A few weeks ago, I sent an email with the subject line:

How to use your day job to fuel your side hustle

In the email, I quoted a few lines from Scott Adams’ book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. 

But we’re not done with this book yet.

Oh no. 

Here’s a short passage from the same book all about the time Scott joined a public speaking course:

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One young lady who had been forced by her employer to take the class was so frightened that she literally couldn’t form the words.

In the cool, air-conditioned room, beads of sweat ran from her forehead down to her chin and dropped onto the carpet. The audience watched in shared pain as she battled her own demons and tried to form words. A few words came out, just barely, and she returned to her seat defeated, humiliated, broken.

Then an interesting thing happened.

I rank it as one of the most fascinating things I have ever witnessed.

The instructor went to the front and looked at the broken student. The room was dead silent. 

I’ll always remember his words. 

He said “Wow. That was brave”

***

Turns out there’s some science behind why the instructor said what he did.

Google pointed me to a 2019 study from Chicago’s Booth School of Management about how feedback impacts learning.

Researchers gave people difficult questions with two possible answers. 

So basically a 50/50 guess.

After 10 questions, the subjects were either shown all the answers they’d got right or all the answers they’d got wrong.

Of course, this is really the same thing. But the researchers discovered this framing mattered.

When people were shown their successes, they did better in follow up tests.

When people were shown their failures, they didn’t.

Intuitively, this makes sense to me. I see why positive framing would positively impact learning.

In fact, typing this out has brought to mind the first set of Mindset & Clarity Workshops I ran for my colleagues at work about a year ago.

I had no idea how they’d go.

By the end of the run, I knew there was room for improvement. But I also knew some of the topics had clicked.

A couple of days later, one of the participants dropped me an email with this testimonial:

***

Skilfully run and highly practical, Tom delivered these workshops with serious professionalism and the value for me and the participants has been transformative, improving my state of mind considerably. 

Crucially, Tom created a safe space where the views and perspectives of all were welcomed.

I strongly recommend the workshops.

***

Just before he signed off the email, he also added these two little words:

***

Keep going

***

Two simple, human and encouraging words.

Honestly, those two words did more for my belief in my workshops and my motivation to run them again than all the testimonials I got (and I got a lot).

You might think I’m about to pitch my workshops.

But not today.

Instead, I have a suggestion:

If you know someone trying something new, putting themselves out there or stepping outside their comfort zone, why not channel your inner speaking instructor and offer them a gentle nudge of support?

You never know how much it might help.

And by the way, that someone doesn’t have to be someone else.

That someone can be you.