Courageous Leader BLUEprint™ – 17th edition
Welcome back leaders!
This is the seventeenth edition of our Courageous Leader BLUEprint™ newsletter.
Every three weeks, you’ll get quick, thoughtful leadership insights without the fluff.
Read time: less than 7 minutes
Our topic today is learning from failure.
We encourage you to slow down and study failure as an opportunity to learn and grow, without shaming yourself or others.
Failure is essentially a form of feedback. It can be painful, but it’s still valuable feedback.
Failure isn’t final unless we refuse to learn from it
To truly learn from failure takes incredible courage.
However, many leaders struggle to learn from failure.
Some reasons for this:
Our ego hates being wrong and we become defensive
It can be easier to blame than to stop and reflect
We fear what others think (even if we don’t want to admit it)
Past traumas around failure
Organizational cultures that punish mistakes
Shame
It takes courage to face our failures:
With honesty
Without excuses
Without beating ourselves up
Keep in mind that failure is NOT the opposite of success.
It is part of the growing process that leads to greater competence, maturity, and wisdom.
Failure can be an incredible teacher.
It reveals the systems, habits, assumptions, or preparation (or lack thereof) that didn’t work.
Sometimes failure points to personal growth, other times it points to faulty systems. Wise leaders look for both.
After trying and failing many times to invent the light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
He didn’t say “I’m bad” or “I’m incompetent.”
He recognized that something wasn’t working, which meant there was more to learn.
Failure is not the same as incompetence or worthlessness.
It takes courage to separate your identity from your performance.
You evaluate performance. You protect identity.
Practical questions for self-reflection and growth:
What actually happened?
Stick to the facts. Avoid excuses. Pay attention to stories you might be telling yourself that are false or self-sabotaging.
What part did I play?
Be honest. Now is not the time to blame yourself, you’re simply acknowledging your part in it. You’re not beating yourself up, merely approaching the situation honestly.
What can be learned?
Is there a gap in skills? Can you do better to communicate, plan, or delegate? Are you making inappropriate assumptions?
What can I change moving forward?
Instead of punishing ourselves, let’s figure out what actions we can take to improve.
I could give so many examples from personal experience here!
Early on in my business, I was convinced the marketplace needed a certain message.
It took a couple of years of trial and error to admit what I was doing was not working.
After much self-reflection, encouragement from friends and colleagues, and early validation from clients on my new message – I finally gave myself permission to pivot.
It would have been a waste of time and energy to wallow over the missed opportunities, and doing so would have meant even more missed opportunities.
For some, it can be very difficult to normalize the practice of learning from failure.
Here are some tips to help:
Talk openly about your lessons, particularly with those you trust
Debrief as a team with a focus on learning instead of blame
Ask “what did this teach us?” and avoid asking “who is at fault?”
Reward honesty over perfection
Approach mistakes as data, not defining moments
The concept of psychological safety shows how important it is for team members to feel safe speaking up when they make a mistake.
When we don’t have psychologically safe environments, people will hide their mistakes for fear of punishment.
This does not mean consequences for mistakes are completely avoided, it’s just a reminder to keep them in perspective.
This week’s courageous choice:
Reflect on a recent failure, whether big or small.
Walk through the four reflection questions and consider the list of tips.
Approach it with an attitude of learning – not excuses or shame.