This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.One day during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carl Hendrick decided to run a 5K. A former musician, Hendrick had spent most of his career in education, earning a Ph.D., working at schools in England and turning to research. But facing middle age, and in the midst of lockdown, he decided to be more active.For motivation, he bought a fresh pair of running shoes, a nice set of earphones and a supply of caffeine drinks. Then, he started running and everything went terribly wrong.“I just didn’t understand what I was doing,” he said.To compensate, he downloaded one of those simple couch-to-5K training apps. In the first week, it told him to run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds and repeat the cycle for 30 minutes. The second week, it told him to increase his runs to 60 seconds. And so on.Every week, he was running a little longer. And every week, he felt “these small hits of achievement.” He wanted to keep going. He wanted to run even more.Hendrick is telling me this story not because he wants to sell me on the benefits of a running app, but because he has a much bigger idea to share: A lot of people get motivation wrong.Hendrick says this happens in all facets of life, from professional sports to Fortune 500 companies to all levels of education. People imagine that motivation leads to success, that a teacher or coach can motivate through reward, threat or inspiration — that we might see a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow — and the student will feel propelled to go after it.Hendrick, however, believes we have the causal relationship backward.“It’s not that you need to be motivated in order to get the achievement,” he said. “It’s actually this reverse kind of way around.”In other words, Hendrick believes that it’s success that leads to motivation.Hendrick has no serious background in sports. He’s never coached above the English equivalent of a private high school. He is, however, among a handful of education researchers and thinkers who might reframe how you think about coaching, teaching or even leading.It turns out, some coaches are listening.In 1997, Nike released a Michael Jordan advertising campaign built on failure. You’ve probably seen the commercials: In a dramatic narration, Jordan is talking about all the shots he’s missed, all the games he’s lost, the 26 times he hoisted a game-winning shot … and it didn’t go in.“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life,” Jordan said. “And that is why I succeed.”Hendrick calls this the Michael Jordan model of motivation, the idea that you can inspire someone to greatness. He thinks it’s largely rubbish.In his view, it’s a perfect encapsulation of “growth mindset,” a concept that has come to dominate all manner of disciplines over the last three decades.Introduced by Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, the core idea of “growth mindset” is that intelligence, knowledge or talent can be developed through dedication and effort. Talent was not fixed.