Issue 2: The courage to fail

Welcome to your leadership newsletter! Each month, we’ll explore a different area of leadership together. I’ll share some of my own experiences, the experience and learning from others and links to some things you may enjoy.

This month, I’ve been inspired by the quote below. So let’s explore what failure means to you and work together towards the leadership improvements you’re after.

Are you playing the blame game?

When something goes wrong in your team or organisation, is there blame and criticism? Or is there support and learning? Do you feel safe to admit when you make a mistake? In social work, we live in a society that plays the blame game. The headlines in the news often talk about how social workers have failed. But what if you also work in a team or organisation who is quick to blame?

Amy Edmonson, Harvard professor, identified the concept of psychological safety at work in 1999. In this post, Amy talks about how we can learn from failure. She shares the importance of building a learning culture where people feel safe to ask for help, take professional risks and admit they’ve got something wrong. She goes on to share that it’s not about a blame game of ‘who did it’ but rather understanding what happened in order to learn and get it right next time.

So, how do you create psychological safety in teams? There are different tools to explore and facilitate this, but be mindful that if you simply have one conversation in an open forum, some members of your team may not feel safe or able to share how they truly feel.

Two links with easy to use questionnaires can be found here and here. If you want to learn more about how to create psychological safety at work, Positive Psychology has a great leadership article on it.

From Fear of Failure to a Growth Mindset

What fuels you to feel like a failure? Maybe you’re stuck in a comparison rut, always thinking someone else is doing better. Maybe you have unrealistic expectations of yourself and never measure up. Maybe you have negative self talk and when you have a set back or make a mistake, you criticise yourself with phrases like ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘of course I didn’t get the job’ or even ‘I’m useless.’

Sure, failing doesn’t feel great, but reframing how we see it can make a lot of difference. Instead of thinking ‘I can’t do it’, what would it feel like to embrace a growth mindset and instead think ‘ok it didn’t work out this time. What have I learned about myself/ the situation so that it may work better the next time’. Or, instead of thinking ‘I can’t do it’, what would it feel like to instead tell yourself, ‘I’m choosing to prioritise my emotional wellbeing and stop stretching myself so thin’.

It takes courage to develop the growth mindset needed to fail. But within the failure, there is growth, learning and opportunity. BetterUp has a great blog on why you feel like a failure and why you’re not. If you’re interested in my own challenge with confidence and failure, you can read more about it here.

Let’s learn together

From September, you’ll have access to a Leadership Masterclass series that covers Leading with Confidence and Authenticity, Leading in times of Uncertainty and Change, Leading for Psychological Safety and finally, Leading with the Mind-Body Connection and Self-Care.

Tickets for the first of the 4 part series are now available for purchase. Early Bird tickets are flying fast, so get your place now.

If you’re unable to make it but don’t want to miss out, email me at [email protected] and I’ll let you know when the next one is available.

How to Fail - Elizabeth Day

There is an entire podcast dedicated to failing! On How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, guests share their failures openly and explore what they learned about success along the way. Check it out on Spotify here.

If you’re not into podcasts and prefer a video, have a look at Elizabeth Day and Steven Bartlett below.

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