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Henry van Asch, Co-Founder, AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand is a keynote speaker at our upcoming conference. He is presenting 'The Leap from Within: What standing on the edge teaches us about resilient learners.' In this article we learn more about an evidence-based youth resilience programme grounded in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Persistence, understanding, empathy, and leadership. Those are the ones that count when things are uncertain.
Persistence keeps people moving when there’s no clear path in front of them. I’ve run a business through plenty of that, a pandemic that shut tourism down overnight being the obvious one, and what carries you is the will to keep adjusting long after the original plan has gone.
Leadership holds the direction when the way ahead isn’t obvious, and it depends on the other two. You have to actually understand the people you’re leading. I lead by reading people, watching how my staff and team are really doing, with real empathy for what they’re carrying, because uncertainty hits them personally before it lands anywhere else. Get those four working together and an organisation comes through in far better shape than it otherwise would.
What is managed challenge?
Managed challenge means the stakes aren’t so high that a mistake becomes a catastrophe, so people can lean in with some confidence. Get an ordinary challenge a bit wrong and it can be hazardous, physically, intellectually or emotionally. The bungy is the obvious example. If we didn’t manage it properly, if we just handed some kids a couple of ropes and a length of bungy cord and told them to work out how to combine the two, they’d end up dead. In a workplace it’s subtler: give someone a big challenge without the resources to handle it and you’ve set them up to fail.
For young people it’s about enough space to be inquisitive and creative, to explore a challenge and work out their own way through, with some oversight but without being corralled. The boundaries can sit a long way out, so there’s room to zig-zag, but they’re there so no one reaches the point of getting hurt, or ending up in a state we don’t want, or carrying a big sense of failure. A little failing is good, and failing fast is good. Big failure isn’t. That’s where wisdom comes in, and you set people up to succeed. I ran headlong into most things in my life, and young people are the same, they want to do it all themselves. I’ve learned since then; when the pressure climbs now, I’ll get out on a bike or into the hills to clear my head before I make the call.
So managed challenge is really about putting the boundaries at the right distance, far enough out that a young person, or a manager, or a team member, feels good about their own decisions without being controlled by someone else.
What three elements from the real-world programme data work and why?
There’s a proper framework behind this, a Theory of Change and an evaluation approach built on the clinical work the late Nigel Latta developed for us, and it tracks how students move across the sessions. What it keeps showing us comes down to three things.
First, success is the supported decision, and that includes choosing not to jump. If a student decides not to jump for their own good reasons and the group backs them for it, the ones who did jump included, that’s a success. If someone pushes themselves right to the edge, decides not to go, and then leaves without support and feeling they failed, that’s a failure on our side. They did the hard, brave part. We let them down after. The job is to get them to the edge, let them try, let them decide not today, and always leave the door open for another day.
Second, the group supports each other. The students who jump getting in behind the ones who don’t, openly and warmly, is one of the clearest signs the programme is working.
Third, turning up is itself the win. Plenty of kids would just avoid the day altogether. When a young person comes through the course and then fronts up on jump day, knowing they’ll be backed whatever they choose, they’ve already done the hard part. Avoidance is a big thing in life, and learning to front up is a lesson that travels well beyond the platform.
The framework is ahead of the numbers, and we won’t claim outcomes we can’t yet stand behind. What I can tell you is what we see, in the classrooms and on the platform, and it’s those three things.
What causes fear for you?
Not realising my potential. That’s the honest answer, and it’s a more positive way to look at fear than most. It goes back to my mother, who told me I had potential and that my job was to find out what it was and use it to do some good, for other people as well as myself.
Potential is something you keep growing towards. The question I put to myself is whether I’m satisfied with where I’ve got to, or whether I regroup and push on towards what I’m capable of. As long as I keep choosing to push on, fear doesn’t have much of a hold. Live more, fear less. That’s about the size of it.
Register here for the ISNZ conference which is on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September at New Zealand International Convention Centre , Auckland.
