Failure Is An Option—In Fact, A Very Good One

As a physician and consultant to large enterprises, I am thrilled when skilled leaders and organizations tap into the power of failure to drive learning, growth and success.

However, this doesn’t happen often enough. Corporate leaders and seasoned employees generally prefer to avoid talking about failure beyond the surface level recognition that it has occurred. There are seemingly logical reasons for this and it often comes down to “loss aversion” – we generally prefer to avoid losses than acquire equivalent gains. So concerns that failure may lead to loss of income, loss of employment and other career impacts are genuinely frightening and cognitively persuasive. This behavior cuts across all demographics, regardless of age, gender or occupation.

But ignoring failure comes at a great cost to organizations and employees alike. By not talking about and dealing with failure, the suffering simply goes on and multiplies. Employees experience the pain and anxiety that comes with failure. They play it safe and apply the brakes on their own innovation. Talent wilts. Self-worth fractures. And employees don’t experience the learning and growth that can turn failure into a material win—for themselves and their organizations.

Depersonalize Failure

To encourage employees and corporate leaders to talk about failure, it helps to reframe and anchor on positive actions or projects and the “bigger picture.” Without positivity, employees won’t engage. And a focus on a bigger picture that emphasizes the idea of smart, productive failures and the organization’s broader success can help teams find better paths forward to maximize outcomes.

Try exploring a recent failure holistically through root-cause analysis. You can depersonalize failure and review it from the lens of a third party. Ask: What was the reason for the failure? What was in your control or out of your control? What backstops were in place? How or why did failure happen? What could be done differently next time?

When we detach personal feelings of failure and enable employees to see the bigger picture, they often recognize that the failure resulted from a cascading series of errors across a diverse range of stakeholders rather than an isolated individual fault. This opens up meaningful opportunities to reflect, learn and grow, and spurs employees and teams on to tackle future challenges.

Create A Psychologically “Fail”-Safe Workplace

Most people resist learning from failure, often due to emotional and cognitive barriers. A similar situation can happen at the corporate level. While some companies understand that failing is a natural process and stepping stone to success, many are still trying to operationalize that understanding and make it part of their corporate DNA.

For instance, most organizations are fully on board when talking about the necessity of supporting employees when they fail. This is especially true given companies want to ensure their talent has the confidence to take risks, develop to their fullest potential and, in turn, advance the business. But it is the rare company that has successfully created a psychologically safe workplace to reduce perceived personal risk from failure and remove fear and anxiety—as much as possible—from the equation.

Effective leaders and companies embrace failure. They have policies that welcome risk-taking as part of the corporate experience and even celebrate it. But they also place expectations around it. They ask employees to share information and rationale on the risks they take before they take them. (Not even leaders like surprises.) They emphasize that employees and employers jointly decide to take risks and share in the resulting success or failure. And they develop a language around failure to drive home their point, including the iconic “fail fast”, “if we’re not failing, we’re not innovating” and “a growth mindset empowered by learning from failure.”

A company that adopts and embeds the above approach should expect to develop a corporate culture that normalizes failure, lowers the stakes around it and is better positioned to deal with and learn from it.

Build Resiliency To Overcome Failure

Finally, companies can help employees develop and build resiliency, which helps employees adapt and grow following failure. Resilience-building activities include self-care, growing and maintaining strong social networks, finding purpose, and setting and moving towards goals. Study results also suggest that higher self-esteem, greater positivity and lower levels of perfectionism provide added resilience in response to failure.

It's important to remember that every company and employee will eventually fail. It’s part of the corporate and human experience. And sadly, even a single experience of failure can heighten anxiety and depression. While organizations and business leaders can’t change failure, they can change how employees respond to it, what they take away from it and what they learn from it. Having a healthy attitude towards failure can also promote emotional well-being, improve coping skills, increase empathy and reinforce positive exploration.

While changing personal and corporate attitudes to failure can take time, the benefits make the journey more than worthwhile.