CFC Blog #81: The Fear of Failure

I love working with children and I love that they are constantly teaching me something, or at least reminding me of a notion I once knew of or habits I used to partake in. It's refreshing. And like you said Jorgen, they don't operate with limitations and they apply what they've learned through failure. I guess as time goes on and life gets more complex and "busy" and risky, I tend to view my world and opportunities with constraints in mind. But this blog reminds me to be more free and bold. Thank you for that, Jorgen.

- Amanda

The Fear of Failure

The past six months or so, I’ve been working with a client on the preparation for an immersive session with their global leadership team. They would like to change some behaviors of their team to become more adaptive to change. In their traditionally risk-averse environment, one of the key things they want to work on is dealing with failure. Up until now, failure is not an option in this organization. There is a fear of failure that is almost coded in their DNA. So the question arises: how do you change this attitude and create a culture that accepts failure as an opportunity to grow?

To answer that question I get back to a loop for changing behavior that I’ve grown to love more and more ever since Keith Yamashita introduced me to it: see-believe-think-act. In this case, this cycle is all about: seeing that the world is changing, truly believing that failure could be an option so that you can think differently about what you could do and then act upon that.

In my own approach the future is always a starting point, so I’ve designed a program for this client that starts with imagining how you’ve failed in the future. And then accepting that that is okay. Ever since we came up with this, I’ve thought about it myself as well: when have I truly failed? How could I potentially fail in the near future? And how can I accept that failure is an option and with it an opportunity to grow and learn. Have you ever done something deliberately to fail and learn? I have to admit myself, that perhaps I’ve grown to fear failure as well…

And then I watch my 5-year old daughter play. From my point of view, I see she fails so often. And she has failed so many times in the past: learning to walk, falling while climbing onto something, cutting her doll’s hairs, trying to cut something out of paper and then destroying her creation, etc. But she learns and grows while doing it. From her perspective there are no limiting beliefs in it at all. Of course there are tears when it happens, but when she tries again applying (intuitively) some of the things she’s learned as a result, she gets better and grows. 

It is that childlike acceptance of failure that we could all learn from. Or perhaps it is something we should relearn if we want to change, if we want to learn and if we want to grow as individuals and organizations. If you would have no fear of failure at all, what would be the first thing you would do?