Assume a Virtue
-Chris Briggs-Hale
“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”
- George Orwell.
I’d like to think I’m an expert at making mistakes and learning from them. As a school principal and a human being I’ve had a lot of quality practice. Not fearing mistakes is a mindset I learned the hard way. It started when I was little. A rambunctious elementary school boy, I was frequently sent to the principal’s office. Each time I landed there, I was hard on myself - why couldn’t I control myself in the classroom? Was there something wrong with me? Mistakes felt like random things I couldn’t control. Relegated to a time-out chair after the dressing down from my principal, I’d watch him do the job of running the school. When some other kids arrived, I listened as they denied, blamed, or even justified what they’d done. I like to think my repeated time in the principal’s office was a forced internship for my later acquisition of the job.
My failure to see mistakes as opportunities made making them more likely and so, I began to fear them even more. This fear increased until I was 15 years old. That was when I started working as an apprentice waiter at a five-star restaurant. Initially only bussing tables, I was slowly allowed to take on more and more responsibility for serving the customer. Then, one day, I was given a table to serve, not as a busboy but as a waiter.
Assuming this role at such a young age, I was keen to really
look the part. So, I decided it was time to
look like an experienced waiter and
carry the tray with one hand. Halfway from the waiter’s station to the table,
the gap between what I was confident I could do and the skill it required
revealed itself. When I realized the unbalanced bottles would not stay on the
tray, I heaved it across the room back toward the deeply resonant metal sink in
the waiter’s station. The sound it made as it landed is hard to forget. So too was the profound silence across the
restaurant. Never had I seen so many shocked eyes locked on me.
“What we learned tonight?” I asked myself. I was sure the only things I learned from this incident were: I’m an idiot and I’m fired.
But not so! My boss saw something in me worth coaching.
“Do you read Shakespeare?” he began. I admitted that I had read some in school. “There’s a quote,” he continued, ‘Assume the virtue if you have it not for use can almost can change the stamp of nature.[1]”’ Do you know what that means?”
I thought for a moment. “It means fake it ‘till you make it?’”
“No,” he said, surprising me. “It means the opposite. Shakespeare was challenging us to assume a mindset, not a specific behavior. There’s no faking anything - you either are or aren’t learning and growing. In your case, it means allowing yourself to not know how to carry a tray of beers before you try to carry a tray of beers.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Do you want to look like a person who can carry beers with one hand or do you want to be a person who can carry beers with one hand?” The answer seemed obvious.
“Be.” I said sheepishly.
“Of course you do. So, how are you going to show up for your table the next time you don’t know how to do something?”
And so it began, many nights of him sharing stories of the hard lessons he’d learned as he rose through the restaurant business worldwide. The more he shared his mistakes, the more curious I became about his journey to become an expert learner. I became fascinated with how this mindset better allowed him to master behaviors that transform a diner’s experience. Good behaviors were easy to master, great ones required assuming a different mindset. Mistakes are opportunities.
In the weeks that followed, I found joy in becoming a person open to feedback about my tiniest movements. I loved practicing the precise moves one had to make to clear plates from a table without disturbing the patron’s conversation. I practiced and received feedback on how to to deftly (with one hand) light a woman’s cigarette (sorry, it was the old days) using only a paper book of matches. Using a lighter demonstrated a lack of polish. I welcomed finding out when I was making private judgment of customers (she’s picky, he’s grumpy) and shifting to a different, more gracious internal dialogue. In return, I experienced our customer’s delight.
I am still grateful for that wise chef. His coaching changed my mindset. The gift of his second chance and coaching taught me discomfort supplies the energy to open new pathways of thinking. I’m not proud I heaved a tray of beers into a sink. But I am thankful for the discomfort that came afterward.
For whatever it’s worth, the table who’d ordered those beers left me with an enormous tip.
Chris Briggs-Hale
Professional Coach
https://waterfalllearning.com/
Chris Briggs-Hale:
Chris Briggs-Hale is the CEO of Waterfall Learning, LLC, and a Certified Professional Coach. He served public schools for 30 years, 15 of which were as a principal. Chris served as a Senior Consultant for McRel and Marzano and Associates, a site visitor for the National Schools of Character Award (Character.org), and was a Board Member with Eunice Kennedy Shriver for the Community of Caring in Washington, DC. Chris has consulted for schools extensively across the United States. He is the recipient of the 2013 Red Cross Community Hero Award, the 2004 Sally K. Lenhardt Professional Leadership Award from Lesley University, the 2004 Community of Caring National Administrator of the Year, and the 2013 Community Service Hero, American Red Cross, Colorado Springs.
Chris graduated from Bates College and received his M.Ed. from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and a Principal’s Licence from the University of Denver. Chris served as a Staff Assistant at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University before entering the public school system.
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