THE ART OF FAILURE (AND RECOVERY) (10/23/10)

Ten years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an essay by this title, which he published in the New Yorker.  That essay was recirculated in the last year in a collection of his New Yorker essays packaged under the title, What the Dog Saw.  I am a Gladwell fan, and was glad the latter publication recirculated several brilliant columns.

In short, he writes about two different reasons that people fail - one is panic - the other choking.  An example of choking would be a golfer having a bad day, and who responds to his under-performance by over-thinking his swing, etc, resulting in a totally goofball day on the golf course - a day when a person normally brilliant plays as horribly as I might play.  For that one dreadful day, they are totally off their game, and the harder they try to think their way out of it, the further they move from trusting their body to find its normal groove.  This often happens on the tennis court as well, sometimes in a very big match.  In that moment, it seems as if the tennis star has lost her Midas touch forever.  Any number of things can throw us off, and then when we tense up, it only gets worse.  Sometimes, ridiculously so.

Has this ever happened to you in leadership?  It has to me.

Panic, on the other hand, is when you are diving and something bad happens down deep in the water, and suddenly you cannot even remember the most basic thing about diving - any of the things you need to know in order to make a survival decision - you suddenly cant perform the most basic function.  It is as if you never had lessons.  You are not over-thinking.  You are in panic.  Thinking has virtually ceased - and you are living by instinct - and doing things which, though intuitive, may be imperiling you.

Has this ever happened to you in leadership?  It has to folks that I’ve worked with.

How do you get out of a funk, a slump, where your leadership is, temporarily, but critically ineffective?  In order to get out of that bad place, it is helpful to know if we are choking or if we are panicking.

In 1988 I moved to Princeton Texas to a small-town blue collar church serving a community that had undergone a 30 percent population reduction during an old fashioned Texas oil bust.  I did not understand the full reasons for the falling attendance and offerings in that church; I assumed that it was something that I was doing wrong.  Everything I had ever touched in my life (except a golf club) had thrived up until 1988.  I kept over-analyzing EVERYTHING.  It was a rough two years.  I grew a lot, but I was off my game for the first year.  Second year, I calmed down and began to thrive again.

A few years later, while driving one day back to Texas for Christmas with my parents, I began thinking back on my Princeton years.  In retrospect, I puzzled to think of some of the seemingly stupid moves I had made under stress.  In retrospect I was able to see that when faced with a situation I had never seen before (falling population), I had begun over-thinking everything, rather than depending on what was, by that time, pretty-well developed instinct for how to give them my best as a pastor.  In 2007, during my first year in DC, when one event after another threw me behind the curve in a new church start project, I again found myself in a very alien terrain, and I started again to choke, to question my instincts.  Thankfully this time, I realized what was happening, found a spiritual director, took some deep breaths to steady my nerve, and plowed through a very difficult situation, with what I feel has been a best-possible outcome, given the circumstances. 

In neither case, did I panic.  But I’ve had a couple coaching clients (church planters) who were able to cast a brilliant and winsome vision of their new church before their appointment, but who were in total vertigo six months later.  In both cases, a series of tough circumstances had converged to slow down the start of their respective projects.  In both cases, the person I saw six months into the project was not the poised and brilliant visionary I knew earlier.  In reality, they were still just as smart, and contained all the same gifts and God-inspired genius.  In fact, they were even smarter, since they also had received new data about their mission field that they were capable of incorporating into their work plans.  They were just in shock for a moment, and their brains had stopped serving them as well as they were accustomed.

When a leader is panicking - it may time for him to step aside from the craziness of the ministry field for a day or even a week and catch his breath - and just calm down.  And relax.  And laugh.  Visiting with a coach may be helpful.  In the short run, he may need to borrow your coach’s brain, since the chances are good that he is not in panic, and still thinking quite clearly.  The desired cure for panic is to get to a place where he can again think clearly, free from the coach - and with many leaders, to think brilliantly, again. 

If you borrow the coach’s brain for a season, you and the coach will want to shift intentionally out of that mode after you calm down - because it will not be helpful to you in the long run.  You do not need coach dependency long-term; but in the short term, it might save your rear end.

When a leader is choking, on the other hand, she simply needs encouragement from a community of folks who know her, to trust her instincts again, and to stop analyzing every damn thing.  In this case, if I am coaching you, I will tell you as much and encourage you to trust your gut again. 

Chokers and panickers both need to chill.  But getting out of a choke is about trusting your instincts again - and getting out of panic is about relaxing so your intellect can rev up again.

Are you having a hard ministry year?  Chances are that half of your ministry years are harder than the other half.  And for me, about one in five are just dreadful.  If this is one of those years - the good news is that it will pass.  As the Trevor Project would say, “It Gets Better.”  But until it does, it could be helpful to get with some folks who care about you in order to discern whether or not you are over-thinking or panicking in response to a tough situation.  Because doing either will only make a bad year worse.  And knowing which one is happening is key, if you intend to steady your hand and lead your way on to a better place.

All of this is true also in parenting, and many other arenas of life.  I recommend Gladwell’s article.  You can find it at http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_08_21_a_choking.htm.