“Why do we fall, Bruce?” says Bruce Wayne’s father in the origin story of Batman after his son falls down a well. “So that we can learn to pick ourselves up”
As some readers may know, I have been involved with competitive swimming and swim officiating for many years and, through experience and learning, I am in the ranks of the world governing body (FINA) list of international referees. Four years ago I wrote a post that went viral in the world of swim officials, called “Leadership Lessons from a Swim Referee” in which I sought to explain the various levels of focus of the referee, who, when the meet starts is the “CEO of the meet”, with total responsibility for everything happening until the meet is completed.
I love the role, and, as much as that, I love mentoring, of supporting others with less knowledge and experience in learning and progressing in their roles as swim officials.
It was with that focus on mentoring that I recently volunteered to Referee a meet held by a relatively new club in the London area for their swimmers. As soon as I walked in, and accentuated by the impact of covid in closing pools for much of the pandemic, I immediately sensed a powerful blend of energies that went across everyone there, from the youngest swimmer to the most experienced volunteers as well as the coaching staff.
That blend of energies was, first, of strong positive energy of this new and vibrant club, but at the same time, truly nervous energy. I, therefore, chose to focus my own energy in two ways. First, to be calm and relaxed and highly visible with that. Second, and even more important, to bring positive energy to everything I said and did.
As the meet went on, there were various gaps in the officiating, each of which I treated as an opportunity to first accentuate the positives for the official in question, then to note to them that “everything is an opportunity to learn” as I then gave them simple instruction on how to improve. Most of these were minor adjustments, which, to be honest, I picked up on in order to have a reason to talk to each official and give them praise and positivity (positive energy, remember?).
However, one was a significant error and presented a real problem to resolve. Working with the head coach and several officials, we did quickly find a solution. However, the key official involved was clearly upset that they had made an error, it was visible. I, therefore, took time to talk to them, and as we began to speak, I said to them:
“Every challenge is a learning opportunity”
I then asked them “so what can we learn from this?” and they became visibly calmer and more relaxed as they took on board my reframing and knew what they had learned and what they could do differently moving forwards. As a bonus, I also saw something they were doing in their role as we spoke and then gave them a quick tip that isn’t in any instruction manual (but almost all experienced officials use it). This one tip made a big difference to their confidence. At the end of the meet, that official came up to me and said “thank you for your positive energy, I learned so much!”
My Purpose is #MakingPotentialPossible, so you can imagine how much it means to me to have such opportunities to support others in the world of swimming. Oh, and I will use that phrase again in different contexts, so once again:
“Every challenge is a learning opportunity”