The Man in the Arena Presses On : Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt and My Son

To inspire fellow classmates, create content, ask for/respect feedback, maintain autonomy and teach his old man something… It is why my son is my best client.

My son graduated this year with his High School diploma and an Associate’s Degree after being dual enrolled the latter half of his high school education. Despite me obviously being proud of him and his accomplishment, I’m writing more about process than achievement today. In preparation for the graduation ceremony, my son reflected on his last four years which included starting high school fully remote because of the pandemic. Despite his young age, he has the benefit of some outsized perspective. He knew that living through a once in a century pandemic was significant enough to merit some reflection and processing. The school ceremony included opportunities for student speakers, and my son decided he had enough to say that he threw his hat in the ring and submitted a speech to be able to address his fellow students. The text of his speech is at the end of this post, but allow me to share the quote from which he drew inspiration

“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Calvin Coolidge

He wasn’t selected.

To reiterate, this post is in praise of process over the long term, not short term results.

A little bit of background about my boy. He is rather bright, but not the brightest. He earned an Associates Degree in computer science, but worked his hindquarters to get through calculus and classical mechanics, as well as holding down a part time job teaching kids to code computers during his senior year. Despite a 4.0 at the start of his senior year, his unweighted GPA wasn’t able to survive a rigorous college enrolled senior year. Thus he wasn’t able to achieve top 10 in his graduating class. He’s attending one damn fine college this fall (Rochester Institute of Technology) but not his stretch schools. Go Tigers! He is an excellent athlete, but not exceptional. He ran cross country and track all four years of High School and earned a varsity letter in all four years for cross country and 3 for track. But he was never more than an alternate for the state teams. He also earned two varsity letters for community service, teaching kids chess at our local parish catholic school, coaching little league baseball and raising $10,000 for fresh water projects in Africa. For most of his life, he has been a top 100 nationally ranked chess player for his age, but his best finish in a national tournament was still outside the top 10 (11th…seriously). He was the high school state chess co-champion as a freshman, but finished in the middle of the national tournament of champions that year.

I am intensely proud of this young man, but not primarily because of his already noteworthy resume. By any measure, my son is exceptional. He’s remarkable. But 100% human. And he’s always been this way. When he started out playing chess, he couldn’t muster a winning performance in a tournament for his first 2 years. On the drive home from the last one of these (2 wins and 3 losses that day), my then 8 year old pipes up from his booster seat and says “Dad, I just figured out that I’m not talented enough to win at chess without working at it. I think I need to do lessons, puzzles, and study before I can hope to do better”.

Seriously, 8 years old.

Those early lessons – losses are feedback, failure is an opportunity to learn, and hard work beats up on talent if talent fails to work hard have served him well. Getting those winning ideas into your consciousness in pre-adolescence as a response to losses is hands down more successful in the long term than a streak of early effortless wins. Many who start out winning everything in sight by coasting on exceptional giftedness will inevitably hit a brick wall when the ratio of size of fish to size of pond goes down later in life. Often in college or professional school this “new experience” of loss and struggle can uncover that a former super achiever has neither a clue how to proceed, nor the resilience to execute that plan.

I’ve attached a link to his speech at the end of this post. I’m better for having heard it while he wrote, revised and rehearsed it. I sincerely believe it is worth your time. The other link is to a speech by Teddy Roosevelt. My wife and I had the opportunity to support the school by purchasing a “senior page” in the yearbook for my son. We did the usual photo collage; pics of family, sports, chess tournaments, and of course Sabre, our chocolate Labrador. Without much discussion or debate we also selected The Man in the Arena from Roosevelt’s Citizenship in a Republic. My children have been hearing that one quoted by their curmudgeonly father in between me shouting at various and sundry clouds, and for good reason. Roosevelt is far more forceful and eloquent in his endorsement of the necessary grit to maintain a growth mindset. I’m happy to quote him and give credit where it’s due.

What blew me away was frankly when the goal of all parenting occurred…my son internalized an important lesson and mindset that his mother and I fostered and selected a quote from Calvin Coolidge as the basis for his speech. I have a Social Science degree and extensively studied American History; I wasn’t familiar with the quote from President Coolidge before my son asked for a review/edit of his draft speech. Talk about winning…

Parenting is not easy; It’s the best leadership job ever devised. Despite all the blogs, books and other material out there, there’s no manual. Your success is really a long term horizon, the stakes are high and unlike well done science, this experiment has an n=1 and no control group. To have your first born spontaneously want to inspire his fellow classmates, create his own content, actually ask for feedback, respect and incorporate that feedback while still maintaining his autonomy and in the process teach his old man something….it’s why I’ll continue to maintain that my son is my first client.

As validating as a coach and a parent as this experience is, it’s not my point today. It’s how I’m getting my emotional hooks in you for emphasis. My point is that while we focus on outcome, achievement, and winning we’re missing the bigger picture. And, no, this isn’t one of those blogs that says outcome isn’t important. Bollocks. Sorry, but I’m not sorry. Try imagining a world that doesn’t care about the outcome. Wanna fly in a plane or drive over a bridge in that world? I didn’t think so. Good results are the goal. Period.

It’s not process or results, it’s process and results

The paradox is that focusing only on the result without any thought as to how you get there is a setup for failure and disappointment. Good process leads to success by intention, planning, and adjusting in response to feedback. Bad process/no process can lead to success, but falls into the “lucky, but not good” bin. Some say I’d rather be lucky than good, but this is the shortest of short term thinking. The outcome remains the goal, but if you rely on luck to achieve it, instead of a well designed, tested, tried and true process you are going to be disappointed at how unlucky you continue to be.

Go ahead – Set Yourself Up to Fail

If you haven’t failed at anything, you aren’t trying hard enough things. Do we think Michael Jordan is an abject failure because he never made it out of the minor league in baseball? Is Wayne Gretzky not the greatest of all time, because his performance as a coach could charitably be described as at best, marginal? How about Jerry Rice? Did Dancing With the Stars diminish his NFL career because he came in second? If outcome is the only thing sacred to you, consider if you would have ever gone outside your domain of prior success into the new, the unknown. And if you had never failed at anything, would you have built a process and a mindset that gave you a chance to succeed at something new? The heading of this paragraph doesn’t mean what you first thought, does it? “Don’t set yourself up for failure” means to have a process. Be intentional. Be thoughtful. Revise, iterate, improve. It doesn’t mean that you should never choose something you at which you might fail.

Controversial parenting/leadership advice

Here it comes. Ready?

Stop protecting your children or your team from the possibility of failure. You are stunting their growth and capping their potential. Failure is inevitable if the challenge is great enough. Failure is an inevitable part of the journey to high achievement. There’s no avoiding it. Simone Biles is the greatest of all time…are all her medals gold? The key is how to respond to failure on the road to success. Herb Brooks scheduled an exhibition hockey game against the Soviet Union just before the 1980 Olympics, and lost 10-3. That team went on to win the gold in a performance that was so improbable that it is best described as miraculous. The exhibition match prior to the olympics is one of the best examples of intentionally incorporating failure into the process on the road to success. How to respond to failure? Growth mindset, losses are feedback, failure is an opportunity for growth. I’ve marveled at the simultaneous ubiquity of “growth mindset” preached by parents/leaders at the same time that they talk their children/teams out of pursuing a challenge that isn’t a guaranteed success.

No, I don’t mean “success is the journey”

I’m not saying that we should embrace failure, celebrate mediocrity, or eschew achievement. That’s silly. Nobody celebrates the journey as a success in a mission that fails catastrophically. Was there a party after astronauts died in a training accident on the ground in the early goings of the US Space program? That was Apollo 1 by the way. 1. The first planned Apollo mission. Not a planned failure by any stretch of the imagination. But the culture of response to failure is one of the most robust in history, because following that tragedy in 1967, a phenomenal culture of learning, response to failure and growth mindset put a man on the moon 2 years later. There would be no success of the kind that happened in 1969 at the Sea of Tranquility without the risk of failure, and the positive response to the most catastrophic failure imaginable in 1967.

No, you shouldn’t put your team or children in a dangerous potentially lethal situation because “it’s good for learning”

Pick your challenges well. Avoid the sure failures that you simply are not up to, especially the dangerous ones. But in avoiding sure failures, don’t restrict yourself to sure successes. if there’s no risk of failure, there is no chance of growth. If there is no chance of success, there is also no opportunity for growth. Getting back to my family as an example, my son’s journey has inspired his younger sister to challenge herself. She is taking nearly a full schedule of college and AP classes as a sophomore in high school this year. 3 AP and 2 college credit classes, and her “fun class” is astronomy. Someone actually asked my wife and I “How could you let her do that?” Seriously, the intonation might have been the same if we casually said we were letting our youngest child play in a bathtub full of crocodiles. Will she succeed with all A’s and 5/5 on the AP exams? I don’t know; neither does she by the way. We’ll support her and guide her, help her with feedback and improving her process to pursue this challenge. But honestly, what are the stakes if she has to drop a class, or gets a B, or retakes a subject? Pretty innocuous in the long run to be honest. What are the chances of success? Pretty darn good based on her intellect and work ethic – as blessed as my son is, it’s his sister that he describes as “creepy smart”. Despite this level of brain power and a stubborn streak a mile wide, there is still no guarantee. I encourage this type of choice on purpose, mainly because my daughter has a process that has worked in this type of realm, and she improves and tweaks it. The process is the means that she focuses on, with success or failure being the end she focuses on. It’s not either/or, it’s yes/and. Invite this level of challenge! Encourage it! But for the right reasons, not to bust out an ” I told you so” when failure occurs. Be there to help build the process, and to improve or tweak that process based on the feedback of results. Support, encourage and guide both in response to success and failure, and your children and your teams will grow and progress because they will chose the correct level of challenge. Somewhere above guaranteed success, but somewhere below guaranteed failure.

Take Aways

1. The answer to “Process or Results” is Yes/And
2. Growth mindset requires challenges that include the possibility of failure or there is no stimulus for growth.
3. Intend to be good, don’t depend on being lucky. Build your process with the results you want in mind. Improve, revise and iterate based on those results.
4. Support and encourage your charges (and yourself for that matter) to seek challenge by helping guide/improve the process, even in the face of success.
5. “I told you so” doesn’t improve anybody…and rejects an opportunity to be able to help someone improve.

Would love your thoughts and response! Am I off my rocker on this one? What has been a failure you grew and learned from?

Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Repub

My Son’s Submitted Speech to His Fellow Graduates

Hello and congratulations class of 2024. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” This Calvin Coolridge quote really resonated with me, and the class of 2024 has lived this sentiment.

I still remember being in biology class and hearing people talk about the two week vacation we were going to have due to something called COVID-19. That day was a defining moment for our class and the situation continued to spiral. A two week shutdown extended into a month, and then the rest of the year. Classes transitioned to being online – a very challenging environment to learn in. Time continued to pass and our first day of high school was on Zoom instead of being greeted as we walked through the doors of Gig Harbor High School. Outdoor activities and other extracurriculars had restrictions too. I still remember doing quarter mile repeats in the pouring rain with a mask on.

We pressed on.

Things got better, and near the end of freshman year everyone was able to go to hybrid. Once sophomore year came we were still not back to normal. Masks and social distancing were still present and continued to be until late sophomore year.

We pressed on.

Finally junior year came and we had our first normal year of high school. Everyone was back in the classroom with no social distancing. Despite all the negative implications of covid we learned important lessons regarding perseverance and adaptability. Remote learning was challenging, it was disorganized and many of us learn better in person.

We pressed on.

Every single person here stuck with it and did not give up, or they would not be receiving their diploma today. At first every surprising change seemed impossible to deal with, but we always adapted to the situation. From remote learning, to hybrid learning, to social distancing, to learning how to go back to normal during our final years of highschool, we pressed on. Everything this class did utilized perseverance and flexibility. This group not only survived, but thrived.

Pressing on through these crucibles required a combination of flexibility, adaptability, and perseverance which is going to allow each and every one of us to thrive in whatever path we choose, whether that be straight into the workforce, college, the trades, apprenticeships, a gap year, or any other path. An old man I live with loves to shout at clouds, and has always told me that your comfort zone will kill you. The class of 2024 has excelled outside of their comfort zone and will continue to do so.

Press on.

Thank you, and congratulations graduating class of 2024.