We encourage failure, but we're terrible at coaching people on recovering from that failure.
I was playing catch with my son this weekend. We were practicing pop-ups and I was giving him some pointers on how to position the glove. He wasn't taking those lessons to heart and I warned him "you're going to get bopped in the head!" Sure enough, the very next pop-up he took it on the forehead.
We're in an era of 'failing fast.' You can't scroll through Twitter, Linked In or go to a business meetup without hearing about it. But leadership is failing on failure. They preach 'failing fast' but practice something vastly different. Let's use my son's own failing moment as a lesson on how to embrace failure.
Timing Is Everything
The moment after my son got bonked wasn't the moment to rush over and say "I told you so" or "why didn't you do it the way I showed you?" It was the time to say "are you OK?" It was the time for me to say "it's OK, you're OK!" The moment after a failure isn't the time to 'coach' or correct. People need time to recover. If we are truly going to create a culture that is OK with failing, we have to allow people to lick their wounds first before offering our words of wisdom. And we have to be there to tell them they are OK.
Admit Your Own
Once my kiddo had calmed down a bit, I got down on his level and said "son, I've been there!" And I told him about my own bumps and bruises. I've had many failures in my career too and I've been fortunate to have a lot of great bosses who have told me about their own experiences with failure and what they learned. But, I've also had bosses who approached the 'coaching moment' as an opportunity to outline every single thing I did wrong while highlighting all of the times they did it right. Do you think I was in any rush to try new things after those 'coaching moments?' Not a chance! If I had told my son "I've never done anything like that before, I've always done it right" that's not coaching, that's bullying.
Great leaders admit their failures and lessons learned. No one has accomplished great things without having spectacular failures. Use those as teaching moments. Humanize yourself and showcase that failure isn't fatal.
Baby Steps
After my son pulled himself back together and we talked about what went wrong, I asked if he wanted to practice a bit more. He hesitantly said 'yes.' I could have given him another big pop fly. But what would that have proven? I gave him a super easy ball to catch. And then another. I slowly built his confidence. And then? We walked away. He had some easy wins, but they were still wins in his mind.
Failure hurts. But nothing great has been accomplished without taking risks. Too many leaders claim to embrace 'failure' when really it's just a buzzword to them. If you want to create a culture that takes risks and allows for failure, use these above lessons to let your people fail gracefully. Practice what you preach. And then step back. Your people are going to do great things!
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