Here’s a quote from US Olympic swimming star Katie Ledecky’s coach, Bruce Gemmell – “We’ll try a drill that she’s horrible at – something where she’ll start off in the poorer third of the group doing it. Then I’ll catch her sneaking practice time to get better at it, so within some period of time, she’s one of the best in the group. Some other swimmers, well, they try and they fail at it, and I have to cajole and beg them to try again”.
We don’t like to fail in public, do we? It doesn’t feel great. I love the idea of a multiple World and Olympic champion “sneaking” off to do some practice on her own. Apparently, she doesn’t like failing in public either! For some, failure can lead to an acceptance of lack of ability. Not Katie Ledecky. Failure lead her to find a ‘safe’ place to learn and do what’s needed to improve. Do you need to find a ‘safe’ place to learn when things don’t go to plan?
I want my team to take more responsibility for how to improve, but what if they can’t work it out on their own?If you just tell them how to do it, you risk them coming back to ask for help whenever they’re struggling – very time consuming for you and not a great strategy when you’re not around to provide the answers.
So, how can you help them work out what to do WITHOUT just giving them the answer? Try giving your feedback as a question.
Here’s an example. If the purpose of your feedback is to provide an option they could use and encourage them to think about WHY this might work, (so they can take that learning and use it in future) how would you add this into a question? Did you see what I did there!!
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You never stop learning, even when you’re trying not to!I’m just back from Christmas in New Zealand and the plan was to have some quality down time with family. However, as someone with a passion for sport, New Zealand probably isn’t the best place to go to switch off!
What always strikes me when I’m there is how successful the All Blacks have been over the long haul – an almost 80% win rate over 115 years of International rugby! Why is this? Rugby is culturally important to New Zealand for a start, but I think the key is that it’s their development system that is the asset, not the shelf life of any ‘superstar’ individual. Great players and coaches come and go but they are a product of a system rather than being despite it.
What I took time to learn more about on ‘holiday’ was this system didn’t happen by accident. It was specifically created to keep ahead of the competition. Which made me think about the development systems in any organisation. Are they business assets and have they been designed for long-term success?