Failure: The Peak Performance Field Guide #2
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The Meltdown: Learning From Our Mistakes And The Mistakes of Others
"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal."
--Mike Ditka, former NFL player and championship head coach with the Chicago Bears.
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
--Michael Jordan.
To best understand peak performance and personal effectiveness, one must also look at failure experiences. Despite all of our best efforts, humans (even high performing individuals) sometimes malfunction under pressure. People in high- risk jobs make big mistakes and die. Finely tuned athletes in high profile, high-pressure situations fail to perform what seem to us to be routine tasks. Free throws are missed, golf-balls are misplayed, and field goals are shanked. What happens when these people fail? Why do they fail? Do they choke? Do they panic? What is the root cause of failure, even in peak performers? What can we learn from failure?
In sports, failure is often described as "choking." Athletes and coaches talk about choking all the time. In sports, thoughts about choking are not very far from athletes' minds. Obviously, this is a very negative term and choking is highly undesirable and to be avoided like the plague. Are all experiences of failure choking? In order to understand success, we must take a close look at failure and choking. How do talented people fail?
"You're only a success for the moment that you complete a successful act."
--Tex Winter, former head coach and mentor to Phil Jackson, NBA Lost Angeles Lakers' head coach.
Michael Jordan on Failure
The Choking Kind
Is There A Difference In The Way We Meltdown?
In reality, choking is a very particular form of failure. When we learn, we learn sequences or patterns of activity, movement, and behaviors. As we rehearse these movements we get faster and smoother. This early learning is called "explicit learning", or learning that is done within one's awareness. Later, that learning, through repetition becomes automatic. Explicit learning becomes "implicit learning", or learning outside of our awareness. Explicit learning is deliberate and mechanical, while implicit learning is what takes over when we can behave in an automatic, fluid fashion, without thinking. In sports and athletics, for example, this implicit learning involves the development of "touch" and accuracy in a throw or a swing.Under extreme stress and pressure, the explicit learning system can take over. This is the process of choking. In these instances of choking, athletes lose their touch, their fluidity; they are out of the zone. The athlete begins to be excessively deliberate and mechanical again, as they would if they were beginners. They revert to the explicit learning system.
The Art and Science of Failure
Learning From Losing
"Criticism is like being in the rain. Once you're wet, what's another drop?"
--former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke.
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Panic
Losing Your Head?!
Not all failure happens in that way. So failure happens in a completely different manner. Some failure happens as a result of "panic." In panic, stress wipes out memory. Panic makes athletes stop thinking. Panic makes individuals shift to their most basic instinct. Perception and focus is narrowed, options are closed. In a sense, panic is the opposite of choking. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his New Yorker article, The Art of Failure, "Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little."Why is this distinction important? After the fact, it really doesn't matter. If you lose, you lose. If you fail, its over, case closed. Panic or choke, who cares? However, it is important to understand how failure happens helps us to understand why it happens and how we can prevent it. Choking and panicking are different processes and may give us information about how the develop ways to avoid failure.
Panic occurs when we lose our ability to think or when we do not have enough experience to know what to do. Panicking can be avoided by experience and diligently learning what do to. Rehearsal is key to avoiding panic. Panic involves the loss of explicit learning as well as implicit learning. Panic involves not knowing enough.
Phil Mickelson at the 2006 US Open
What Was He Thinking?
"I still am in shock that I did that. I just can't believe that I did that. I am such an idiot." -- Phil Mickelson, golfer, after losing the 2006 US Open on the 18th hole"What are you playing for? You're playing to win, not be a hero. The only person you have to beat is yourself -- and he beat himself. It sounds like he beat himself because he didn't play the percentage shot." -- Tom Watson, winner of five British Opens and eight major tournaments, discussing Phil Mickelson's performance at the 2006 US Open.
Why did Phil Mickelson lose the 2006 US Open? He displayed poor judgement and his club and shot selection was highly questionable. However, it looked to me like he was mentally fatigued and drained. After being so focused for so long on the US Open prize, he couldn't hold it together long enough to close it out. The man who had been "seen" as the most disciplined and prepared golfer on the tour did not have it when he needed it most. Why did he lose it? Can he get it back? Will he be able to put this behind him.
I think that the key to the US Open mystery will lie in how Phil Mickelson handles things from here on out. Can he return to form? Will this destroy his career? Will he ever be heard from again as a contender and future champion? Can he come back from disaster, stronger and with more resolve? Can he bounce back from this type of setback on a major stage? Resilience is the true sign of a champion.
Too often in sports and in business, failures of this type result in tarnished reputations forever. This type of meldown can result in shame and a branding that can follow someone relentlessly.
However, true champions learn how to gain control of situations that are spinning out of control, they re-set themselves, and rebound from so-called disasters. Phil must dust himself off, reset his vision and gain clarity about there he sees himself going. Then, he can figure out the road to get there.
Unfortunately, what he has started to do, is label himself as "an idiot". This labeling could spell long-term disaster for him if he does not gain mental control. He needs to regain control of his self-respect and dignity. He must communicate to everyone that this is a blip on the screen rather character flaw. He must see past this single event and ensure that he is not defined by his momentary failure. A sense of humor and perspective would go a long way toward rehabilitating him in others' minds as well as his own.
Pressure
How to Predict Your Reaction and Learning to Perform Under Pressure
"Whether you've won majors or not, it is still nerve-racking to hold the lead. It's a good nervousness because that is what you look forward to, and sometimes that edge, that uneasiness in your stomach, actually helps you play better because you don't get overly aggressive and overly confident."--Phil Mickelson, professional golfer, discussing pressure and how he handles it, providing some insight into his propensity for melting down under pressure.
Shortly after the 2006 U.S. Open, when Tiger Woods was asked what his best attribute was as a golfer, he quickly replied, "My mind."
Perhaps these two individual statements say everything about the difference in the mind-set of these two golfers and why Tiger Woods is so much more successful than Phil Mickelson.
"Choking" vs. "Panic": Developing a Peak Performance System
How Do You Know The Difference?
From an intuitive standpoint, choking makes little sense. Experience seems to count for little in times of choking. Choking occurs when we lose our focus, our ability to be "in the zone". Choking occurs when we are too focused on what to do.Choking is the paradoxical failure of working too hard and in too focused a manner. The more we try, the more we choke. When we choke we revert to the mode of explicit learning. We return to slow, methodical non-fluid movements. We go back to the mechanical, conscious method of re-learning. We get away for intuitive, quick processing and revert to the methodical.
This choke vs. panic distinction is useful if we look at the importance of learning and rehearsal. Getting in the zone is about using explicit learning and making the learning implicit. Staying in the zone is about ensuring that the learning remains implicit.
A structured learning approach to peak performance and installing some type of a stress-and-anxiety management system provides the vehicle that improves our ability to use learning to get in the zone and stay in the zone. We become immune from panic and choking.
Famous Failures
Reader Feedback On Failure
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If you want to get in touch with me, you can at:
Luis Valdes, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
PerformanceVertical consulting, LLC
Decatur, Georgia 30033
404-357-7335 (cell)
e-mail: luisfvaldes@yahoo.com
http://www.performancevertical.com
Work and play with heart!
by LuisValdes
I am Luis F. Valdes, Founder and CEO of Performance Vertical Consulting, a talent and performance management consulting firm in... more »
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