Resilient Accountability

As a youth mentor, I encourage the teen boys I work with to “Celebrate their mistakes”. We all do some of our best learning from the mistakes we have made over the course of our lifetime. At best mistakes lead to new insights, learning and ultimately increased responsibility. Mistakes can also lead to shame, defensiveness, and resentment. Mistakes are transformative, what’s important, is how we learn to respond to them. There are two important reasons I teach young men to have the resilience to learn from their mistakes. First, because it is important for their personal success in overcoming life’s obstacles. Second, it is important for making the world a more just and equitable place.

In a rapidly changing world, boys are no longer able to get away with some of the things that they used to. “Boys will be boys” isn’t an acceptable catchall phrase that will excuse offensive behavior anymore. There is less leniency when young men cross a boundary and make someone else feel uncomfortable with a racially insensitive comment, or an unwanted touch or verbal advance. Boys and men are being held accountable in ways they never were before. In our evolving political and social landscape, boys need to be given the tools to stay open to hard conversations and be accountable when they have done something that made someone else feel uncomfortable. This is especially true when their actions perpetuate old dynamics of power or oppression, even if they didn’t mean for them to.

Getting past being defensive

Working with young men over the years, I have seen the ways that they feel like they are being unfairly blamed, accused, or held responsible for things they didn’t even know were wrong. Rather than having the courage to look inside themselves and see that maybe some of the ways boys have been taught to behave aren’t really serving them or the people around them, they instead turn bitter, reactionary, and avoid responsibility. When I observe this, I know that they were never given the skillset to be comfortable with uncertainty. The ability to be discerning, stay open, and consider their own responsibility, starts with boys being taught early on that admitting to making a mistake is not a sign of weakness, it’s an opportunity to grow. It’s liberating to not have to be right all the time.

Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

Many adult men, including myself, still haven’t mastered this skill. We would rather blame others, get angry, or emotionally shut down than admit we have messed up. With guidance, we can help our next generation avoid this trap. We can help them grow into men who have the integrity to consider why they did what they did and analyze its impact on themselves and others. If young men grow the capacity to learn from mistakes, they can better hear and empathize with those around them without growing defensive. This is resilient accountability. It is a different form of strength and resilience than is usually expected of boys and men. Instead of suppressing difficult and complex feelings, they can have the integrity and fortitude to look at them head-on and be willing to look at the responsibility they can take in a situation.

Learning the limits

Any place young men are spending time together: on the field or court, online playing games, or in classroom zoom meetings or text conversations, they are in the process of calibrating their values and becoming good men through trial and error. In order to do that calibration, they often push up against social boundaries to learn when they’ve gone too far and what is unacceptable to those around them. They will make mistakes, and then they need to learn from them. They can do this by being open to the feedback they get from their peers and guiding adults.

In the classrooms and youth groups I teach, I often see boys testing and pushing up against the boundaries of social acceptability. Young men want to rebel. Unfortunately, that sometimes means experimenting with being a jerk or treating people they care about like trash. As they do this, Sometimes they use words that have painful histories behind them. Young people often internalize and parrot what surrounds them in the adult world. It can make them feel powerful or grown-up. The adult world still has a long way to go before it is free from marginalizing and belittling certain groups of people. When young people mimic some of the hurtful language or actions of the adult world by making homophobic, racially or sexually inappropriate comments, they need to know that it is unacceptable. At the same time, we can help them see it as an opportunity for learning, not punishment. They are acting as a reflection of our society. Their actions were unacceptable, but they themselves are not unacceptable.

We need to be able to show boys the seriousness of what they are perpetuating. However, without building their resilience for accepting and learning from mistakes, our reprimand can backfire, turning them towards anger, avoidance and shame. Punishment and shame can shut young men down and breed resentment, stunting the capacity for the critical conversations and curiosity that are so important to truly get at the root of creating a more just and equitable society.

Doing something wrong doesn’t mean being all wrong

We have a wrong/right binary embedded in many facets of our society. It is endemic in our tests, grades, discipline policies, and sports: Pass/fail, win/lose. If a young man regards their mistakes as a loss or a failure, it can be easy to get locked into an identity as someone who is bad, or incapable of change. Without having the strength and resilience to learn from a mistake, a young man who gets called out on racism, sexism or homophobia can get the idea that they themselves are not accepted, that they are the victim. As a self-protective mechanism, their impulse is to retreat into a safe place, one that is less vulnerable. They develop a hatred and dislike of the topics and people that made them feel uncomfortable. They may begin to isolate into homogeneous social groups online, barring the door and keeping themselves safe from further encounters with the uncomfortable. This can lead down some very concerning rabbit holes. They may even grow to find a thrill using taboo, racist, homophobic or sexist jokes amongst others like themselves to feel unique and powerful.

If young men are afraid of making mistakes they will learn to avoid interacting with people different from themselves. They may stay clear of uncomfortable dynamics where there is a higher likelihood of making a mistake. In doing so, they also lose the capacity to make meaningful connections with people different from themselves. They lose a chance to learn from their peers. They shut down and self segregate. Isms thrive and multiply in homogeneity.

We can instead help boys have the bravery to thrive in diverse groups and communities by recognizing that socializing across race, class, gender, and sexual orientation will never be a clean and tidy process. It will be messy. They will make mistakes. What’s important is that they have a resilient foundation so they can take responsibility when needed, learn from their mess-ups, and make things right.

Learning to make it right

When mistakes happen, youth and adults alike should always be attentive to the safety and well being of those who are most targeted or marginalized. Adults may need to step in and stop offensive actions or words with clear and concise messaging: hate speech, and bullying will not be tolerated. Then the important follow-up work begins. Young people that say or do offensive things can be guided to see the full and nuanced impact of their actions. This likely means bringing them together with those that they have hurt to hear the impact of their actions. As parents and educators, our work is to help young men put their actions in context. This may mean exploring the historical significance of the words they used, it may mean asking the young person to dig deeper into what hurt they are feeling that made them want to hurt others.

In this way when a young man does mess up, when they say something offensive and are called out on it, they can lean in, not run away. They can learn about the impact of their actions instead of shutting down and growing reactionary. They can begin to embrace the feeling that growing up is alive and uncomfortable work. They can see that being asked to be responsible for their actions is an opportunity to demonstrate their strength and resilience. They can show they have the perseverance to stay engaged with hard conversations. They will support each other to show up and stay with it, even if it is uncomfortable. We can be honest with young men that all of us are capable of messing up, being hurt, and hurting others. The things we say and do impact others. What is required to make the world a more equitable and just place is not to never make mistakes, but to be able to stay resilient, learn and take responsibility when we have.

***