How to Embrace and Learn from Failure as a Coach and Help Your Athletes do the Same

Hi Coach,

I hope you’ve had a wonderful holiday season!

Before you dive in, two quick notes:

In today’s issue…

Four years. 5,126 failures.

That’s what it took James Dyson to invent his cyclonic vacuum.

It was a revolutionary invention. I have a Dyson vacuum and use it at least 3 times a day (shoutout to having 3 little kids, my floors are always a mess).

Dyson’s company is now one of the largest privately held companies in the world.

I recently listened to an interview David Senra did with James Dyson diving into his story (click the link above to give it a listen).

Dyson’s grit and commitment to solving a problem (vacuums with bags that clogged frequently) is inspiring.

In sports, the beliefs coaches and players hold about failure and they way they choose to respond to them can be the difference in their success.

Let’s talk about 1) how we as coaches can use failures to fuel our success and 2) how we can help our players view failures as opportunities to learn and grow.

The first question to ask yourself is are you committed to your purpose and vision?

If your purpose and vision aren’t clear, or you’re not committed to them fully, the inevitable public “failures” you will experience as a coach will likely ruin you.

Dyson was so committed to his vision that 5,126 failures could not make him quit.

Are you that committed to your vision?

When you’re 100% committed to your vision, failures and setbacks might delay you, but they certainly don’t derail you.

We as leaders must model treating failures as opportunities to learn, grow, and get better.

Dyson saw every failure as a fascinating opportunity to study, learn from, and improve.

What if we had the same view of mistakes and failures as coaches?

I believe it would change the way we coach and lead.

Losing a game, having a bad practice, or mishandling a situation with a player doesn’t mean you’re a failure as a coach.

It just means you’re human, have room for growth, and have an opportunity to reflect and get better.

The final piece for coaches to embrace this mindset towards mistakes is to define our own success.

Society and other people are happy to set metrics of success for you if you let them.

Evaluate where you are honestly, then determine what success looks like 5 years from now, 3 years from now, 1 year from now, 6 month from now, 1 month from now, and today.

James Dyson knew what success was for him: inventing a cyclonic vacuum.

What’s success for you?

I’m currently coaching my son’s youth basketball team.

Success for me this season is that every player has fun, improves at the game, and wants to play again next season.

How can we as coaches create an environment for our players where they embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and grow?

There are several key factors in doing this.

First, we must create an environment filled with what research calls, “Psychological Safety.”

At its core, psychological safety is when members of a group feel they can be themselves, take risks, and ask questions without fear of retribution or negative consequences

For a deep dive into this, I’d encourage you to check out our most recent podcast with Trevor Ragan (see the links in the podcast section of this newsletter).

The biggest factor in creating psychological safety on a team is the modeling of the leaders.

Coaches must normalize and model seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve.

Legendary USA volleyball coach Karch Kiraly calls these OTIs (opportunities to improve) with his teams.

Another key factor in creating this sort of environment that helps athletes move beyond a fear of failure is how we respond to their mistakes and failures.

My friend Doug Lemov advocates for a strategy he calls “positive framing.”

It’s responding to mistakes in a way that validates the learner or player for taking and risk and makes it clear that now is a chance to learn from what happened.

One of my favorite ways to respond to a mistake is to say, “I’m glad this mistake happened now so we can learn from it and avoid it in the future.” Then, we recreate the situation, discuss what happened, and find a better solution.

Another key factor in creating this environment is delivering intentional feedback that reinforces the decision over the outcome.

Sport is full of errors and randomness.

As coaches, we should be intentional about reinforcing good decisions that our players make even when the outcome might not be what we hoped for.

Players can think that because an outcome was poor, they made a mistake. It's our responsibility as coaches to help them evaluate the quality of their decision above the outcome.

I wrote about this concept in depth in this newsletter. Check it out for examples and a helpful framework to improve your feedback.

The final way coaches can help athletes develop this mindset around mistakes is by sharing the stories of people in sports and outside of sports, like James Dyson, that had an unbelievable level of “stick-to-it-ness” in the face of failures and setbacks.

Nothing captivates our attention like a great story.

Show them a video, read an article, or just tell them a story.

Discuss what stood out and how it can apply to them and your team.

Then celebrate players often and in public when they respond positively to failures and challenges.

A few thoughts on how this could apply in your coaching or leadership context…

Topics include:

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Thanks for reading, I hope this serves you on your journey.

To your growth,

Luke Gromer, RYG Athletics | A NIKE Sports Camp Provider

P.S. If you’re interested in becoming one of our NIKE Sports Camp directors, reply “NIKE” to this email, and we’ll get on a call! You can see testimonials from over 100 athletes that attended our camps last summer.

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