Failure and Learning in Teaching a New Craft
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
- Frank Zappa
There once was a potter who was teaching pottery making to a class of 20 students. As an experiment, the potter split the class into 2 groups, giving each group a simple yet different objective. His hope was to teach his class something about failure, learning.
For group 1, his objective was for each student to make one perfect pot.
For group 2, his objective was for each student to use up 100 lbs of clay.
The first group struggled, working on one pot days on end. Most failed to get it right.
The second group went through a lot of clay and failed often. But through failure they also iterated, learned, and perfected technique. By the end most had several perfect pots.
For me, there are two important lessons from this experiment.
First, it is important to consider the enablers of the (sometimes hidden) motivation that you employ.
Second, is the importance of not being concerned with failure (i.e. the importance of failing as a means of learning a new skill).
What do you think about this experiment in learning, motivation, and failure? Were the experiment results what you expected?
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This is a great story to illustrate the dangers and pitfalls of focussing on getting it perfect.
I have seen this exact behaviour and associated outcomes both in my own life and in working with sales professionals.
Setting an expectation of ‘Perfect’ creates a failure mindset (I cant get it ‘perfect’) This belief plus the added weight of having to succeed leads to stress and performance issues with the result in many cases that not only is the product/action not ‘perfect’ it is in fact never finished.
Thank you for sharing
Stephan … pretty common pitfall, eh? Thank you for your comments and feedback.