Self-Communication Grit

Social work researcher Brené Brown teaches employees how to fail. She calls this training “Daring Leadership.” Millennial employees and interns make up half of her staff. She reports that nearly every Millennial who works with her has confided some version of a kind of innocence: “I never learned how to have these kinds of conversations.” “I never learned about emotions or how to talk so openly about failure, and I’ve never seen it modeled.” “When you’re used to using technology for everything, these hard face-to-face conversations are awkward and so intense.”

If tough communication skills are not taught at home, then public education might pick up the slack. However, schools do not like the word “failure” any better than parents. This communication grit training then falls to OJT, or on-the-job training, the great teacher in most work settings.

I recently read that researchers report evidence for humans speaking as many as20,000 to 75,000 different languages in a timeframe between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago. I wondered if early humans had vocabulary for failure or disappointment in any of their languages. According to an internet search, every culture has a linguistic version of mistakes, or lack of success. However, it is impossible to know vocabulary from thousands of years ago! Many questions have few clear answers.

Irish organizational consultant Annette Clancy did her PhD research on emotion in organizations with a questioning focus on disappointment. She found that the wider the gap between expectation and reality, the greater the disappointment. Major disappointment entails a grieving process, even if the reality of some special thing happening never existed. This applies to one’s work as well as one’s relationships, but disappointment frequently is masked by distracting or numbing oneself. Most of us have little training in addressing our disappointments.

Disappointments need communication, often first with ourselves.  And we need passion plus perseverance (grit) to be frank in our self-communication. Why exactly are we disappointed? It is only one part of one’s personality, but it can link up with a chain of personality parts that exude vulnerability, blame and/or anger, the other parts that we try to avoid.

Your disappointment has roots. This simple recognition is a starting place for some investigation. What were your expectations about a given situation? What were some earlier times when you were disappointed? Can you think of any disappointments from your childhood years? Was some failure ignored or denied at that time? It is time to admit failures, flubs, and disappointments. In fact, learning from failure may be key to creativity. Post-it Notes were created from “failed” weak glue.

Let’s adopt Brené Brown’s approach: “No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail, you can’t innovate. If you’re not willing to build a vulnerable culture, you can’t create.”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

520. When has a disappointment eventually led you to innovate?

521. What gets in the way of meeting your goals?