Lessons We Teach Our Children: Don't Fail

I was conducting interviews today at a local high school for a new curriculum we are developing for LeaderTreks. In the midst of filming the interviews, I went into another room where a couple of my fellow LT staff were training students for an upcoming mission trip. Whenever we train anyone, we always try to couple an experience with the leadership principles we teach. In this case, the team of students was learning about communication, and subsequently, had half their team blindfolded. The "seeing" students were paired up with blind students, and asked to guide them around obstacles just using their words. Every pair was charged with picking up a single coin, hidden amongst the obstacles, without allowing their blind partner to hit anything. The game plays out pretty much the same every time: screaming, laughing, confusion, frustration, failure, more screaming, and eventually, success. Such was the story for every pair, except for one. For some reason, the girl who could see in this partnership just could not successfully communicate to her partner how to pick up their coin. Every time her partner would get close to the coin, the seeing girl was worried her partner would touch the obstacle and have to start over. While everyone around her experienced failure, which eventually led to success, this one girl would not allow her team to fail, and it cost her everything. She was more afraid of failing than she was of not succeeding, and those are two totally different things.
This is all too common. As parents and youth workers, we are continually imparting "wisdom" to our students that in the end hinders them. When we tell students that failure is the ultimate no-no, we are killing their spirits and destroying in them the likely hood of them ever taking risks. Where would we be if we had not failed along the way? Where would we be if we never took risks? No where. Failure is a part of learning and it's a part of leadership.