Attitudes towards failure and excellence

I’m going to start by blogging about something which, at first sight, has nothing to do with conservation.  I’m going to start with a blog about our attitude towards success and, more importantly, towards failure.  There are two fundamentally different attitudes towards the attainment of excellence which fall at opposite ends of a spectrum.  The talent theory of excellence states that those who achieve highly do so because they are ‘naturally gifted’.  The practice theory of excellence may acknowledge (or not) that individuals differ in their natural abilities, but maintains that these differences are insignificant compared to the effect of training.  The practice theory of excellence states that training is not only necessary but sufficient to make one world class in any skilful discipline.  This has been the subject of much debate which has really gotten nowhere.  I am not going to support either argument.  Instead I am going to write about what I think that we can learn from the two attitudes.

Our attitude towards excellence is something which we generally do not question but it can have very important impacts on how we view failure and how those we influence (such as children) view failure.  A person who believes in the practice theory of excellence believes that their achievements are the result of hard work and learning from past experiences.  When they fail they are aware they they have the capacity to improve upon their performance, to improve through experience.  In contrast, if one is constantly told ‘you did well, you must be really gifted’ then one will begin to believe that their achievements are not the result of their hard work but of their natural talent.  When one fails they will be more likely to believe that they have hit their peak.  In such a mindset every challenge becomes a risk of realising that one can progress no further.  One cannot be blamed for deciding not to try, to adopt the attitude ‘if I don’t try, I can’t fail (and if I don’t fail I am more likely to still improve)’.

Therefore, even if the practice theory of excellence is not correct and some individuals are naturally more predisposed to excel in a discipline, such individuals will still benefit from the mindset that the practice theory of excellence fosters.  A mindset in which failure is embraced as a chance to learn, improve and progress.  A change in mindset must begin in schools where children’s attitude towards success and failure can be moulded.  But it must continue with us past school into our everyday lives.  We must continue to search for feedback, to put aside our egos, honestly assess our mistakes and learn.  Obviously this applies to conservation, where our margin for error is so thin that, rather than sweep failures under the carpet, we must expose everyone and learn from them.  This is why only funding assessment of habitat restoration projects for 2 or 3 years is so senseless.  To invest a large sum of money in a project and then not learn from its shortcomings or to only tick a box to denote a project either a success or a failure is not good enough.  Each conservation intervention represents an opportunity to learn especially the ones which fail.