Empowering Your Athlete:

The Role of learning and failure in building people

Author

Fortitude 365
January 19, 2024

Hi Everyone, thanks for checking out this week’s newsletter. Below you'll find:

  • Performance Concept of the week

    • Empowering Your Athlete: The Role of Learning and Failure in Building Confidence

  • Action plan

  • Resource of the week

  • Things to Explore

  • Got Questions?

Performance Concept of the Week

Empowering Your Athlete: The Role of Learning and Failure in Building People

One of the biggest concerns coaches at the next level have is athletes coming into their programs who do not learn well, and when they fail do not react well and shut down. Learning and failure are two critical components to building confidence.

Often when athletes get to the next level in their sport it is because they were a good athlete at the lower level. This does not guarantee success at a higher level, only an opportunity to try that new level.

So as a parent how can you use the concepts of learning and failure to help support your athlete?

Let’s talk about a short story we witnessed recently. While sitting in the Apple store letting the data transfer from an old phone to a new one we were able to witness the hustle and bustle of people of all sorts, coming and going through the store. There was however one story that really caught our eye though and the lesson it provides parents on development of people (and athletes).

A young girl and her father got set up at the genius bar. This young gal was using a very old “hand me down” Iphone, and had recently gotten her first new one. She was there to get some help transferring the data from the old phone. When the Apple specialist came up to ask what they could do to help the father said “she got a new Iphone for Christmas, I’m not a tech guy so I wanted to have an expert teach her how to do this”.

What a profound statement, a parent showing vulnerability that they could not do something, asking for help, and wanting their child to learn how to do something. Maybe even more powerful was he made this statement in front of his daughter and passed the whole conversation over to her. This forced his daughter to learn, and try something new and maybe even step out of her comfort zone a little.

The father sat their patiently while the Apple specialist walked the young girl through the data transfer step by step. The young girl listened intently to every word and step the Apple employee provided, asked questions when she didn’t understand, and was going through the process of data migration and set up of the new phone.

As with any data migration of a phone, it takes time, especially to back up an old phone, and then download everything on the new phone. The Apple specialist said to the young girl “I’m going to help this next person with their watch while this downloads, please let me know when it is complete” and moved onto helping the older person beside her.

So far this story is very on point of growth mindset, learning, engagement patience, confidence building, and communication.

Then…….

A few minutes later the young girl’s mother showed up to the Genius bar and asked the husband how things were going. The husband replied that she was learning but it was a bit of a slow process and the download just finished and they were waiting for the Apple specialist to come back to them.

This is where the story takes a turn.

Instead of continuing to wait and allow the young girl to finish learning how to set up her new Iphone with the Apple specialist, the mother grabbed the phone and started hitting buttons and completely took over the process. The young girl took a step back from the Genius bar and you could see her body language change and she shrank into the background as the mother took over and completed the data transfer and new phone set up. When the Apple specialist came back asked the young girl what stage she was at, the mother spoke before the girl could even get a word out. The mother had swooped in and took over complete control cutting her daughter out of the process completely.

What does this short story tell us about how you as a parent can help develop your athlete?

The number one thing athletes crave is confidence. Confidence is built in many ways, but one of the best ways to build confidence is from developing competency through learning new skills and taking action.

The story illustrates a few very good points for supporting and building your competitive or high performance athlete’s confidence:

  1. Empower your Athlete - Empower your athlete to take control of their own world and take action because this is what they need to do in sport.

  2. Let them Learn & Do things On Their Own - You need to let your athlete learn new skills on their own. Learning and problem solving are ways to build confidence. When you step in and take over or do it for them, they do not learn any skills that can help the when they are training and competing and you aren’t there to do it for them.

  3. Ask for Help - When you or your athlete do not know how to do something, ask for help. Get an expert to help explain, teach, and build the new skill. Confidence will grow from this learning experience of experts.

  4. Let Them Fail - Failure in sport is higher than in normal life. If you think about it, failure in sport is at least 50% (in a game between two teams 50% of teams lose). In the Olympics the rate is even higher. In a race like the 100m dash one athlete wins, seven do not. By letting your athlete fail and you promoting their ability to push back will actually build them stronger.

Legendary University of Alabama Football coach Nick Saban is all about using these four points to build his athletes. Check out the video below where he talks about “never wasting a failure”.

Video Key Take Away - “You never want to waste a failing…Everybody basically has two choices. You can throw in the towel, quit, and be mediocre, or you can fight, grind, and do the hard things that you need to do to be successful”.

Summary

The two most important take aways from this article to help you support your competitive or high performance athlete are that if you want to help build their confidence, let them do it themselves, and let them fail. You support by ensuring they push back, grind it out, and do hard things to persevere. This becomes exactly what coaches at the next level are looking for. Athletes who learn, try, fail, succeed, take action and build their confidence.

Action Plan

This week’s action plan includes using the four learnings from the story above:

  1. Empower your athlete as the first step to building confidence is taking action!

  2. Let them learn and do it themselves to learn and build new skills (in and out of their sport).

  3. Encourage them to ask for help when they do not know what to do?

  4. Let them fail so they learn through making mistakes. Taking over for them and not letting them experience the mistake will not let them develop new skills.

Resource of the Week

This week’s resource is a recommendation for a great book on learning how to work with this generation of humans. Generation iY: Secrets to Connecting With Today’s Teens & Young Adults in the Digital Age by Tim Elmore is a great read on how you can learn to connect with the digital era athlete.

Things to Explore

Got Questions?

Do you have a question, or want to know more about a topic. Let our team of experts help you. Ask your question here by clicking the button below. We will post answers to questions within future newsletters.

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