Authentic Happiness

I can't fully explain why I put this image here, except that it made me laugh.  I like to see it.  For someone with my sense of (or lack of) humor, I would like to see this every day.  And I would probably laugh at it every day.  Which reminds me of something a mentor of mine share with me a little while ago.

Dan Hickey (The Hickey Group) was listening to me gripe about my day in leadership until he really couldn't take anymore.  "Authentic happiness," he said to me, abruptly interrupting my monologue.  We were sitting at the last known Caribou Coffee in existence.
     "What?"  The barista was steaming some milk to death and distracting me.
     "Go to authentic happiness."
     I looked around.  "Is that a place?"
     "It's a website.  Do a Google search.  The basic problem with leadership is the job controls you.  It will throw crisis after crisis your way, most of which isn't 'fun'.  You need to know what makes you happy."  He took a sip of his coffee and leaned back from the table.
     "But I do . . . "
     "Dan cut me off.  "You think you know, but go to the site.  It's pretty interesting.  Basically it will ask you a series of questions and it will tell you your top strengths, in rank order.  Try the 'Brief Strengths Test'.  Those strengths are places you need to spend more time 'in'.  For instance, humor.  What if one of your top strengths is humor?  You need to daily schedule in something about humor.  Or what if your strength is 1:1 conversations.  Have any today or was it all group presentations?"
     "All group presentation.  I ran professional development all day."  Just thinking of it made me cringe.
     He could tell I didn't consider is a strength.  "With leadership there will always be tasks outside of your comfort range.  Each day will be an experience pinballing from one crisis to another.  You might be able to plan for that, but you can't control that.  What you can do is control what you're doing BETWEEN the crises.  Schedule some happiness time every day.  You need it."
     He took another sip of his coffee.  "So, what makes you happy?"

Click on the image to the right, go to the website, create a free account and see:

Fine, don't think my panda riding a plastic, yellow horse is funny?  Try this:

Praise Worthy Praise

So, why is it that our defining moments of learning are typically negative?  Tripping in front of the whole school bus, asking a stupid question the entire class laughs about, being humiliated by a coach or teacher or parent or boss in front of a rapt audience?

I do tend to obsess about this conundrum.  As a coach, my players seemed to need negativity in order to change behaviors; in other words, they never seemed to respond to positive feedback.  Unless I was roaring epithets from the sideline like a lunatic they made the same mistakes one (long) game after another.  To get positive results I felt like I needed to be a monster.  I mean, it seems like too many of the people who learn and achieve the most have AWFUL upbringings.  Einstein, Oprah, Hemingway.  I got pretty good at a sport, for instance, and I attribute it to a horrible coach.  He pulled me in front of the whole team and roasted me.  I vowed to never let that happen again!  (Shoot, just re-lived the pre-teen moment a little there.)

No matter how many times being nice seemed useless, I can't believe that being evil to children is the way to produce great learning.

Which should explain my delight when I came across a Carol Dweck video (thank you Kate Murray!).  The basic premise?  How we, the educator, interact with our learners matters greatly.  Carol quickly explained why my players didn't grow.  But it wasn't because I was giving 'positive' praise.  Actually, they weren't growing because my praise was, well, BAD.  (Again, perhaps they grew when I scared the hormones out of them, but I hated myself.)  Going nutshell here, according to Carol Dweck, good praise focuses on effort and process.  Ineffective praise focuses on right vs. wrong, whether I'm being nice or screaming.

Carol's findings are staggering.  When students are praised for correctness, they get worse over time and avoid taking risks: they become pleasers. Even more significantly, they become LESS correct over time.  Conversely, when students are praised for effort and perseverance, they tend to take more risks, try harder tasks and ultimately are MORE accurate, more correct.  Well, color me a praiser!

http://youtu.be/NWv1VdDeoRY
(Ok, odds are you skipped past the video.  DON'T.  Watch the video.  It does a far better job than I do.)

I watched this video and felt immediately changed.  Learning takes time; students grows subtly.  As I hugged my daughter and for the first time praised how hard she worked in the swimming pool versus how proper her form was, I didn't care if I was right or wrong.  I am not sure if there were visible results in her performance.  I loved how big her smile was.

And the next day?  She crushed her 100 meter lap time . . . for 50 meters.  Then she mistimed her breath and swallowed 1/2 the pool.  As she came up to me coughing and hacking, I didn't mention once how silly it was to breath water.  Nope, 'great effort kid.  Great effort.'