Jason Higa, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
When I was starting out as an academic advisor, I would get discouraged when students, who had proven to be capable of academic success, continually struggled semester after semester. What really struck me was that these students knew what they were doing wrong, knew exactly what they needed to do, and genuinely cared about being academically successful; yet, they continued to struggle. I later found that this issue may be specific to the Generation Z population (born between 1995 and 2015). According to Lukianoff and Haidt (2019), many college students from the Generation Z population are well prepared academically; however, they have been raised in a culture of overprotection, in which potential “dangers” or “triggers” were cleared away before they could face them, which results in difficulty dealing with the challenges of everyday life.
In my opinion, there is nothing that teaches you more about dealing with challenges than sports, and I believe that Coach John Wooden’s philosophy on success is the most appropriate for the Generation Z population. From 1948 to 1975, Coach Wooden led the men’s basketball team at UCLA, where he won 10 national championships within a 12-year span, including seven national championships in a row. From 1971 to 1974, he led the UCLA Bruins to 88 straight wins, which still stands as the longest winning streak in NCAA men’s basketball history (Wilco, 2018).
What stands out the most about Coach Wooden is that he did not measure success based on the number of national championships or the amount of games that his teams won; instead he believed that “true success is attained only through the satisfaction of knowing you did everything within the limits of your ability to become the very best that you are capable of being” (Wooden, 1997, p. 192). He also took pride in the fact that over 90 percent of his players earned their diplomas and graduated from college (Wooden, 1997).
Throughout his time on and off the court, Coach Wooden created his philosophy of success, which is a combination of motivation, organization, and psychology (Wooden, 1997), that would later develop into his famous Pyramid of Success. Although I believe that all 17 concepts within Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success are important, my advising approach focuses primarily on self-control, confidence, initiative, poise, and intentness.
Concept #1: Self Control
Wooden (1997) believed that losing control of one’s emotions results in breakdowns of self-discipline, judgement, and/or common sense, which makes it difficult to function physically and mentally. When athletes lose control over their emotions, we often see them making “silly” mistakes, committing penalties, or physically taking out their frustration, making it harder for them to perform at their peak level and sometimes resulting in them giving up.
Generation Z students are coming to colleges with higher levels of anxiety and depression, which are conditions that create negative emotions (Lukianoff and Haidt, 2019). Students who are unable to control their negative emotions are more susceptible to procrastination (Economy, 2019). Higher levels of procrastination are associated with individuals who are prone to engage in activities other than those intended when faced with intense emotional states, who have difficulty in taking into account potential long-term negative consequences, who lack the ability to remain focused on boring/difficult tasks, who lack the ability to regulate emotions, who lack confidence in their own worth or abilities, and who lack extrinsic motivation (Rebetez, Rochat, & Van der Linden, 2015). This means that even though individuals know the importance of a task and feel guilty when they do not complete the task, they still choose to prioritize short-term mood repair, instead of working on the intended task.
I used to assume that all students who procrastinated were lazy or did not care about their academics. I failed to realize that the reason many students procrastinate is because they are preoccupied with self-doubt, fear of failure, guilt, and anxiety. So instead of focusing on students’ productivity, I started to focus on adjusting their mindsets, which I will discuss later.
Concept #2: Confidence
Coach Wooden (1997) maintained that in order to be successful, you need to believe in yourself and in your abilities. It is no coincidence that some of the most successful athletes are often the most confident ones. Bandura (1997) discovered that people who perceive themselves as capable of using their skills effectively, had a higher rate of success and were more likely to persevere. To be more specific, students need self-efficacy, which is an individual’s belief that they can achieve the goals that they set (Bandura, 1989). Self-efficacy encourages persistence in seeking solutions, cognitive development, and intrinsic interest in academics (Bandura & Schunk, 1981). An individual’s perception of their personal efficacy is also one of the factors that determines what the individual chooses to do, how much effort they invest in the intended task, and how long they persevere when they experience obstacles or failures (Bandura, 1989). It also influences whether an individual displays self-hindering or self-enhancing thought patterns, and how much stress and discouragement they experience (Bandura, 1989).
The key for advisors is to boost their students’ confidence; however, simply having confidence that they will achieve their goal is not enough. The reason that great athletes have so much confidence is because they work hard on their preparation, which is why I stopped focusing on morale boosting speeches, and started focusing on motivating students to put more effort into their preparation. By doing this, and by reminding them that their hard work will eventually pay off, I found that many of my students gain the confidence they need to succeed.
Concept # 3: Initiative
Nobody is perfect, and everybody fails from time to time. The key is to not be afraid of failure because if you are afraid of failure, you may never realize your true capabilities. Some individuals will use avoidance as a strategy to escape these negative feelings (Sirois & Pychl, 2013) or as a self-protective strategy to mask their fragile self-esteem (Rebetez, Rochat, & Van der Linden, 2015). These individuals believe that by avoiding the task, their perceived inability is never tested (Rebetez, Rochat, & Van der Linden, 2015). In other words, they blame their failure on inactivity rather than inability.
In a 1997 commercial for Nike, Michael Jordan, who is arguably the best basketball player in NBA history, attributed his success to many failures in a commercial for Nike:
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Failure is scary, especially for students who do not face many challenges. It is important to help students to realize that through failure, they can learn and develop the skills they need to succeed in the future. They also should not be using their fear of failing as an excuse to not try or to quit. I believe that allowing students to quit prematurely is no different than clearing away “dangers” and “triggers,” which will create a never-ending cycle of overprotection, and will make students less resilient in the future.
Concept #4: Poise
Poise is about staying true to yourself and doing everything that you can do that is within your control and your level of competence (Wooden, 1997). Athletes, no matter how great they are, can only do so much. They cannot prevent their teammates from making mistakes or the referees from making bad calls. In those situations, they just need to remain poised, and focus on doing the best that they can do under the circ*mstances because if they try to overcompensate, they will probably make things worse.
When negative things happen to my students, I remind my students that the past cannot be changed, and the future is unpredictable. I remind them, “Worrying about things that are out of your control will only result in negative moods and impulsive behaviors. Focus on the things that you can control here and now, do the best that you can do, stay positive, and eventually good things will happen.”
Concept #5: Intentness
Intentness “is the ability to resist temptation and stay the course, to concentrate on your objective with determination and resolve” (Wooden, 1997, p. 185). Throughout their academic careers, students are going to be faced with negative emotions, failures, and distractions. Thus, it is important to remind students to refrain from impulsive behavior, concentrate on their objectives, and trust that their efforts will pay off.
There are often negative emotions that are attached to studying, and students may think that watching television for a little while will relieve those negative emotions; however, choosing to prioritize short-term mood repair (e.g. watching television) over an intended task (e.g. studying), may actually result in the student feeling worse (Sirois & Pychl, 2013). In fact, the negative effect of working on an intended task from the start, instead of short-term mood repairs, would likely have been less than the negative effect of procrastinating (Tice & Baumeister, 1997).
When working with students I like to create long-term plans to show them what it will take to reach their end goal. Then I break it down to smaller goals (yearly plan, monthly plan, weekly plan, daily plan, etc.) so that they can see how small things they do today, can deeply affect their end goal.
Conclusion
Students in the Generation Z population have been raised in an environment where they have been overprotected; therefore, we can expect that these students will have problems dealing with adversity. As academic advisors, we help these students by instilling the NACADA core value of empowerment (NACADA, 2017). If we keep looking for ways to clear paths and help students avoid challenges, they may never realize their full potential. We need to allow students to face adversity, and be there to support them as they deal with negative emotions, diminished confidence, and failure.
One last thing to consider is that we are not going to be able to help every student that comes through our offices. There are some students that are dealing with issues that are beyond anyone’s control. Another concept that Coach Wooden talks about is enthusiasm. If the student is not interested in getting their degree or doing well in their academics, it would be near impossible for us to convince them otherwise.
Jason Higa
Academic Advisor
College of Social Sciences – ACCESS
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
jthiga@hawaii.edu
REFERENCES
Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development. Vol. 6. Six theories of child development, 1-60. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman.
Bandura, A., Schunk, D., & Hogan, Robert. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(3), 586-598.
Dweck, C. (2016). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group.
Economy, P. (2019, June 15). Why laziness is not why you procrastinate (your emotions are). Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/why-laziness-is-not-why-you procrastinate-your-emotions-are.html
Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2019). The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Penguin Books.
NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. (2017). NACADA core values of academic advising. Retrieved from
https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Pillars/CoreValues.aspx
Rebetez, M., Rochat, L., & Van Der Linden, M. (2015). Cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors related to procrastination: A cluster analytic approach. Personality and Individual Differences, 76(C), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.044
Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the Priority of Short-Term Mood Regulation: Consequences for Future Self. Retrieved from http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/91793/1/Compass%20Paper%20revision%20FINAL.pdf
Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: The costs and benefits of dawdling. Psychological Science, 8(6), 454-458.
Wilco, D. (2018, October 8). The longest winning streaks in college basketball history. Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2018-10-06/longest-winning-streaks-collegebasketball-history
Wooden, J. & Jamison, S. (1997). Wooden: A lifetime of observations and reflections on and off the court. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
