bcg blog

Being Soft

Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile defines antifragility as becoming more robust when exposed to stressors, uncertainty, or risk. One of Taleb’s talking points in the book is the difference between fragile, resilient, and antifragile.

A wine glass is an easy example of fragile. I don’t own any wine glasses, but when I pick one up I’m always worried about breaking it. In my mind, one mishap and the glass will shatter. I’m careful with them and, honestly, don’t really enjoy being around them because of it.

A plastic cup, on the other hand, is more in my comfort zone. It’s a good example of resilience. If you drop a plastic cup, which makes up about ninety percent of our drinking containers, it will maintain its size and shape. The stressor of being dropped doesn’t have an ill effect on the cup itself. It remains pretty much the same.

There isn’t an ideal example for something that is antifragile. Things that are antifragile do more than survive stressors, uncertainty, and risk. They are improved by them. Antifragility takes resilience to another level and is the antithesis of fragile. 

Identifying things into categories of fragile, resilient, or antifragile is fairly simple: expose them to stressors - like dropping them - and simply observe the results. 

The same is true for us and the people we lead.

Why Should We Care?
Fragile is the coaching equivalent to soft and, in the coaching world, we love to describe players and teams as soft. Unfortunately, most of the time the players don’t have a full understanding of what soft even means, let alone how to change it. It’s elementary coaching to simply call out what you observe - like riding in a car with someone reading every sign out loud. It doesn’t take long for us to block them out or tell them to ‘shut up’.

Before we get to understanding and changing it, we should at least acknowledge the reality of the acceptance of being soft, because it is a thing. I don’t know that blame can be placed on any certain group or specific activity, but it is clear that leadership now must intentionally plan to confront this ever present drift towards fragility.

Parenting is a good place to start. Helicopter parenting used to be the concern - hovering around the playground ready to snatch little Jenny off the ground the second she fell. By being close by helicopter parents could limit the time of distress and struggle, swooping in to save her. Parents rationalize this as good parenting by keeping the child safe in the moment. However, in an effort to help, they actually harm because while the child may be void of minor injury in the moment she is now also void of the skills required to manage the distress the injury would have provided. I would argue the latter is significantly more important.

As if the helicopter parents weren’t enough, now we have snowplow parents that are the concern - they’re still parked close by but they’ve either decked Jenny out with a helmet and knee pads, forbidden her from playing on any equipment that has even a remote chance of causing harm, gone to the city council to have swing sets removed from the playground all together. Again, in an effort to help, they manage to do even more harm by handcuffing the child to fragility.

Leadership, it seems, has followed suit. Helicopter leaders are nothing more than micro-managers. Their intent is good, but they always end up clipping the wings of those they lead. Snowplow leaders are most often exposed by the feedback they give - padded and vauge. By removing the hard truths we think we are softening the blow and protecting our people. When really we’re robbing them of the opportunity to become antifragile.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Becoming antifragile should be a goal all leaders have for the people we lead. We should have it for our children (I mean, what’s more important!), as well as our employees. However, society is now structured to keep people fragile - much more money to be made there. Here are a few ways to move them towards becoming antifragile.

• Truth Talk
  
  • “Clear is kind” as Brené Brown says. Take out all the qualifiers - sometimes, ifs, maybes, and kindas; just say it.Oour actions following the truth will tell the person whether we are still with them or not. If we love them, really care about them, then we tell them the truth. If not, we lie. We can try to justify it anyway we want, but that’s what it is.
    

• Recovery Talk 
  
  • Failure is a gift that is much easier to appreciate when it’s not yours. The mark of an antifragile person is how they respond to failure. As a leader, we can play a significant role in helping team members choose antifragile actions in response to failure. These are the actual learning opportunities that we don’t want to miss. The celebrations following success or the best practice for completing a task are important, but they pale in comparison to being able to confidently navigate failure. That changes a life.
    

• Long Game Talk
  
  • The people that are the most antifragile are the ones that realize they’re playing the long game. Some of the most antifragile people in history were not the biggest, strongest people - they just knew who they were and where they were going: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi. Remember, this moment, this instant, may be important but neither success nor failure defines us. Antifragility requires an understanding of who we are and where we are going. That stability is foundational to antifragility.
    

We have a choice in this matter of softness. The label, just or not, is a culmination of the actions we take. If fragility is a reflection of our choices, then so is antifragility. Choose wisely.

Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!