Turning a "Fail" Around- 5/4/2020

I love my job- every day, I get to help my colleagues solve problems. I get to inspire them to try new things.As a tech coach, I also try to model this behavior and try new things and take risks. In fact, taking risks is one of the ways that I was determined to CHALLENGE myself with for my #oneword2020. For the past 131 days, I have been journaling and reflecting on the risks I have taken.

Applying to present at conferences
Guest blogging
Moderating my first chat #NoVaEdChat
Working on a draft of my book

Things have been going really well with taking risks to CHALLENGE myself, so I have to admit that I was totally embarrassed when I took a risk last weekend and initially fell flat on my face.

So you might be wondering what would make me fall flat on my face? Last Sunday, Tim Cavey from the Teachers on Fire Podcast invited me to one of his Instagram Live session at 3 PM. I thought I was all ready-I was so excited and to be honest, I was kind of fangirling.

I was by my computer and ready to go, right? That was my first misstep. I didn't know that Instagram Live had to be done on a mobile device.

I then tried my iPhone, that should work? Unfortunately, for some strange reason, Instagram chose that afternoon not to work on my phone. By now, it's 3:10, maybe 3:15 and I am getting frustrated.

Here I am a tech coach and I can't join an Instagram Live! I was feeling pretty pathetic. In desperation, I ran into my 14 year old daughter's room.

I need your phone for 10-15 minutes. She looked at me like I was crazy, but still handed me her phone. I quickly downloaded Instagram, logged in and was finally able to join the Instagram Live.

Yes-I was finally on and got to participate in my first Instagram Live. It took a while but Tim Cavey never gave up on me. He continued to talk and interact with everyone who was on live, giving me lots of tips as I went along.

We discussed what I was currently learning about. Apparently, I need to learn more about Instagram, right? I shared how I was learning a lot about how to support my teachers in distance learning, including lots of struggles the past few weeks through the early bumps of synchronous learning. After, I shared that I was doing better now and my hopes to share some asynchronous tools with my colleagues this week. As we ended the conversation, Tim said this would probably be an upcoming blog post. Yup, he was right.

This morning, I shared Pear Deck with seven of my colleagues who gave up an hour of their time to learn. Some were able to get started right away using this "new tool," but not everyone. I am sure a few of my colleagues felt like they were falling flat on their face. I understood that feeling, after all, I had experienced an epic "fall" of my own yesterday. Even us tech coaches can struggle.

Like Tim had done the day before, I took a step back and worked with my colleagues to help them learn this "new" tool. I knew that they could do it and that with time and a little extra help, they could be successful.

Tara Martin in her book, Be REAL, shares that to build relationships, you need to expose your own vulnerability.

Exposing vulnerability is not about glorifying our failures; it's about sharing what came next. (p.83 Be REAL)

While working with my colleagues, I am honest about taking risks. I even shared this "very embarrassing" story today, but I also shared how I persevered and was able to be part of my first Instagram Live.

You may never know the power of exposing your vulnerability, particularly when you might use to help someone else build up the courage to cannonball into their dreams. (p.83 Be REAL)

Turning a "fail" around is never easy. But I believe it helps all of us not only grow, but develop empathy for others. I hope that today sharing this helped build up my colleagues. Who knows maybe someone who reads this blog post will build up the courage to try something new and turn their own "fail" around.