Bookstores and blog post are full of pieces of writing entitled ‘How to succeed at…’ We are part of a result and success-driven society. League tables, number of likes and bums on seats all provide us with data to grade ourselves as either a success or failure. There are plenty of articles out there, including this regular column, which encourage and advise on how to be better at youth work. As more and more articles are written about how to succeed in youth ministry, failure becomes a dirty word: it becomes something we’re afraid to admit. The knock-on effect of having an increasingly negative view of failure is that opportunities and ideas are disregarded because of the risk of failure. It’s interesting how we can get together and talk about the successes of our work and hide the failures. Yet, as Christians, we also have a keen awareness of sin and forgiveness, so what prevents us from disclosing professional failure when personal failure is commonplace.
KOBAYASHI MARU
For those non-Trekkies among you, the Kobayashi Maru is a training exercise given to Starfleet commander cadets in the Star Trek universe. In the exercise the cadet is placed in a simulation exercise where a friendly ship is losing power in enemy space. If the cadet chooses to enter enemy space and rescue the crew they provoke the enemy to attack and possibly initiate all-out war, if they choose not to enter enemy space the friendly crew die and their own crew may start a mutiny. It’s a no-win scenario. However it is not a simulation to be overcome by the cadet, rather it is test of the cadet’s character in dealing with failure. Failures will happen, either by our own hand or someone else’s: what we do when it comes is the true test.
John from a project in North London says: ‘Failure is all about perspective: one person’s failure might be another’s success. I think it’s good to share your failures but it has to be with the right person. I can talk to my line manager about most things, but there are levels. Some stuff is more personal – where my faith, life and work collide – and I need a space to share that, which isn’t always with my line manager. Having a supervision session that isn’t with a line manager is great; it’s an opportunity not to focus on work but how work is impacting me. Stories of failure are a good thing. In my current role I’m setting up a project and so we are very much driven by deadlines and timetables. It’s the first time I’ve been responsible for a project and so I feel it much more keenly when things don’t go well. Failure and success are so abstract: you can move the boundaries and change a failure to a success, so they can become unhelpful. For me perhaps it’s about hearing stories of those who have tried.’
IMPROVEMENT
After experiencing failure, the danger is that we look to make drastic changes in order to improve. We think that if we find a magic bullet it will solve everything and we’ll hit the target with one shot. Even though we know that’s not generally how things work, we spend time and energy looking at how others ministries have tackled these problems. Scrolling though blog posts or flicking through pages of books trying to find that one golden nugget that speaks to our situation and how it has been miraculously solved. We work with people. People are complex and there are no magic bullets.
Paul’s dramatic conversion from Christian persecutor to preacher can look like a ‘magic bullet’ solution. I have no doubt of God’s transformational power, but often, as we are transformed, our humanity has to catch up. Paul says in Galatians that after his conversion he went to Arabia for three years. There is debate among scholars about what he did there but one theory is that he needed to take some time out after his life got dramatically flipped upside-down. When the blasphemy that he was fighting against becomes the truth, he’d need some time to get his worldview in order.
John from North London says: ‘Sometimes when I’m in the moment it can feel like transformation can happen really quickly, but when I look back I can see that it didn’t happen quickly at all. I’m now not concerned at all that me or the young people I work with have a Damascus road experience. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to have that experience and have that new life, but the way that works is very slowly over time. When people ask what difference I’m making, I’m providing a safe space for young people and that’s enough, the rest will come in time.’
So instead of looking for the instant fix we need to find a way of changing and improving that works. ‘Kaizen’ is a Japanese word that roughly translates as ‘good change’. As a philosophy of constant improvement, it first appeared in Japanese business not long after World War II. These businesses embraced the idea that doing things the way they’d always been done wasn’t a good idea. Instead they focused on a company wide effort to improve and streamline their businesses. To put it another way: marginal gains. While the youth work world isn’t really interested in streamlining our interactions with young people, we are and should be looking at ways we can improve our practice.
John says: ‘I’m quite interested in the fact that what we’re trying to do is quite inspirational, but it’s also something that happens step by step, drip by drip. The kingdom of God is a big vision, but it’s built day-by-day in small decisions. Sometimes I find it hard to hold together the largeness and smallness. I have a daily page where I note down what risks I plan on taking each day and then at the end of the day reflect on what improvements those risks contributed to. I’m trying to grow a project that’s volunteer-led, so by its very nature the steps have to be small. They can’t make every day or every session so we have to make small steps. I keep reminding myself to take things slowly which files in the face of my deadlines.’
There is always a danger that when we a have a big vision we take big steps to try and get there, often those big leaps mean that it’s too easy for others to fall away, rather than little steps which take them with us. So instead of radical innovation or even re-invention, Kaizen teaches small but continuous improvement. So what could you do to make your youth work practice just one per cent better today? What could be your marginal gain? It may not sound like much, but one per cent today and one per cent tomorrow and so on, soon adds up. It also is great because it’s a low barrier to change meaning that it’s an easier step to take and by having a slow rate of change, changes are more likely to embed themselves into your practice of youth work.
Experiment Yourself
Find a forum for your failures
Sometimes line managers and those within the organisations and churches we work for aren’t best for disclosing our failures to. Find yourself a group of likeminded youth workers with whom you can discuss how the intersection of work, life and faith is affecting you. It’s important to find people you feel safe with, who will help examine the issues with you. If a group situation isn’t your thing then maybe find yourself some non-line management supervision. These sessions are run by a professional who can support you in exploring how these issues play out in your work. (Obviously anything that contravenes your work place policies and procedures, especially safeguarding, should be brought to your line management immediately.)
Make small changes
Put aside those big goals you have for your youth work practice for a second and ask yourself, ‘what is the smallest improvement I could make that I could implement today?’ Then ask yourself the same question tomorrow, repeat. Just one thing. Really small. Confucius said, ‘The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.’
#youthworkfails
This is a hashtag that youth workers started using to admit their shortcomings. Have a look and add to it be encouraged that we’re all out there trying.
