We put so much pressure on ourselves to perform and role model achievement as leaders, that sometimes when we f* up, we focus too much on what we didn’t do instead of what we DID do. We need to reframe failure and mistakes for ourselves - but also for our team, here's some tips to get you failing (and loving it). 

Create a Learning Lab

One of the most powerful practises you can have as a leader is an experimental approach. If you create a space where it’s safe to test and learn, you are basically creating a space for innovation and growth. When we aren’t clear with ourselves or our team that it’s ok to make mistakes, we create a culture where protecting your ego is more important than honesty. We create a culture where people are afraid to fail, a culture that stunts your ability to innovate and stagnates your commercial and personal growth. 

Studies have shown that those who experience failure or rejection, almost always look back later and agree that it worked out for the best, so instead of being scared to fail, be excited to learn.

How can you create a learning lab?

>> MAKE IT CLEAR THAT MISTAKES ARE OK

Talk openly with your team about experiments and your “test and learn” approach, so that it’s clear that you are open to trying something new and learning from it. When you make a mistake, take the opportunity to share it with your team, be vulnerable and explain what happened and what you've learned - so that they can learn too. 

>> FACILITATE EXPERIMENTS

Set up templates to facilitate innovative thought, whether that's a slide template dedicated to trying new ideas, or a notion board where you capture unexpected outcomes and learnings. 

When a team member wants to try something, discuss what their “hypothesis” is - what do they expect will happen e.g. what’s the goal here? Will it be to make $5k, are they expecting to sign up a new client? How will they know they've been successful.

>> CREATE LEARNING DISCUSSIONS

It may seem obvious that when someone makes a mistake, you learn from it by reflecting on what went wrong and how you'll avoid that in the future BUT that still feels a bit negative and has a sprinkle of blame in there. Instead of that approach, try taking a much more objective perspective. Put on your lab coat and assess the project just like any other experiment.

Questions you can ask:

• What did we expect to happen? (hypothesis)
• What actually happened? (results)
• Do we know why that happened?
• Did the results meet our expected outcomes? (conclusion)
• How can we use this information to improve future projects? (next steps)

Don't be scared to fail, be excited to learn.

You'll notice that as you focus more on intentional failure through your experiments and 'test and learn' perspective, that when you or your team make other mistakes outside of your experiments, you will all be much more adept at handling them, and extracting insights and learnings instead of blaming, worrying, hiding and protecting egos. 

Here are three things for you to test out this week:

1. Try something new that you expect to be bad at and be ok with it.
2. Decide on an idea to test at work, set a hypothesis and run your experiment. Discuss the findings with your team.
3. Reflect on a mistake you've made recently, and take your 'lab coat' approach to the results. Run through the questions and identify what you learnt from it and how you can use that moving forward. Compare that perspective to your normal response to mistakes and reflect on the difference in how it makes you feel.

Loved this topic and want to learn more? 

Inside the Epic Self Leadership Program we look at how to build personal resilience to handle any challenges you may face as a leader, and how to foster innovation for yourself and your team.

 Apply now for the Jan 2023 intake.