Learn to Accept Failure
by Karl Plesz
The most memorable quote about failure that I know is “Failure is not an option.” Worst. Phrase. Ever. As adults we learn to fear failure, partly because of how work life evolves into a competitive struggle against our peers, and partly because we traditionally cheer success and frown upon anything else. We learn that failure may be interpreted as weakness or incompetence. This attitude even prevents us from asking for help, making matters worse.
Failure is a required element of learning, and obsessing about failure in a bad way suppresses the will to contribute ideas and keep striving for success. The status quo becomes the norm. We fail all the time and have done so since birth. That’s in part how we learn. But we also learn that if we fail a test, we don’t measure up. We eventually progress once we pass successive attempts, but the stigma is already in place. This thinking can also be taught to us by our parents, our coaches, or anyone in a leadership role with influence.
If we’re lucky, failure, while acknowledged, isn’t an obsession for those mentoring us as we grow. Instead, they show us or ask us to reflect on what each failure has taught us, to find a better way. This is the single most important lesson an improviser learns up front, and one that they never stop being reminded of. Fail with joy and move on. There is no guarantee of success, only attempts at greatness, with each attempt leveraging the lessons learned.
Some feel that celebrating failure is a dangerous habit to get into because you can’t have success if you’re downplaying failures. I counter that when we review failures, we’re not dwelling on the outcome as much as the creative process. In business, we’re only adopting this strategy during the creative phase of a project. We are trying to develop an environment where everyone feels safe to offer ideas that are risky but worth exploring. This is a valuable strategy to adopt in adult life and work, especially as a leader or parent. For example, in a meeting, someone might put forward an idea that doesn’t pan out. The competitive nature of some work cultures might use that situation as an opportunity to focus only on the failure itself. This creates an unwanted atmosphere where the contributor no longer wants to serve up any more ideas for fear of reprisal, shame, harassment, etc.
Forward-thinking companies do it differently. They not only encourage talking about what was learned from failure, but some even make it into a competition, encouraging all workers to contribute their biggest failures and what those failures offered as lessons learned. This cultivates trust, empathy, and promotes collaboration. This leads to innovation and is what’s needed to stand out in the business world. This tactic also works better during personnel assessments. Workers who understand failures as steppingstones to success do a much better job with self-assessment and the interview is spent building strategies to leverage those lessons.
Good leaders will share those lessons with the team, not to make the worker look bad, but to thank the worker for the free lesson. In fact, good leaders will set the stage for admitting failure by doing it themselves to show that anyone can make mistakes and that the key is to learn from those mistakes. History shows that time and again, successes are often preceded by endless strings of failures. We need to remind ourselves that we’re not perfect and give ourselves permission to fail.
Click here to the Montgomery Community News home page for the latest Montgomery community updates.
