Appointment and Disappointment…
This week sees us in the aftermath of the Olympics, and in the UK, in anticipation of the results of the A Level endeavours of 18-year-olds, hoping to launch their university careers and apprenticeships.
It’s a strange phenomenon – the human process of ‘trying’ – whatever form it may take. Whether it is competing in the Olympics, training for an exam, applying for a job…writing an essay/ ‘essaie’ – in high stakes situations it involves concentrated effort, aspiration, investment, commitment, courage, and self-esteem.
Success means validation, affirmation of our expectations, mastery, a sense of completion. Failure means…what? It means quite a lot. And a lot more than the cognitive, narrative construction of the meaning(s) we place on the situation.
As teachers, we often think about others quite a lot more than we think about ourselves. Year by year, both within each year, and on the days of reckoning when the results come in August for the nations 16 and 18 year olds – we observe those who are winners and losers of the exam game.
We often frame success and failure in terms that link to Dweck’s growth mindset – as well-earned triumphs. Or as learning opportunities – information that can be useful for planning the next steps of a young person’s path. It’s all workable. It’s not life or death. They will live, they will thrive. They have options.
These are very helpful, well-intentioned, kind re-framings. But they are cognitive. At certain times and contexts in all of our lives, these rational perspectives can serve very well indeed. At others, they just won’t cut it.
We look on with worry, and concern, on those candidates who have received their results and dropped a grade. We wonder why they can’t be grateful and happy with their eight Grade 9s at GCSE and why they mourn so profoundly the one or two that got away. It’s perhaps easier to empathise with A Level candidates who might have dropped a grade by the narrowest margin, but miss the entry criteria for their chosen university.
We see excellent pupils throw their hats into the ring for top universities, invest in the extra study and preparation for interview for the highly competitive Oxbridge entrance for instance, and suffer such disillusionment and feel no less than disgrace at not getting in. We hope that they will be able to see it with perspective. It is without doubt extremely painful to bear witness to the distress on it.
When an academically strong student suffers so profoundly, it is confronting. They are confronted with their vulnerability – sometimes because it is their first experience of failure in an otherwise gilded path through school life.
As caring professionals, we are confronted with what can be a problematic cocktail of emotions. There may be sadness, shame, frustration, disappointment, but there can also be blame, anger, cynicism, rejection. One may be equipped to be supportive in the initial aftermath, but when the sticking point lingers, it can be harder to help a young adult re-engage with their endeavours.
How might be understand the way disappointment can play out? So that we might be able to support our students and each other to find growth when their internal landscape may feel so depleted, that they are in the grip of a self-esteem collapse?
It may be worth reflecting on the number of comments made throughout the Paris Olympics of 2024 about the psychological aspects of endeavour – both in preparation as well as in the aftermath. Many athletes referred to the scarring experiences from previous contests, especially the Tokyo Olympics taking place under the pressure of the COVID era.
Post-Olympic blues are widely acknowledged. Depression, reckless, self-destructive behaviour and suicidal ideation can follow. HBO’s documentary The Weight of Gold explores and investigates this darker underbelly to sporting excellence. Medal winners are feted. They are overnight celebrities, revered and celebrated. And therefore it makes it easy to assume that having made their nations proud and happy, they must be happy too.
The documentary is narrated by Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time. Many of the athletes who contribute to this analysis of the mental health impacts of being an Olympian agree that the narrow focus in their lives is a contributory factor.
The Weight of Gold: https://youtu.be/jsyrTntiWJQ?si=zFsRi8tEwKwDxVP2
Another iconic Olympian, Simone Biles, famously pulled out of the Tokyo games, making her return in Paris all the more sweet… “I have to focus on my mental health…we have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do…There were a couple of days when everybody tweets you and you feel the weight of the world.”
In 2021, Dr David Lyreskog wrote about this in advance of the delayed Tokyo games. In his analysis, he pointed out that during the Olympics alone around 11% of the athletes incur injuries. In his article The mental health impacts of being an Olympian, he states that “in elite sports teams, the prevalence of depression and anxiety is sometimes as high as 45%, and in adolescent elite sports the prevalence of eating disorders is approximately 14%. The pursuit of performance – of excellence – does not appear to be a healthy one.”
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/features/mental-health-impacts-being-olympian
Improving performance and shaving your edge for competitive advantage certainly has the potential to fulfil the psychological drive for mastery. But it is problematic when it comes to the sense of satisfaction – feeling, and being enough. I’ll not forget visiting a hospital school for children who were psychiatric in-patients and discussing the demographic of the school’s intake – close to 50% were in the top 3% of the cognitive ability range. A number of those suffering with eating disorders were keeping up with their study programme of 6 or 7 A Levels. When belonging is contingent on perfection, the drive to compete / excel can be a deadly beast that will never be fed.
I remember listening to a radio programme where a Bronze medallist was speaking to the paradox, of having competed and performed at such a supreme level, but it feeling and being insufficient. The curse of not being the gold medallist was inescapable. Known everywhere for nearly winning, and being unable to buy a pint of milk from the corner shop without being commiserated. It’s hard to be the third best Olympian on the world stage when the your recognition has that double edged sword. Even if you’re happy with your result, being confronted daily with the infinitesimal gap in your achievement. So close! Maybe next time!
Other research reckons on Silver being the worst medal to get – so close to Gold…whereas Bronze has the distance from Gold and the proximity to not getting a medal…so yay!
This has relevance to us mere physical mortals when we think about that vulnerable act of going for something. Putting ourselves forward and committing to a process – with all it entails. Telling friends and family. Putting in the extra work, funnelling and channelling your effort, your attention, your energy, your hopes and dreams.
The fact is that when we look upon and support those students – or any friend or colleague who are at a point in life where they are having to engage with disappointment, we could do with knowing the following:
- Experience of disappointment is hugely subjective and dependent on context.
- There’s an expansion pack on the ‘two darts of suffering’ of the Buddhist framework. The two darts of suffering are the event itself, and your reaction to it, your resistance, difficulty of accepting, being ill at ease with it – which might look like self-blame, shame, guilt, intrusive ruminative thoughts, resentments. Instead in high stakes situations, there’s a whole bunch of additional darts – how other people around you react, and how they might be resistant to the implications of your frustrations or fate. How you feel you might be perceived by those in your periphery as a result…how it might affect your future…
- Thinking of the origin of the word ‘disappointment’ – in the 1500s, referring to the power of the king to demote, to take away your position, your role, your status. The secondary meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary is the notion of thwarted or frustrated expectations. When we think about disappointment in its essence, it means a threat or sudden change in your belonging. This perhaps brings us to the more visceral psychological impact of the experience. It’s something that is fundamentally connected with our sense of self-orientation. We are primed to find safety in belonging, and to feel threatened, destabilised when that belonging is compromised.
In my professional life – both as a coach, and previously as a school leader, and as a Union representative, I have seen a contradiction of how we would hope and like our students to be sanguine about the disappointments they face, and yet, it turns out that one bad lesson observation, or a job application that misfires can plunge us as teachers into confusion and dismay.
This is because teaching is a purpose-led, heart-centred job. We bring a lot of ourselves into work and into our professional lives. Teaching well is all about creating relationships. And relationships are the mirror to our self-hood and sense of safety. To feel that we are not teaching well, to come under fire with complaint or criticism when intentions were good, aspirations and efforts high can feel awful.
Thinking on this theme of professional disappointment, this is particularly strong with applications for internal appointments – going for promotions in-house. Here constructing meanings around failure and success can be really vulnerable territory. For it isn’t only the lack of promotion that’s at stake – but equally how the candidate feels exposed by their experience.
Alongside of one’s own disappointment, there are layers of projected elements – for instance the ‘audience’ of colleagues who watched you throw your hat in the ring, and the awkwardness of living with the thwarted endeavour. Unsure of what to say to whom and how to say it. It’s no surprise that despite previously being happy in their jobs, people start to look elsewhere. And with serial applications and serial rejections each can deal difficult blows to the sense of self, the feeling of entrapment and an erosion of hope.
Disappointment does not only come as part of the professional package when applying for jobs or promotions, it also comes as part of the human endeavour of working with children, teens and young adults. Difficult feedback as a result of a mis-match in your approach and the school ethos or a change in strategy or approach, a lesson observation, a parent or student complaint all stick very deep. In workshops I deliver, colleagues speak of not only the mental anguish, but also serious physical turmoil in a nervous system that goes into overdrive. The stakes are high in the world of education.
Disappointment stings. It brings up primal fears and embodied memories of rejection. Like traumatic memory, it reaches back in time to childhood injuries, or times when the deep tracks of anxiety left their imprint. Out of our basement tumble up – unbidden – fears and feelings that are not in narrative or verbal form. Our lagging brains then seek to make meaning out of them. And unless we are very well resourced internally and externally those meanings are coloured by an anxious filter until we’ve had time and self-compassion to see through them more clearly.
https://hbr.org/2024/08/how-to-manage-feedback-like-an-olympic-athlete
Smart, not loud: How to get noticed at work for all the right reasons – Jessica Chen Harvard Business Review interview -What to do when you’re overlooked.
https://hbr.org/podcast/2024/08/what-to-do-when-youre-overlooked
Of course we look at the state of things today, the chicken and egg debates about anxiety and mental ill-health. Are we raising snowflakes who can’t handle life’s truths? Is life generally more wearing? Are we mollycoddling in our approach to mental health? Might we feel trapped as educators in cycles of endless interventions and learned helplessness? Should there be times when a line needs to be drawn and we let people get on with it?
How we show up around disappointment matters. Structurally, for instance, the experience of the furlough system in the UK during COVID provided some really interesting insights into what was fortifying and facilitated resilience, and what didn’t.
For those of us who had to continue to work under very difficult conditions during the COVID crisis, furlough seemed to be in many ways, a golden ticket. What’s not to like? You get paid for not working while the rest of us are on the front line. In fact you are not allowed to work even if you want to.
Nonetheless, many workers who were furloughed suffered in terms of their mental health. The feeling of rejection – having been deemed expendable, less necessary was one contributory factor – along with the sense of anxiety about the future as well as the loss of purpose and sense of self-worth that often also comes with having an occupation.
Research into workplace psychological wellbeing at the time and subsequently showed that what helped enormously in promoting resilience in the transitions involved was the way the employer’s decision was explained and brokered with the individual, and structures being put in place for those placed on furlough to continue to feel valued and belong. Here I am summarising a series of webinars delivered by Brian Marien’s Positive Group during the pandemic. Linked here:
https://www.positivegroup.org/loop/webinars/kindness-in-leadership-how-important-is-it
Check-ins and careful thought to transition both out of the work-place and on the return were very important elements. This was especially true where managers and leaders who were orchestrating this process were able to engage with their colleagues as individuals and be attentive and considerate of their unique circumstances and outlook.
The same is sometimes sadly not in place when we think about how we treat colleagues undergoing applications for jobs – either elsewhere or internally. Success can be relatively less problematic.
Rejection, and its aftermath emotionally can be a particularly large elephant in the department office or staffroom. Especially if there are compounding elements in the way the rejection is brokered. Rather like the furlough approach – it’s not so much about what gets done, so much as the way it gets done and the mis-steps in the relationship along the way.
At these moments where the basement stuff about belonging, safety, rejection is in the air, misattunements can cut very deep and the meanings made alongside of these can leave a toxic residue and mean working relationships are on a downward and distancing spiral, or there’s cynicism and distancing – burnout factors coming in to play. Neither of which are helpful or likely to optimise engagement with fellow workers. This means that the effort really funnels into the classroom teaching – but without the sustaining and fortifying benefits that come from the powerful backroom social support provided by that feeling of belonging in a collegiate environment.
How does your school or school group approach wellbeing in the workplace. Many schools have developed policies looking at staff wellbeing. To what extent do these engage with specific and predictable pain points in professional life?
Ideas on psychological safety in the workplace:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter
https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/mental-health-charter
https://www.michellemcquaid.com/supercharging-safety
https://www.mind.org.uk/media-a/4662/resource3_howtopromotewellbeingfinal.pdf
When we think about disappointment and it’s history of meaning – it’s not just about not getting something extra…it’s about feeling demoted – even if that hasn’t happened in actual fact.
This can be incredibly damaging where an application and rejection has been carried out in only a functional, process-led way – as a formality. It’s awkward enough telling external candidates that they haven’t been successful – but you won’t be seeing them in the lunch queue the next day.
Equally for school leaders, sensitivity and curiosity as to the meanings and constructions colleagues may place on student or parent complaint is important. Once you’ve been in a leadership position for a while, handling complaints becomes a bit like bread and butter. We get comfortable with our side of the process – to be rigorous in investigating, being supportive, having difficult conversations, mediating and bringing things to a resolution. We sometimes assume that the professional mask we all wear means that all is OK, and that it’s just business.
Backstage, in the internal lives of our colleagues, may be a very different story. Mindfulness of that can be extremely helpful in enabling colleagues to learn and grow and apply appropriate self-compassion to the situation.
If we can really be open and ready to bear witness to what the lived experience our student, or colleague, or family member is having, with steadfastness and curiosity…if we can strip away the ‘shoulding’ about how a person ought to react in any given emotional challenge, and meet them where they are actually at, we can give them the chance to allow the difficult feelings, the attendant feelings, and be able to move through the experience without stuffing too much down in that basement.
So wherever you are coming from in reading this, I hope this provides some food for thought about the ways in which we can show up for each other. No matter what stage of life we are at, we co-regulate more readily and easily than we self-regulate. Being able to find- or provide – a safe space with others to look clearly and compassionately at life’s disappointments can be an incredibly powerful thing.
Key questions to consider:
- How well equipped are we as individual professionals to support students and each other through disappointment – an inevitable part of school life?
- What ideas has this article given you about areas you might explore differently in your work with students? With colleagues? With parents?
- What are your key experiences with disappointment? How have those been rationalised over time? What helped? Who helped you? What did they do that worked so well?
- Have you had any experiences in professional life that resonate with this piece? Either personally, or in supporting colleagues within your team?
- When was disappointment in your life experienced handled well, not so well?
- Does this article make you think there are conversations to be had around how we can show up for each other around difficult and vulnerable situations?
Ways I can help:
- Training for staff – whole staff groups, line managers, leaders. Related topics:
- Conversations that matter: how to have difficult conversations, vulnerable conversations
- Listening skills and creating trust-based influence.
- Giving and receiving feedback effectively.
- Promoting resilience and relationship. How schools can provide effective professional mentorship and literacy around applications and feedback processes.
- Psychological safety in teams, in classrooms. Why it matters, how you know you’ve got it, and what to do about it when it’s in jeopardy.
- Understanding and developing engagement and motivation.
- Supportive staffrooms: showing up for each other in a high pressure job. Being effective as a supportive colleague, and mindful of boundaries.
- The practical science of wellbeing in a high-pressure job.
- Dealing with disappointment.
- I offer in-person inset training, webinars, twilights, lunch and learns, work discussion group supervision for safeguarding and pastoral teams…
- Working with teams – reviewing, building trust, reconnecting and re-engaging teams.
- 1:1 coaching – for colleagues stepping up into leadership, support for applying for leadership roles, managing difficult situations, working with difficult colleagues, having difficult conversations, public speaking anxiety, taking on a more parent-facing role…Mediation, helping schools provide support for colleagues who are in stuck situations, supporting teachers who feel on the flightpath to burnout.
