I’ve not blogged for some time for the usual reasons: Work, lack of time, too much sailing, etc, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been active within social media, so I don’t feel too bad for my absence. I was inspired to write some thoughts on today’s newsletter from Chris Brogan. Well, when I say newsletter, I really mean “letter from an old friend”, because that is exactly how you feel every time Chris writes. It’s not one of those lame and spammy emails sent out by PR companies, but an incredibly informative, information rich discussion with someone you feel you know well. So, just a quick note, if you’re thinking of writing newsletters thentake a look at how Chris does it. I promise you’ll learn something..
Anyway, on to the conversation. Chris discusses our fear of failure, the ways this affects our work and how we can utilise a few techniques to use it to our advantage. The primary point, however, is that we should all accept a bit of failure, knowing that we learn our most important lessons from making a mistake. It’s a great read, so I urge you all to sign up to Chris’ newsletter to have a look.
This fear of failure is closely linked to a Sports psychology issue that I’ve learnt over my years of dinghy racing. I’ve spent many years at the top level of the UK dinghy racing scene (we just finished 4th at the RS800 nationals. Thanks..) so I’ve learnt my fair share from my various coaches. Most of the psychological babble that I discuss on this site has been directly linked from past mentors or fellow sailors, and I find that they have always transferred extremely well into business. Attribution is a key example.
There are two different types of people. Those who have a “need to succeed” (NTS), and those who have “a need to avoid failure” (NAF). The NTS people will always strive to go above and beyond targets, because they have a strong need to impress, the need to do a great job, and the need to be noticed. In Football they’ll always look to score or catch a touchdown pass, in Golf they’ll look for the big drives and the whole-in-ones, and have little interest in making mistakes. Besides, when you’re this confident, mistakes are rare anyway.. This sounds selfish or arrogant, but we’re all a bit selfish, and it stands to reason that we would all want to be the best at what we do. After all, you need to go for the big swings to learn your boundaries and to taste that success, right?
The NAF crowd will work to simply avoid failing, to stay hidden in the crowd (a bit of social loafing is always good for them) and to try to stay away from any criticism. In a game of Rugby, they try to avoid the ball as they don’t want to drop it. In Tennis they’ll always serve the safe option rather than the killer serve, and in business they will aim to simply avoid any mistakes, stay out of sight of the managers or owners and quite simply keep their heads down.
Different people will suffer from one of these characteristics, so it’s important to be able to pick out each individual trait to make adjustments to their mental state. Sure, it’s great to have a player brimming with confidence and going for the killer blow every time, but do you want him always doing this? Will they make too many mistakes that affect the team or the business? How about the NAFs? Do you want a team who try to avoid messing up? Sure, it’s nice to have fewer mistakes, but you also want a few more victories, right?
So, how do we control these personality types? One way is to lesson the ease people have to indulge in social loafing, and make people accountable for their actions, both good and bad. furthermore, tell your staff that mistakes are fine, so long as they learn from them. Tell your staff to try new ideas, and work out why they succeed or fail. If you break down the whole theory of the need to succeed/avoid failure, you’ll notice that it comes down to one simple rule: the amount of pressure people are receiving regarding failure. If they are scared of failing (through your own actions), then you’ll have a larger number of NAFs in your business. If they are rewarded every time they succeed, yet also rewarded every time they try something new, then you’ll have an environment that breeds success, and a much happier team.
Why don’t the networks begin a social media campaign to keep viewers interested? Have the key roles (played by copywriters, of course) writing twitter profiles in character to release new information, chat about latest happenings, answer questions etc. Why not hide snippets of the next episode online, providing key bloggers with the opportunity to announce new information and to get behind the show? Millions of viewers would be directed to their blogs, encouraging them to continue to talk about the series to keep the traffic coming. Finally, why not have a website that allows viewers to interact with the computers in 24 during the show? So when Chloe sends Jack a GPS uplink, we can view it on our laptops. When a key suspect is profiled, we get to view the mug shot and information. And then finally, you can take it offline, providing GPS coordinates and mugshots for special characters hidden in various cities that when found can provide cinema tickets, boxset goodies, or more in context experiential fun.
