Extra Credit - The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes & Posner, Part 4

     A few weeks ago, a co-worker was talking about failure. She claimed that a 3.8 is better than a 4.0 in the business world because a 3.8 shows that you know how to fail. Upon hearing this at first, a lot of people may not understand: why would a 3.8 have a better chance of getting the job over a 4.0? I couldn't adequately explain it at the time, but here in Part 4, KP have helped me, simply with their term "psychological hardiness." Specifically, there are two quotes which emphasize the point I would like to make:

1. "'Success does not breed success. It breeds failure. It is failure which breeds success" (200).
and
2. "If we're not making mistakes then we're only doing what we already know how to do....The only way that people can learn is by doing things they've never done before. This entails resilience and becoming psychologically hardy" (204).

     KP's idea of psychological hardiness in leadership comes from innovation, inspiring change, and creating small wins over large, not achievable goals. From a business standpoint, someone who has failed before will be okay with failing again: this doesn't mean that you'll have a lazy, forever-failing employee. It means you'll have a supporter who can bounce back and be ready to try something different. "It isn't stress that makes you ill but how you perceive and respond to stressful events" (206). Someone who has responded to the stress that comes from failure will be familiar with it, not shocked and hurt. That is why the 3.8 wins over the 4.0. The 4.0, on paper, has never failed.

     On a related tangent, I wanted to dive into the idea of "small wins." When KP first began explaining the small wins idea, I immediately thought of to-do lists. I thought of the action-plan to-do lists made in Leadership Foundations. But I also thought of the often comedic scheme of putting an already completed task on a to-do list just so you can cross it off. This is comedic, sure, but it's also displays an extreme genius. Crossing off an already performed task gives you a small win from the very beginning and boosts morale to carry you through the whole list.
     In Chapter 7, KP relate one leadership story that goes as follows, "When a senior engineer responded with 'it won't work' to a manager's question about a project's feasibility, everyone jumped on this melody and sounded ready to accept defeat. Stephen asked the group to take another tack: 'What is working?'" (170). How could one read this narration and not immediately think of mirror neurons? This leading scientifically thing has really stuck with me throughout this semester; mirror neurons fascinate me. The idea that one smile really can light up a room is the basis of how I live my life - and now it's proven. But anyway, I'm getting slightly off track. When you lead a small win to-do list with an already completed task you give yourself (or your team, depending on the environment) a boost: "We already achieved so much," say the mirror neurons, "We can achieve more!"
     My grandpa always taught me that I have the power to make my day incredible or to ruin it. The above quotations and explanations summarize this perfectly. My mirror neurons, the way I react to failures and stresses, control how my day and how my life plays out. If I can control my emotional communications and interactions then I can control the emotions and motivations of the people around me. From a leadership standpoint, if I am psychologically hardy, if I stand tall and firm in times of failure and stress, I will automatically surround myself with supporters of the same strand.