There was a time in my life where I once told myself that the worst thing a person could be was a failure; that failure is the end of the road, game over, and if I don't fit my idea of success in a timeline I set for myself, I might as well throw in the towel now and save myself the heartache.
And if I had stayed in that unhelpful, toxic headspace for too long -- if I had taken those ideas to heart -- I wouldn't be here, writing for you about all the strategies I've learned in order to achieve fulfillment.
Our culture has a habit of telling young people that they have to be flawless, stellar, and diligent without any cracks showing, and that any perceived failure is meant to be seen as a sign of weakness. Yet, some of the most successful individuals and organizations in history view failure differently. For them, failure is not a setback but a stepping stone to success.
For them, failure is a sign that they are pushing their comfort zone, moving forward, and taking necessary risks.
In today's blog post, I want to share with you just how powerful failure can be when we move towards our goals, and how we can reframe making mistakes as opportunities to foster growth, resilience, and even better leadership.
Understanding the Importance of Embracing Failure
Failure is an inevitable part of life.
Whether in personal endeavors, professional goals, or creative projects, the road to success is rarely smooth, but oftentimes these setbacks can make it difficult to picture a positive future for ourselves. They challenge our expectations for what a successful future looks like, and may impact our motivation to continue, an option that many of us have probably considered at some point or another.
But if we know that failure is coming no matter what, do we simply accept that we are doomed to experience these internalized negative opinions on a regular basis?
I don't think so. If failure cannot be avoided, run from, or delayed, then the answer is simple: the only way forward is through.
Embracing failure doesn’t mean seeking it out or playing a blame game, but rather, embracing failure is essential to success, and it’s a forward-thinking mindset that is crucial for personal and professional growth. Failure is a natural part of the learning process, and it’s essential to accept it as a teacher, not an undertaker.
The Benefits of Owning Your Failures
Acknowledging failure is a powerful act of courage and authenticity.
By thinking that failure is unacceptable, we may miss the chance to learn and grow from our mistakes, and even worse, set ourselves and our team members up for future failure down the road out of fear of being blamed. Instead of deflecting blame or avoiding the topic, owning your failures allows you to take control of your narrative.
Owning your failures can lead to increased psychological safety, allowing team members to feel more comfortable sharing their ideas and taking risks. It shows that you are able to adapt, reflect, and continue to move forward with special focus on correcting what had caused the error to begin with.
Of course, I recognize that separating out the very natural psychological ties between failure and blame is easier said than done. An insightful article from the Harvard Business Review by Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson found that while many companies agree that failure isn't always bad, employees seem to be more concerned with being blamed, meaning that perhaps the vast majority of failures necessary for growth go unreported.
Do we blame the employees, then, for not owning up to their failures? Or perhaps we should blame the company for not providing correct oversight? Or maybe we blame our culture of perfection, and read yet even more articles on the evils of overworked teams?
None of this is productive and frankly, misses the point.
We cannot be satisfied with just playing a blame game, but instead we must be willing to envision and work towards a future where everyone understands how and why growth and learning are born from failures.
Creating a Culture of Growth and Learning
Amy C. Edmondson goes on to discuss the importance of understanding failure in promoting a culture of honest feedback and embracing mistakes as successes. This is to say that reframing failure should go beyond an individual effort -- it's a cultural shift. Organizations, teams, and communities that embrace failure as part of the process create a culture of failure where growth and innovation thrive.
A culture of failure values employee growth as a victory in its own right, accepting that mistakes are intrinsic to eventual success.
You can take steps to foster a growth culture in your own life by:
- Encouraging innovative experimentation: Take steps to acknowledge and reward effort and creativity, even if the outcomes aren’t perfect.
- Normalizing failure stories and how they led to success: Employees often feel that they cannot share their failures out of fear of being blamed. To tackle this, share your own lessons learned from mistakes to remove the stigma from failure, especially if they led you to unexpected wins.
- Providing constructive, rather than destructive feedback: Focus on actionable insights rather than criticism or blame.
- Celebrating small wins: Recognize progress, even in the face of setbacks -- trust me, there will be many.
A culture of failure is unafraid to ask questions and turns errors into teaching moments. By creating a culture of growth and learning, you can foster a positive and supportive work environment that encourages innovation and progress.
Overcoming the Fear of Failure
Overcoming the fear of failure can look different for everyone, but I think it's important to highlight how overcoming fear is not avoiding fear itself or making excuses.
In medical students, for example, it is far more common for individuals with a severe fear of failure to "overcome" it by developing maladaptive coping mechanisms such as self-sabotaging in order to avoid feelings of failure ("If I only study the night before the exam, my poor grade won't be because I am unintelligent," or, "I couldn't have possibly done better on this assignment, my roommate was up late all night making noise.")
We don't overcome by making excuses or trying to run from failures. We accept failure as something that could happen, and go from there.
Fear of failure can be reduced by:
- Letting go of unhealthy demands concerning success or failure: Look at things in a more constructive and objective way. Many of us lose sleep over punishing ourselves for not living a life that looks exactly our idea of success, and ruminate over all the past failures that led us there. Acknowledge that every day you move forward -- especially by making mistakes -- is a present success.
- Be honest with yourself: Emotions demand to be felt, and it's not advised to bottle them up and pretend that failure doesn't bother you (it certainly bothers me!). We are only human. Feel that feeling from a place of non-judgment, and then break down the things that happened in order to learn and plan for the future.
- Redecorate your mindset: When you think of any past mistakes, what did you learn? Did any of those past mistakes lead to valuable insights that served you well later on? Did you find that your life went in a new, positive direction as a result of a past setback? We tend to think that success breeds good and failures foster the bad, but things are not so black-and-white. It may not be automatic to seek out the valuable lessons learned from mistakes, but with more practice, you can quickly find the positives and opportunities in future failures, and recognize how past mistakes potentially led you to new horizons.
Remember that failure is not a dead end, but rather a stepping stone to success.
Conclusion
Reframing failure as a stepping stone to success is a transformative mindset shift, allowing us to navigate setbacks with resilience, learning and optimism.
By understanding the value of failure, owning your mistakes, fostering a culture of growth, and overcoming fears with authenticity, you can turn setbacks into opportunities for progress. Both the individual’s role and the culture's place in the process of accepting failure is crucial, and it’s essential to ask ourselves hard questions that challenge our perfectionist mindsets, honestly.
Remember, every failure brings with it a lesson—and every lesson brings you one step closer to success.
