One, two, turn

My 9 year old has started playing on his school chess team, affectionately known as the Chess Ninjas.  I know nothing about chess.  Well, I know how the pieces move.  The knight - one, two, turn.  I now know there is a thing called "castling".  And a thing called "en passant".  Although I just had to google that one to be sure.

I went to my first chess tournament this week.  For those of you who have never been, let me assure you that an elementary school chess tournament is not an exciting way to spend the day.  Even if you love chess, you can't watch the matches - the kids are alone for those.  So you spend most of your day sitting in a classroom at a school.  Waiting.  Not eating, because if you get caught eating in the classroom, your team can get kicked out of the tournament. It's kind of like not watching the world's slowest cricket match.

My kid goes to a school full of families who are fairly normal (in a good way) and truly diverse.  I had a nice time chatting with the chess parents, and we had one very interesting conversation about the history of Columbus day and the way Columbus is perceived in countries throughout the western world. I had one nice walk through Harlem to Starbucks.  I got a little bit of work done, but not as much as I should have.

Through it all, I quietly observed the coach of the Chess Ninjas.  And I took home a number of interesting lessons.

Before I share them, let me brag a little.  This is no ordinary coach, and no ordinary chess team.  This is a team that took home a national championship last year.  This is a feeder team for the famous Brooklyn middle school team that won the high school championships last year, that star in this movie.  So, this is a coach who knows what he is doing.  And here's what he does:

Every player, win or lose, goes over his/her game with the coach after it's over.  And the feedback is on the play, not the win or loss.  Don't get me wrong, the coach likes to win.  But the kids sit down and go through their games move by move. When they won 'cause they got lucky, he tells them. When they play great but lose, he tells them that.

Think about it - we've gotten pretty good in the nonprofit world about learning from our mistakes, "failing fast", and pivoting.  But we still always take credit for our successes.  What if we are succeeding despite ourselves?  A popular rabbi who has significantly grown a congregation once said to me, "yes, we were growing.  We are in a community where people keep having kids and they want those kids to have a bar or bat mitzvah.  That doesn't mean that we are successful.  That's demographics, not outreach".  How many of the rest of us analyze our wins as critically as our losses? 

And the losses? After one loss, the coach told my son that the difference between the higher ranked players and the lower ranked ones is the number of possibilities they see at any given time.  It's an important lesson for my kid who is so literal that he sometimes calls himself "Mr. Literal." And an important lesson for all of us.  Think about it - winning it isn't knowing the right thing to do. Losing isn't doing the wrong thing.  It's not fully understanding all of the options. Winning is making decisions based on fully understanding all of the options for all of the players in the game.

I'm not going start playing chess.  Just isn't my game.  (Games aren't really my game, actually).  And I'm not going to volunteer to sit in that room for every tournament.  But while I'm there, I'll listen to the coach. Because maybe there is a life lesson in the castle after all.