How Much of Star Leadership is About Finessing Failure
Summary: Failure is an important concept – far too important for you to waste it on something that you don’t care about. And to do that, the only way is to not take it too seriously. Similarly, success is too happy a concept – almost a fleeting one. The way to enjoy it is to just let go the fear of losing it. So take every success and every failure in your stride, and move on forward like the star you are!
In the endeavor for success, not failing is never an option. It is an inevitable thing that carries a valuable purpose. Here is a star leader’s guide on Failing Intelligently, how it’s better than Success and what can you do with those Failures at the Workplace?
The word failure is one that carries automatic negative connotations, and does not really apply to what happens in real life. As this HBR article1 mentions, IDEO, the design and consulting firm, decided to see how they could potentially deliver the service of coming up with new lines of innovative products for their customers. Till then they were only involved in coming up with products in existing lines, but they tried their hand at this service with a mattress company on a small scale. After “failing”, they knew what they had to do for delivering the service and made new teams which involved managers from customer companies and their own employees. Today more than a third of IDEO’s revenues come from this strategic innovative service. This is because they gained the right insights from doing the right things.
What are You Really Failing at?
Failing vs. Failure
We differentiate between failure and failing. They say it’s the act of not getting up after failing that makes you a failure. This Forbes Article2 reviews the process of design thinking: how instead of trying to come up with that one solution which turns a failure into a success, keep deviating from normal processes a bit more every time, fail continuously in small amounts but keep improving designs with the learning every time. This is how we can be okay with tolerating failure and encouraging innovation and end up gaining exponentially much more in the long term.
The Awkward Failure Conversation
Impact on Leadership
3 Immediately Applicable Action Steps
- To catch mistakes before they accumulate, you can make reports be colour coded in green, yellow and red, where green is nothing to worry about, yellow is caution and red means there are problems.
- Rotate the responsibility of being the devil’s advocate in your team across different meetings.
- When a meeting reviews a failure, make a visualization of the narrative of failure.
References
- Edmondson, A. (2011, April). Strategies for Learning from Failure. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure
- Whysel, B. (2019, January). Failing To Succeed: Use Design Thinking To Improve Your Strategy. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettwhysel/2019/01/22/failing-to-succeed/
Authored by Coach Vikram
Vikram is an Executive Presence Coach who supports CXOs and senior leaders to make an impact, influence, and lead with ease. He advises C-level leaders and teams to strengthen business performance through their executive presence and star leadership.
Vikram works closely with Boards and senior leaders to align leadership needs with strategy. His forte is his ability to develop trusted partnerships with senior leaders at some of the most recognized companies in the world. Vikram coaches senior leaders to draw upon their best selves, while growing their business and their leadership capabilities.
Vikram and his team have developed a groundbreaking model of executive presence and an Executive Presence Index (EPI) Assessment, the first frequency based, scientifically validated tool to measure executive presence.
Connect with him if you want practical and immediately applicable strategies to accelerate results, develop your people, and influence others to make a positive difference in your organization.
