On Failing Well
“There is something very freeing about being willing to try something that doesn’t work.” - Malcolm Gladwell
On a warm spring evening last month, with the scent of popcorn in the air, every single one of the kids on my son’s Little League team got a personalized trophy. And last week, every child in his first grade class got not one, but two awards (I have to admit that I was particularly proud he got the “Bookworm” award).
But regardless of your opinions on today’s parenting culture, our focus on success at all costs has bled over into work and life, and has come with a hefty price tag.
It is a rare and beautiful spark of honesty when I talk to a candidate or a business leader who is willing to admit they have failed at something. Usually we clothe our failures in the guise of something much more palatable, but have we not then lost an essential part of being human—the capacity to fail?
“Most failures can teach us something meaningful about ourselves if we choose to listen,” comments author Elizabeth Day. There will certainly be times when we fail in our careers, friendships, and even our marriages. And certainly some failures are more devastating than others. But what if, instead of pushing the failure under the rug, we took a hard look at why the failure happened, and what we can learn from it?
“The fastest way to succeed,” IBM’s Thomas Watson, Sr., remarked, “is to double your failure rate.”
Even in 2002, Harvard Business Review shared research about companies becoming more tolerant of failure. And yet, the concept of failing on the personal level remained entirely horrific. “Everyone hates to fail. We assume, rationally or not, that we’ll suffer embarrassment and a loss of esteem and stature. And nowhere is the fear of failure more intense and debilitating than in the competitive world of business, where a mistake can mean losing a bonus, a promotion, or even a job.” (And while there are failures and there are failures, for the sake of this article, we’ll assume we’re discussing the non-lethal kind.)
So how do we normalize failure—for our teams and for ourselves—in a culture that is obsessed with success?
1. Ask Questions.
The best approach to failures takes a step back and assumes a posture of questioning, like you would treat a friend. “Failure-tolerant leaders . . . “ states HBR, “know that as long as someone views failure as the opposite of success rather than its complement, that person will never be able to take the risks necessary for innovation”—or entrepreneurship, I would add! These leaders “identify excusable mistakes and approach them as outcomes to be examined, understood, and built upon. They often ask simple but illuminating questions when a project falls short of its goals.”
Some of the questions I ask my team include:
“What would you do differently if you were starting this project over?”
“Do you feel most of the challenges were external or internal?”
“Are there different questions you would ask the client next time to avoid some of these challenges?”
Many times, we’ll walk away from that exercise with some nuggets of wisdom. Often there are at least partial causes to the failure that were out of our control, which helps alleviate some of the embarrassment of failure.
2. Set the Example.
When friends or team members see you fail—and acknowledge that failure with transparency and honesty, they are best positioned to be able to learn from their mistakes.
Acknowledging the duality of both success and failure as part of the complete human experience will temper our ego when success comes, and alleviate our humiliation when failure happens. Because both are inevitable.
“No signal is so powerful as a leader who is open about their own mistakes,” wrote author Daniel Coyle.
After all, I want that Little Leaguer in my house to know he won’t always get trophies, and he will most definitely fail. And that will shape him—and me—just as much as any trophy.