Insights

My 7-year-old granddaughter, 4-year-old grandson, and I often work on batting practice in the back yard. It consists of one of those oversized yellow bats and an oversized wiffle ball. My daughter grew up with my excitement about baseball and has prepared them for my enthusiasm and desire to work on these activities. My daughter can repeat many of my maxims, like, “there is nothing quite like hitting a ball so squarely that you do not feel it.”

Recently I was in the backyard, tossing some underhand pitches to my granddaughter. During several attempts, I could see she was not connecting. She seemed to be tentatively trying to touch the bat to the ball. Instead of swinging to hit the ball, she was gently moving the bat to the ball. She was not having success and she was making disappointed faces.

Reflexively I went into my teaching mode, I said, “C’mon, swing the bat.” “Keep your eye on the ball and just let it go!”

My daughter who was sitting off to the side, frowned as if to say, “Dad, give her a break.”

My granddaughter, however, quickly replied, “Oh, I know I am going to hit it now.”

I heard this moment of certainty and chose not to say anything. I tossed the next pitch. My granddaughter belted the ball off the side of the house. The next two pitches were rocketed similarly. She hit the balls on a line, one almost caught me in the head. She hit the balls so forcefully that it startled my daughter and me. It also seemed to surprise my granddaughter. She hit the ball so squarely, I am sure she did not feel it.

I asked my granddaughter, “How did you know you were going to hit the balls so well?”

She said, “I remembered one time you said, ‘keep your eye on the ball,’ and that when I did that, it worked.”

My granddaughter knew she was going to hit the ball. She believed that she had the ability to do it as she remembered doing it before.

I want to emphasize that she went from looking like someone that had not hit a ball before to a major league baseball swing. Boom! She did it three times consecutively. What occurred that day with my granddaughter was an example of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is the belief in your capacity to sustain a specific performance. In The Power of Doing What Matters, we review how self-efficacy is an underappreciated word and practice. When she heard the words, “keep your eye on the ball,” it triggered her memory of her experience when keeping her eye on the ball was successful. This belief led her to know she could do it again. This belief led her to know she had the capacity to hit the ball like before. This belief triggered a response in her body that led to extraordinary precision.

Your self-efficacy is at the heart of what and how you do most things. It is not merely saying “I can do that” or being positive about a situation. It is believing, congruently, that you have the ability to achieve or overcome. Especially when you are not achieving.

Self-efficacy can only be obtained through knowledge and experience. Had my granddaughter not had the experience of hitting the ball paired with hearing the phrase ‘keep your eye on the ball,’ it is improbable that she could have hit the ball so impressively.

Self-efficacy is not self-confidence. Without the previous experience, she could have said, “I am going to hit it this time.” It is very unlikely she would have said, “I know I am going to hit it this time.”

Self-efficacy is at the crossroads of knowledge and experience.