Where does the greatest learning occur with adult learners or with any learner in general? This question was posed to me recently and had me thinking a lot about it. Enough that I was woken up to the thoughts of putting an answer down on paper and sharing it for the masses nice and early in the morning. I would have to say that if there is one skill that we need to teach all humans, it is to squeeze learning out of failure. By learning how to learn from failure, we create humans that are capable of adapting to new and challenging environments. In essence, we create critical thinkers.
Yoda said it best in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017):
“The greatest teacher, failure is, We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”
So how do we learn from failure? The military has a few different practices in place from After Action Reports (AARs), Debriefing, and even has a Center for Lessons Learned. However, instead of spending a few hours in one of these more formalized settings is there a way to apply any of these to daily life? The simple answer is yes. However, instead of me just leaving you with that answer at this point and telling you to go read the Military Debrief Blog (click here), I’ll give some quick ways to make the most out of failures.
If you read the military debrief blog, then you may recall that there are typically three parts to a normal USAF style debrief: (1) Reconstruction/Truth Data Gathering; (2) Debrief Focus Point Development; and (3) Lesson Learned Presentation. We will stick to these three very generic phases in order to quickly apply some rigor to learning from failures. But first let me talk about what this is not.
This is not an excuse to go out and haphazardly walk into a situation without preparation. The theme throughout all of my teaching so far has been on building expertise and experts. It is nearly impossible to call yourself an expert without preparation for a task or a mission. Don’t use failure as your only tool for learning and teaching. Instead, use failure to make yourself better than you were the last time you encountered the same or similar situation.
Now, back to the debrief for real life. Steps 1-3 above can be accomplished in whatever time you have available to make it happen. The more time you spend reconstructing the failure and gathering the truth data, the more detailed your next steps will be. It is also very likely that you will end up with a higher quality lesson learned. However, the length of time spent does not need to be 3 hours (a quite normal debrief in the military circles). I have learned and have taught some quick lessons learned after about 5-10 minutes with my own children. So naturally, I think that the idea of a debrief for everyday life is totally doable and it will stay just 3 steps, however we will modify what we call them to make them a little easier to remember.
Our modified steps will be: Reflect, Root, and Recalibrate. Let me break those down for you in the next few paragraphs. In addition, I think it is good to remind everyone that there is no time limit to this process. The important piece is hitting the steps and accomplishing the intent or “spirit of” the steps in order to produce a “recalibration” of thoughts and processes.
Step 1 – Reconstruct
The intent here is to reflect on what just happened. Reconstruct the event as best you can and identify areas that may need to be focused on within step 2. An example for any parents would be talking to your kid about what just happened after the fact. Here is a quick run-down of what that could look like in my house:
Me: Junior do you know why you fell off of your bike and skinned your knee?
Junior: No.
Me: Were you going super fast or slow when you fell?
Junior: Slow.
Me: Were you trying to turn up the driveway as well when you were going slow?
Junior: Yes, and then the bike just fell over and I scraped my knee!
Me: Okay, well let’s go take care of the knee and then talk about ways to help you out in the future.
That’s it! Step 1 is complete. We found out what happened through reconstruction. Now, depending on how into science your kid is, there are multiple paths to focus on in step-2.
Step 2 – Root
The idea for this step is to focus on 1 or 2 things that went wrong and dive into why those things went wrong. In short, we want to root ourselves in something that went wrong so that we can learn from it.
What we want to have at the end of this step is a couple of things to take away and build out a “next time I will” statement in step 3.
Using our example from above we could do something scientific (Junior is very engineering focused). We could also concentrate on risk management and riding outside of our skillset too. (I tend to lean away from this with my kids, as I like them to experience some level of danger and risk to build their skillsets).
Here is what this step could sound like:
Me: Okay so how did the bike feel when you were going fast? Did it fell like it was harder to turn and harder to lean?
Junior: Yeah, a little.
Me: So do you remember when we talked about going faster on the bike actually makes the bike stand more upright?
Junior: Not really.
Me: Okay, so there are multiple forces working with the bike when you are riding on it.
Junior: Oh yeah!
Me: Do you remember that when an object is travelling in a circle it pulls towards the center of that circle?, do you remember how we talked about moving forward on the bike, by pedaling, actually makes you more stable? And that when you slow down you will need to be prepared to put your feet down because you are less stable?
Junior: Yes.
Me: So next time, when you are starting to go slow, you need to get your feet off the pedals and be prepared to catch yourself buddy. Let’s try it again.
Junior: Okay.
Step 3 – Recalibrate
The purpose of a recalibration is to ensure that a transfer of knowledge has occurred and that your student has the highest potential to apply the lessons discussed in step 2 to their next similar event. The key here is a transfer of knowledge. That is something you truly will not know until the next similar event occurs.
I like to refer to this phenomenon as the “lifecycle of learning” and it is visualized in the figure below.
In this figure the idea is that you have three gears that all feed off each other. Your opportunity to learn is occurring every day, at almost every second of every day. You are bound to make mistakes, so that gear is also spinning. Once you have identified and worked through your mistakes (steps 1 &2) we get to the lesson learned gear. Here is where the magic happens. You can be stuck in 2nd and 3rd gear for as long as the same mistake keeps occurring. Only when that same mistake is not happening anymore can you return to another opportunity to learn.
That, in simple terms, shows that a transfer of knowledge has actually occurred and a recalibration has taken place.
What does this look like with our example with my son?
Me: Okay buddy, I want you to ride down the hill just like normal and notice how the bike is super stable. However, when you get to the bottom and start to turn around, I don’t want you to peddle. What are you going to be ready to do when you start to slow down?
Junior: Put my feet down!
Me: That’s right buddy. As soon as you make the turn, and are not peddling, you will feel the bike start to slow down, and you’re going to put your feet down to get ready to catch yourself.
Junior: Okay.
At this point we would run through several of these types of scenarios so that he can put our teaching into practice. With a little repetition the goal, for me as the instructor, is to instill this as a muscle memory for him so that it is nearly an auto-reaction that doesn’t take up too much, or any, cognitive load, in the future.
I hope you enjoyed reading about how failure can be a great teacher today. By simply going through the R3 formula (reconstruct, root, and recalibrate) you too can easily start to harness failures as an opportunity to learn.
If you have a better way, reach out. Let's have a chat about effective teaching through failure.
As always, stay humble in your knowledge, approachable in your teaching, credible in your thoughts, and aggressive in your passion to teach others!
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