Handling Failure

If you have ever failed, or if your team members have failed... read on!

Dear <<First Name>>,   
Reading Time: 93 secs

You've never got things wrong, right?
You've never messed-up, broken stuff, failed?

And, come to think of it, neither have any of your team members. At least, not while you've been there.
So, you can stop reading this now.

But...
If you have failed, maybe just once.
Or, if your team members have maybe failed once or twice...

Then read on!
 

Own

First and foremost... You fouled up. Own it. take responsibility. Say sorry. Put it right.

Learn

Now, learn from your mistake. And learn from the mistakes people around you make. Those ones are kind of 'free'! One of my former colleagues (Hi, Colin) used to love the phrase, 'you win, or you learn'.

Move

Move on. This is about grit and determination to put things right then put the disappointment down. Carry the learning, but leave the frustration and anger behind you.

Kindness

When people around you fail, treat them with kindness. They just had a bad time, so they don't need you to make it worse. And, guess what? When it's you who just failed, treat yourself with kindness.

Balance

After a failure, we need a boost. Work hard to catch them at a success, and to acknowledge it. And, guess what? When it's you who just failed...

Focus

When we learn lessons, we have been taught to focus on what went wrong, and what we can learn from it. But that just irons out the wrinkles and, at best, reaches the standard we call 'adequate'. For the standard we call 'exceptional', shift your focus to successes and how to repeat, extend, and embed these practices.

Serendipity

Be open to the opportunities that failures can bring. Sometimes, something good can come from failure. But, only if you have the mindset to look out for it, and to embrace it.

Creativity

Necessity may be the mother of invention but failure is the father of creative problem-solving. Use your failure as a springboard for innovation.

Memory

Think back on the biggest life and work lessons you have learned. Often, what sticks in our minds are not the small successes, but the host of petty failures. Your job, as a manager and leader, is sometimes to give people the space to fail safely, and so learn powerfully.

Productionism

Perfectionism sets us up for failure, because perfect is not possible. So, reject perfectionism in favour of productionism - an obsessive passion for producing stuff that is goo (but maybe not perfect).