levels of power.
Models and Frames
People differ in their experience of the meaning and purpose of their work. And the same person may evolve over time in their meaning-making and intellectual capacity, including how they experience expectations, complexity, and ambiguity. By becoming acquainted with some relevant ideas and models, we can create a shared language and more effectively respond to these challenges.
The design of SFR workshops, while partly experiential and largely dependent on the particular concerns of participants, includes key models of leadership and human development, common misunderstandings about the nature of good work and mistakes, and suggestions for how to fail well, both personally and as a team.
Customizing a Workshop
Planning a SFR workshop begins with a conversation between Dr. Phillips and those who can represent people closest to the particular context--such as CEO’s, staff members, deans, faculty, and others. Ultimately, the workshop that emerges may include reflection, brainstorming, design thinking processes, action steps, and follow-up.
Example of a SFR Workshop
Although the shape and specifics of the workshops differ depending on context, below is an example of one workshop outline:
1. Introductions
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The idea of rethinking success and failure, common myths.
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Conditions for innovation and creativity
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The nature of resilience and the inner experience of “failure”
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Models of reframing—“What is the main purpose of my work?” “What is the purpose of college?” “What is my role?” “What is the role of authority, i.e., bosses & faculty?”
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Self-concept models—for example, Dweck's mindset and Steele's stereotype threat
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Design thinking
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Fundamentals of resilience—learning from failures and re-defining success
2. Activity in pairs: Our own stories of success/failure/mistakes. How do I respond to mistakes internally and externally? What are my attributions about mistakes and missteps? How do I cope? What factors, both internal and external, make it easier or harder to learn from mistakes? Are there changes in this work environment that would help?
3. Small groups: Explore locally derived scenarios. Reckoning with the realities in our context.
4. Brainstorm wall. Develop action steps.
5. Debrief. Develop concrete follow-up process.
To learn more or to discuss scheduling a SFR workshop, contact
Ariel Phillips, Ed.D.
978-505-5150