What is failure? Failure is success turned upside down. Failure is the primary ingredient of growth. Failure is what creates the polished version of you. Well if failure doesn’t sound so bad, then why do we fear it? Perhaps we don’t fear the failure itself but we fear the uncomfortable growth pain it puts us through or maybe we fear how others will view it. Will others view it as a sign of incompetence? Will it drain our trust battery with others? Will we be negatively tagged by our failure? All great and valid fears if you ask me. I myself battled for the longest time with perfectionism and fear of failure.
In the words of Winston Churchill, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” Basically, my ability to turn failure into opportunity is a testament to my courage and resilience. Being the perfectionist myself, I need failure to perfect my courage and resilience. As a leader, embracing failure can make you more relatable and empathetic to the challenges your team faces. When your team sees you handle failure with grace and determination, it sets a positive example for them to follow. A great leader is a dynamic leader who doesn’t stick to the same failing strategies. They pivot and try new approaches. Some will work and some will fail but it’s how we flip failure into success is what counts.
Failure often forces us to re-evaluate our approach and think outside the box. When something doesn’t work, it’s an opportunity to innovate and adapt. Enabling a growth mindset within the team is what makes a great leader. Allowing your team to fall with grace and get back up is what charges the trust battery between you and your team. Being transparent and allowing your team to see your falls and how you bounce from them with determination is what fosters resiliency within the team. Saying “I learned that there is a better way..” automatically creates the psychological safety needed to enable a culture of adaptation and innovation.
Let’s say a software engineer decides to go with a specific architectural design thinking (with valid reasons) that it’s the best way to tackle the problem at hand. They then go about convincing the team with their design and implementing it, only to realize that it’s not performing as expected. Instead of seeing this as a learning opportunity for the engineer and the team, they continue to fight for their design and deny the performance implications caused by it. They think that if they start changing their design then they would be admitting failure and losing the trust of their leader and the team. However, by doing so, everyone loses. The software is now performing worse than before, the team will have to maintain and build on such faulty design, and the leader will start losing trust in the team’s abilities.
Instead of going down that route, the engineer could have simply viewed this failed design as a learning opportunity and a stepping stone towards a better and more performant design. Their humility to share their growth journey would serve everyone better. Their ability to bounce back up and flip failure into success is what will be remembered and appreciated. Instead of viewing failure as a dead-end, they should see it as an opportunity to course-correct and refine their approach. As a leader, it is your responsibility to lead by example and create the safe space needed for your team to grow and do right by their failures.
Recognizing failure is one skill but knowing how to make it right is another important skill that any great leader should instill. Training your team on how to articulate learning opportunities from failures is a crucial part of the growth process. This encourages continuous improvement and resilience in the face of setbacks. Here are some essential steps to help your team embrace failure and add the right STROKE to create a better looking picture:
- Shift your perspective. View the failure as an opportunity to learn and improve.
- Trace your steps. Figure out how you got to the current state.
- Retrospect. Why did these steps lead to failure? Share the outcome with others.
- Outline a new plan. Articulate what needs to change to aim for success.
- Keep learning and improving. Learning from our mistakes and gathering feedback from others is how we allow ourselves to get better and stronger.
- Execute and Evaluate your new plan! Remember, success is not final. An improved state is a already a successful state.
When leaders embrace failure as a learning experience and encourage their teams to do the same, they create a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability. By shifting the perspective on failure from something to be feared to something to be embraced, leaders can turn setbacks into stepping stones on the path to success. This is what I call “failure done right”!