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091 - Teaching Teens the 4 Types of Failure | Why “I Failed” ≠ “I’m a Failure”
113 Plays1 month ago
Teenage athletes will fail. That’s not the problem. The problem is when failure becomes identity.
In this episode, Coach Tex breaks down the four types of failure every teen must learn to navigate—calibration, climb, consequences, and circumstances—and explains how to coach athletes to see mistakes as feedback instead of personal judgment. You’ll learn how to give athletes language, structure, and perspective so “I failed” never turns into “I am a failure,” and effort, confidence, and ownership can actually grow.
Perfect for coaches, parents, and leaders who want tougher, more resilient athletes—without yelling, shaming, or lowering standards.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Action. We are all failures. At least the best of us are. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Understanding Failure: Event vs Identity
00:00:10
Speaker
I want to lead off and clear something up right away that failing is an event and failure is an identity.
00:00:17
Speaker
And those are two different things. They are not the same. One is feedback and the other is a label. And the problem with teenage athletes and honestly most adults, right, is we blur those lines. We miss a shot, we drop a ball, we bomb a test, we make a bad decision, and suddenly our internal internal voice says, I am bad.
00:00:38
Speaker
No, you did bad.
Teaching Teenagers to Handle Failure
00:00:40
Speaker
You are not bad. Today i want to give a framework for teaching teenagers, in particular, how to fail correctly. This is what I do with my lacrosse players. So I've installed this, I've seen it, I've toyed with it, I saw what works and didn't work, and I'm going to give you my best way to communicate failure to the teenage brain.
00:01:02
Speaker
The goal is shortening the recovery time and extracting the lesson from whatever loss or miss or failure that we face as a teenage athlete.
00:01:13
Speaker
Because the goal is not to avoid failure. We want that feedback so we can continue to grow. It's not about providing these teenage athletes with a safe space. It's about getting them stronger. And we need to go through stress to progress.
00:01:29
Speaker
So this is called failure literacy. Every athlete you respect, every single one has failed thousands of times. The difference isn't talent, the difference is interpretation. If a teen interprets failure as identity, they shrink. And I see this, I've seen it, I'm sure you have too with your teams or even yourself. If they interpret failure as information, now they start to
Failure Literacy and Constructive Processing
00:01:55
Speaker
grow. And that is often our intent as coaches to frame it that way, but how do we get them to actually believe it?
00:02:04
Speaker
So instead of telling them, hey, it's okay to fail, we're gonna start to give them language. We're gonna give them categories, which gives them their that control to make a decision on what to do next, on how to respond to this versus just reacting negatively. Again, moving away from that safe space getting stronger.
00:02:27
Speaker
So there are four major types of failure for teens that I want to introduce
Types of Failure: Calibrate, Climb, and Decisions
00:02:32
Speaker
them to. And there's a a representation, there's a lesson with each and a visual to really help help paint this picture.
00:02:40
Speaker
So when they can name it and see it with the visual, then they're in a position to better navigate it. So we're going to start with our first one. This is C. You're going to see a lot of ah alliteration with this to make it sticky. But the first is calibrate.
00:02:55
Speaker
This is skill failure. Think about the thousands of reps that we take at sports practice shooting, rep on rep. This is the most common one, and it's the least dangerous. It's the easiest for them to understand, especially when we're at practice. If we miss a shot, it's not the stress of the game.
00:03:14
Speaker
We just reload, it's the next one up. So calibrating failures, there's thousands of reps that are imperfect, aiming for us to dial it in. You're finding your groove, you're making adjustments. We need to highlight this. They're doing this, but we need to highlight this as small reps of failure.
00:03:35
Speaker
Think about the shooting range. And I've got a ah lot of awesome friends that have taught me some amazing lessons on the range. The aim is to get our shots as clustered as possible. Then you got this little guy over here. And we don't worry about that little guy.
00:03:49
Speaker
We just make adjustments when it's our next opportunity to shoot. So helping them understand that, yes, these are small failures. These are good things. And we're gaining reps and opportunities.
00:04:00
Speaker
So now if one shot starts to drift off target, we don't panic. We just think about that next rep. It's this skill refinement. So I want to use this range as the visual, of the opportunity, and showing them that cluster within our target. Even though we're not at a bullseye, if we're close and our cluster's calibrated, then we're in a good position.
00:04:25
Speaker
and not to worry about that little guy. Skill refinement. The coaching language here is simple. What did that rep teach you? teach you What's the adjustment you need to make?
00:04:36
Speaker
Tighten it up. How did that feel? So now explaining to them, hey, what was going on in there? What were you aiming for? Is another one i love to throw out.
00:04:46
Speaker
So we're aiming to calibrate not only the accuracy within their skill, but also their mindset to to adjust and get focused. So that simple, what are you aiming for, puts you in their mind as well.
00:04:59
Speaker
So you can try to then calibrate yourself, your next coaching cue, and adjustment for their next rep. And we're speeding up this feedback loop so we can fail fast. Okay, visual two, this is going to be climb.
00:05:14
Speaker
This is about process, failure, and process. Climb is the visual because there is no path. You know, there is no linear path to a straight, to to progress.
00:05:26
Speaker
So we're climbing, we have peaks, we have valleys, and we're working our way up. It's not even just a stair step with a plateau. Sometimes you dip, take two steps forward and one step back, and then we gradually work our way up.
00:05:40
Speaker
So progress is never linear, even in a linear weightlifting progression we're going to have to reload reset and before you know it deadlifts are going up squats are going down or deadlift continues to progress and i've reset my squat five times so i've reset my vertical press 10 000 times that's that's still getting reset here so progress process all of our words we need now to reference and help them understand that so they they teens they teens and just tend to struggle here because they zoom in too close on the one rep or the loss or the feeling that they're experiencing So the climb is that mountain is a visual. It helps us bring their their view out to help them see this process. This is why I love recording weights for athletes so we can flip back to three months ago, a year ago, and see how far we've come to this moment.
00:06:44
Speaker
Two steps forward, one step back. um So take this zoom out approach, whether it's 30 days or three months or even a year to see that show them that they are trending in the right direction or the amount of reps that they put in. We have to measure as much as we can, whether it's shooting, whether it's weightlifting, how many reps can we measure to help them see it over the long run if they get too focused on one event.
00:07:11
Speaker
And i mean, this this is a a process mindset that's going to be so valuable come game time, come season, because you're allowed to make mistakes in a game. It's not going to be it's not go to cost your team They just may be focusing on that one thing, and then we've lost that kid for the rest of the game.
00:07:29
Speaker
So we're helping them understand to zoom out, make the mistake, and then move on. Or get more aggressive to try to fight uphill to overcome that mistake.
00:07:40
Speaker
So finding trends, ah that that's our objective here. And helping them understand this this whole big picture so they don't get caught on one stumble or get caught in one of those peaks or valleys.
00:07:55
Speaker
get caught in a valley there you all right the third this is consequences So when we make a decision, we chose to make a decision and it led to a failure.
00:08:09
Speaker
This one is uncomfortable, but it's it's necessary for us to grow in a lot of our behaviors as young men and women. These failures, they're based off of our actions, our decisions. We knew better, but we did it anyway.
00:08:23
Speaker
Or we weren't taking into someone else's feelings And we acted, and now we have to deal with the consequences. Our intent did not match the impact of our actions or words. This could could be skipping workouts, breaking team rules, disrespecting teammates, cutting corners.
00:08:41
Speaker
where And this is our opportunity to develop maturity as leaders and coaches to highlight this stuff. We can't let them get away with stuff because in the long run of a season, it will eventually catch up to them.
00:08:56
Speaker
Now, my freshman year of college, we had a ah very authoritarian coach and one morning I mean in the winter where it's freezing and snow practice was never canceled we just went indoor into the gym so there was one morning I mean we we started conditioning and guys that lived off campus they were clearly late and they tried to sneak in into our lower gym of course head coach sees him sneak in he turns to us
00:09:28
Speaker
it turns to them looks back at us looks at them is like you just effed everybody and then i mean we had to run for the whole 90 freaking minutes on a basketball court never fun because of four guys uh that i mean for one reason another were not on time i just who i remember that so now I mean, just maybe you have this dream too, where you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, oh no, did I set my alarm? Am I going to be late for practice?
00:09:59
Speaker
And that was 20 plus years ago. So I still have anxiety and fear thinking about oversleeping and missing practice. ah Yeah, but maturity, I learned from somebody else's mistake there. Never freaking, never not set your alarm. Set two alarms. Always have a buddy system in place if you're living alone there. All right.
00:10:22
Speaker
So the visual that I like to give here is a fork in the road because we're talking about decisions. We're talking about delayed gratification here. So decisions, one path leads to discipline. The other path leads to regret.
00:10:38
Speaker
So every decision asks the same question, pain now or pain later. Or if we do face that fork in the road, man, I remember the last time that I made that decision, how did that feel? What was that experience? What did it cost my team?
00:10:55
Speaker
And a great mentor, if you do make the wrong decision on that fork in the road, they'll walk you back to that decision point. They won't just MF you and yell you and tell you or tell your teammates you just effort at everybody.
00:11:09
Speaker
They will lead you back to the decision, that fork in the road, and help you understand your thought process, the actions, the behaviors that it may have impacted and cost others. So that way, the next time you face that fork in the road, you consciously make the correct decision to go down it.
00:11:28
Speaker
So that's what ah a a transformational authoritative coach will do. They'll help you understand why the decisions you made were costly and walk you back. So you are prepared the next time you face that.
00:11:44
Speaker
And every decision asked the same question pain now or pain later that's our objective here to help them understand that and um yeah in line with that going back to my uh favorite coach there that sarcasm he also had a little game called good idea bad idea in line with consequences and monday morning practice People would go out on weekends, and he would receive what people did wrong that they got caught with either on campus or off campus. And he would introduce, good idea, bad idea.
00:12:22
Speaker
Let's play a little game. and how This is about the time Saw 1 came out too, so who wants to play a game? And good idea, bad idea. he would say what we did today.
00:12:34
Speaker
we as a team or individual what we did and then ask the team okay we'll take a vote good idea bad idea so it always started of course as bad idea coach and he's like you are correct on the line eventually it just the the game got old and we were we were a silly rambunctious team so then we used it as fuel and he asked us okay good idea bad idea Naturally, we went with default. Hey, great idea.
00:13:05
Speaker
It's good time. Coach's like, wrong again. On the line. So good idea, bad idea is a game. That has stuck with me as well. The the lesson two, it was about accountability.
00:13:17
Speaker
What choices did we make that led us there to that moment? We didn't have resentment against the teammate. They did it. However... Now in a position ah of leadership, I can help my athletes understand that there are consequences greater than this. i don't want to lead them to resentment. I'll lead them to a better decision next time so they can value their team above all else.
Failures Beyond Control: Bitterness vs Resilience
00:13:40
Speaker
All right. So, and
00:13:44
Speaker
often you need to help lead them to this lesson, not yell at them, ask them, what will you do differently next time? So then that is an important way to finish up a conversation when you are disciplining an individual.
00:13:59
Speaker
So that way you show that they know the difference between a right or wrong, and we can increase the, the impact, increase the punishment, increase the,
00:14:11
Speaker
ah think punishment is the right warrant word for this those who've seen my speak uh before i don't often use that but if they know the difference between right or wrong then we can increase uh the the amount of reps or time under stress that is there the consequences there and on helping them understand that the consequences are not defining them it's just showing them that there's impact beyond their mistake and
00:14:44
Speaker
we can still make good decisions and choose to respond to these mistakes after that. So they still got to pay the piper and at the same time, help them understand why not just berate and negative and create a pushback for pushback sake moving forward, which I've all also seen to that old head coach I referenced.
00:15:05
Speaker
Okay. Number four, circumstances. This is uncontrollable things that then we perceive as young minds as failure or labels for ourselves.
00:15:20
Speaker
And this is one of the hardest things to for for young people, teenage athletes, college-age athletes, to learn to deal with. Oftentimes, from an athletic perspective, they are very successful in high school.
00:15:35
Speaker
Then they get to college, still have success, but then they stumble along the way, maybe in their college career. I've even met athletes that then graduate dominated sport, dominated school, dominated life, and then their first hardships that they face is the circumstances and challenges of just an everyday job, entry-level position.
00:15:59
Speaker
Now, using sports as the analogy, injuries, bad calls, weather, family situations, things outside of our control. I'm considering all of these circumstances.
00:16:10
Speaker
And how do our athletes choose to respond to that? This is where bitterness or resilience gets chosen as the response. My favorite visual for this is a sailboat.
00:16:25
Speaker
You don't control the wind, you control the sail. We teach athletes to extract a lesson from the circumstance, keep the gratitude and release the resentment, especially when it comes to referees.
00:16:40
Speaker
So how I ask and frame this following one of these circumstances, what was in your control? What did this teach you?
00:16:51
Speaker
How are you stronger because of it? We don't want circumstances to start to build excuses. We often see this with parents who are blaming the refs or kids that are even blame the refs.
00:17:03
Speaker
So they're build they build perspective if we let them, circumstances build perspective if we let them, not allowing them to be excuses. And we thank God for second chances and the the the tide that never stops, to continue with the boat analogy.
00:17:20
Speaker
And What I love to share this is my freshman year of college, eight days before our first game against the number one team in the country, I hit a guy.
00:17:31
Speaker
I stepped on him when he fell on the ground. Big hit. And I rolled my ankle, broke my fibula, it done for the year. So that was a circumstance outside of my control.
00:17:43
Speaker
i just dominated this kid, stepped on him, rolled my ankle at practice. That was it. That was unfortunate circumstance, deep depression, sad. a game that came there for lacrosse. I couldn't contribute. You still had the stresses of school. I'm crutching around campus as small as it was, still had to crutch around.
00:18:05
Speaker
Negative, negative, negative. However, Took me three years to learn the lesson, but that opened up the opportunity to now play a fifth year, go to grad school, which I didn't foresee as a possibility for myself, was not the best student.
00:18:19
Speaker
And then i learned how to learn. Grad school is more my preferred learning style. Questioning, deep diving research that you're interested in and exploring that. So it took me three years to see the value in that.
00:18:34
Speaker
I want to try to accelerate that perspective for the athletes that I'm working with that have to manage circumstances and extract lessons from them.
Recap and Conclusion
00:18:45
Speaker
it's as simple as a bad call how do you redirect and and take on the next play so circumstances to to walk through everything again every failure fits into one of these four categories that is easy to understand for teenagers i don't want them to treat uh one miss of a shot with the same magnitude of something that's a circumstance well out of their control so walking through it again calibration climb consequences circumstances none of these are identities continuing with the theme that failure is feedback identity is a decision who are they choosing to be following a failure
00:19:34
Speaker
You are not your missed shot. You are the athlete who adjusts, takes the next one, calls calls for that ball, and be the dude. So, and for the coaches listening, our job isn't to protect our kids from failure. I started the episode with this. We don't want to create a so a space to keep them safe all the time. We want to create an environment that allows them to get stronger.
00:19:59
Speaker
It's to teach them how to interpret failure, redirect, and then grow, enhance our skills, our mindset, our attitude, our communication, whatever it may be. Because when athletes learn to fail correctly, they recover faster, they think clear, and they own their growth.
00:20:18
Speaker
They don't avoid failure. They use it. So that does it for the episode. If you wanna learn more about my mission and course, I have this about connection and communication with teenage athletes, in particular coaching the modern athlete, head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com. We also got some o sweet new merch available. Head to shop.captainsandcoaches.com to support the cause here. And lastly, shout out to our sponsor, Train Heroic. If you're a coach looking for supplemental income, start your online training biz. Head to trainheroic.com. slash captains for a 30-day trial.
00:20:58
Speaker
And lastly, if you want my show notes, access to, I deliver all show notes that I'm i'm walking through during this solo podcast onto my newsletter.
00:21:10
Speaker
Sign up for that. Head to newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com. Thank you again for tuning in and helping us raise the game.