Failure is a Misconception

I want to take umbrage with the word failure. We have been using the word failure in terms of the workplace for a while now, hearing how leaders need to let their employees fail. And yes, I agree - it is totally OK to fail. However, most of the time what we’re calling failure, in my opinion, is not failure at all. 

Now, I have failed plenty of times in my life and I have grown from those experiences. But most of the times I’ve stumbled or not generated the results I’d hope for haven’t been failures. I would characterize them as experiments; experiments that didn’t quite go the way I expected or had a different outcome than I planned. Frequently my “failed” experiments have led me to something completely different and far better. Meeting my fabulous husband was the result of multiple failed relationships.

When we talk about allowing our teams to fail what we’re really talking about is allowing our team members to experiment, to learn, to grow, to try new things, to own their work, to have agency in their decisions and how they approach their work. When we allow our teams the opportunity to experiment or take ownership of their projects we may wind up with results that are different than we expected, or different than what we believe we would have created if we’d been more involved. However, it’s that opportunity for others to try a new approach or to learn as they go that leads to innovation – doing things the same way you would do them over and over limits the scope of possibility. Empowering someone else to lead the way or to run with a different perspective creates the potential for results that you might consider failures but it also creates the opening for results that far exceed your expectations. 

When scientists experiment, they start with a hypothesis - what they think might result from the experiment. If the experiment fails to prove their hypothesis, they don’t call it a failure, rather, they’re curious about why their hypothesis didn’t play out. They don’t throw out the entire experiment. Instead, they learn from it and tweak it to see if the hypothesis holds up under different circumstances or with a different set of variables. They may throw out the experiment all together at some point and start with a new hypothesis but it’s rare that scientists get the desired results on the first try. And they don’t expect to.

So why do the rest of us consider our efforts failures when they don’t go the way we’d hoped or expected – particularly after the first attempt? Flipping failure on its head, we can reframe how we view failure or the potential for failure. Rather than focusing on whether we’re going to allow our team to fail, we can focus on allowing our team to experiment and learn from the outcome of those experiments. Curiosity, growth and empowerment are tools for advancement and innovation. They’re also the root of employee engagement.

Let’s throw out the word failure in the workplace. And lead with curiosity, allowing our teams to experiment with the goal of building stronger teams, creating better understanding of what works and what doesn’t and forging new paths to achieve results and grow our impact.