April 3, 2014
At a recent event on personal branding, a member of the audience asked, “How do you fail in style?” What a fantastic question! The speaker’s approach to answering was to give examples of moments of personal failure and then sum things up, tongue-in-cheek, saying, “But look how I turned out?!”
The Clark School, I recently discovered, has a wonderful answer to that very question. They emphasize that personal growth comes from making and acknowledging mistakes. Here is one example of how that message is conveyed (as described on their website):
“Bob the Chicken is a rubber chicken that hangs proudly in the classroom of the teacher who has made the biggest blunder. Students vote to see which teacher gets the honor each quarter. This sends a strong message that even as adults, mistakes are made and are not something to be ashamed of. This is particularly important for a student who is academically superior in all disciplines but may not know how to fail.”
I think I might have to go out and buy a rubber chicken to hang in my home, so that my family can do some voting of our own. Here’s to rubber chickens!