Concept
Self-Reliance
Self-reliance is the goal The Courage to Be Happy sets for education and management: people who decide for themselves, take responsibility for the result, do not need someone else's approval in order to act, and have broken away from self-centredness.
Kishimi and Koga argue that praise and rebuke turn a class or a team into a community of competition, in which everyone watches the person handing out verdicts and peers become rivals. The book proposes a different goal: self-reliance. On this view a teacher's or manager's success is measured by how little they are needed at the end. The daily work is not grading but encouragement: trusting that the person can face their own task, helping when asked, leaving the decision with them, and treating mistakes as part of learning rather than as occasions for punishment. The book adds a further layer. Self-reliance is not standing alone but moving the subject of one's life from 'I' to 'we', and the authors argue that most of us learn this through love. The evidence is mixed: a 1999 meta-analysis by Edward Deci and colleagues found that expected tangible rewards tended to undermine interest, while informative positive feedback often supported it. The argument is therefore strongest against rankings and rewards that turn work into a contest.
A real-life example
Serap, a quality supervisor at an automotive parts supplier in Bursa, stopped announcing the technician with the fewest errors each week. Instead she gave each technician one inspection decision they would now make without asking her. Three months later the time lines spent waiting for her sign-off had almost disappeared.
How to use it
- 1Identify one routine decision you usually make for someone, and say clearly that it is theirs from now on.
- 2Before you correct or praise, ask: 'What do you intend to do?'
- 3Measure your own success by how rarely your team has to check with you.