Last fall, in one of my master’s classes, the instructor started with a game of sorts. He paired us up with another student, came over to one person in each pair, and whispered a song. The song remained unknown to the other person (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, etc.).  He then instructed the partner who knew the song to tap it out on the table for the other person.  My partner and I were lucky, we both had young children and were able to guess the nursery rhyme with relative ease. However, watching the rest of the room revealed something very interesting; the partner who was tapping grew increasingly frustrated that they could not communicate this simple nursery rhyme to their partner. After 90 seconds or so, the instructor had us stop, and most of the room had been unsuccessful in communicating their song. The purpose of this exercise was to reveal what is referred to as “The Curse of Knowledge.” In 1990 Stanford University conducted a study led by a graduate student in psychology named Elizabeth Newton. She had 120 songs tapped out by different sets of partners. Only three listeners guessed correctly, which astounded observers who had predicted a 50 percent success ratio.  How could this happen?  How could the prediction for success be so far off?

As Army leaders we see ourselves as mentors to those we lead. A part of this mentorship is the ability to coach and teach. One of the key parts to learning and developing is failure and understanding why a failure has occurred. In Timothy Ferris’s book, Tribe of Mentors, he sent 11 questions focused on professional development to over 200 highly successful individuals within their respective fields and asked them to answer three to five questions. The one question that over 68 percent of these highly successful people answered was “How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?” Why would so many successful people, in a wide array of professional fields decide to willingly discuss their favorite failure? The answer is simple, we learn a lot from failure. We learn much more from failure than we do any success we may have. Anyone reading this who has been a part of an after action review (AAR) can immediately recall the AAR they learned the most from. It is doubtful that you ended up with your organization standing firmly on the objective with the enemy destroyed.

If the “favorite failure” question was asked to over 200 leaders across the Army, how many would answer that question instead of the other ten? Inherently, we do not see failure as an option in the Army and subsequently we miss out on the ability to learn from it. There are situations that failure is not possible (i.e. combat), but failure is a powerful learning tool and one we as leaders must begin to embrace in order to prepare the next generation for an uncertain future battlefield. We almost always are in a job/position where we have subordinates, and subsequently we are responsible for mentoring them. As we gain experience and knowledge (via schools, training, reading, etc.) we often have a more difficult time allowing those subordinates to make their own mistakes. This is where the “Curse of Knowledge” begins to inhibit our ability to allow our subordinates to fail. When you suffer from the “Curse of Knowledge” you assume that the other person knows the same things we do or we forget what it is like to not understand a concept. This makes it significantly harder for you to identify with the other person’s failure to understand a concept, possibly making you an ineffective mentor. Due to our experience and institutional knowledge we know a way to get something done. Our subordinates, in many cases do not, and this frustrates us. So how do we react? We jump in and provide “our way” of accomplishing the mission, significantly degrading the value of the learning experience for our subordinate.

How do we overcome the “Curse of Knowledge”?

• Be empathetic with your subordinates. Understand they may not know or understand something you consider “basic knowledge.” No one has been commissioned or enlisted knowing how to do this job, we were taught and learned just as our subordinates must.
• Identify the root cause of the failure. It may be as simple as your subordinate did not know how to do something you assumed they did. If we understand “why” the failure occurred we can effectively train to correct the shortcoming in capability.
• Accept that there is more than one way to accomplish a goal. One must allow a subordinate to figure out a task or mission and allow them time to think critically, develop their own understanding, and generate a plan. Budget time in your own planning process for subordinates mistakes.
• Use self-awareness to keep perspective. Understanding how you observe, coach and teach will enable you to evaluate how effectively you communicate as a mentor.
• Remain patient. It is easy to become frustrated when failure occurs. Use the opportunity to teach and allow subordinates to learn from their mistakes. As mentors it is our role to help make them better.

CPT Billy Folinusz is currently an Assistant Professor of Military Science at Temple University.  He was commissioned as an Armor officer from James Madison University in 2009. He has served in roles ranging from platoon leader to company commander at Fort Hood and Fort Stewart.  He is married to his wife, Theresa and has a son, Theodore.