No Failure, Only Lessons

I was talking with a leader a little while ago about how they wanted help to develop a junior manager in their team. When we dug into the topic a little bit I discovered that although well intentioned, this leader had such high standards that he ended up micromanaging his team a little bit more than he realized.

This was coming from a good place - he wanted to make sure that the work his team is doing is high quality and meets the needs of his stakeholders. The downside of this is that he isn't allowing his team to fail safely.

This has the end result of the manager that he wants to grow often not taking initiative and checking everything before they do anything.

"You can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you."

― Barack Obama

You will have failures. You will make mistakes. Your team will too. It's how you create space for that and respond to it that matters.

Mistakes and Learning

If you never make a mistake you'll never learn anything. In fact, throughout human history we have learned via trial and error.

Take this for an example. Ancient humans looked at a beehive and said - "Mmm, those buzzy stinging things must be hiding something delicious...". Through that somewhat risky exploration they found honey. That's trial and error for you.

When they tried the same with wasps...oof...that must have been unpleasant.

Anyway, we need to have the opportunity to try things if we want to learn. That means, as leaders, giving our teams projects and initiatives that will allow them room to try their own ideas and then reflect and learn from them.

Bees are awesome

Safe Failure

What do I mean by failing safely? It's simple really - making sure that in whatever area they're learning, if they make a mistake it doesn't do a lot of damage. Maybe the scope of the project is sufficiently small, or the stakeholders are ones that you have great relationships with.

As they gain experience, you can increase the scope or give them larger initiatives to work on. The gradual increase will help them increase their confidence as they get exposed to new things - perhaps different stakeholders or more challenging problems.

It's important to make sure they are consciously learning from these experiments. Be explicit with them on the scope of control they have. Let them know the guardrails that they're working within. Provide them with specific feedback on their performance for this initiative on a regular basis.

Let them know that you trust them and that there won't be recriminations or blame if there are issues. Work with them to analyze the challenges and help them work out how to solve them. Help them reflect. Don't fix things for them.

In other words, loosen up the reins a little bit and let them know it'll be ok.

Objectives

In this context it can be very helpful to have a couple of objectives or OKRs (or whatever your process is) in this area for each of your staff. Make this a recurring theme for your organization.

This is particularly important if you have any people managers at any level in your team - encourage this behaviour in them, and get them to encourage it in their teams too.

Final Thoughts

Allowing your team opportunities to make mistakes, fail safely, and learn from doing so will help with their development, motivation, and retention. It also contributes to an overall sense of psychological safety in your teams.

Try it out, see how you get on. And consider where you personally feel empowered to fail safely.

When you're ready, I offer 1:1 coaching for leaders who are looking to take their life and career to the next level. Send me an email and we'll set up a time to have a chat.

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