The F Word
The ‘F’ word. You dread it. Fear it. You catastrophize it -- think it's so much worse than it really is.
Nobody ‘wants’ to fail.
But what if failing was the very experience that would allow you to achieve extraordinary success? That without failing the impact you desire will have less impact.
During my leadership retreat this week, the CEO shared this with his team:
If we take risks, we could fail.
If we don’t take risks, we could fail.
Either side comes with potential failure.
Instead of talking about the risks, fear and catastrophe of failure, the team got talking.
Talking about embracing the potential of failure.
Being open to it.
Seeing it as an opportunity to evaluate, edit and execute with a continuous improvement strategy,
Simon Sinek recommends failing forward. The concept is rooted in using failure as an experience to learn from and quickly make decisions to get you achieving your mission faster.
Experience, fail, evaluate, edit, execute again.
When you embrace failure as a necessary component to success, you get open to discovering, experimenting, learning, iterating.
That’s a fail-forward strategy.
The strategy of failing forward creates a continuous cycle of improvement.
A rising leader recently interviewed for a job she really wanted. She was prepared with her pitch and felt good about the solid impression she would make with each of the 17 interviewers. While she got to the final interview round, she ultimately didn't get the job. She was upset. So, she got to work. She requested feedback meetings from each of the 17. Most were rote, but the last one was with the senior leader. He gave her constructive and actionable guidance on improving the impact of her message. He also promised to support her in finding her next role. A role that is likely to be an even better role than the original one. She's getting to work on those actionable suggestions. Moving forward with more clarity and impact.
The next time you set a goal for yourself, plan a fail-forward strategy with a cycle of iteration.
Plan for it by imagining the fails through powerful questioning:
What are the markers of and signals to failure?
How will you know it?
What adjustments will you make along the way and when?
If this doesn't work, then what?
The after-fails also have a questioning filter. (Suck each and every failure dry for all it was worth):
What worked?
What didn't?
What did you learn?
What were the never-agains?
What do you want to do differently going forward?
Use the data to move forward more quickly, more decisively and in a direction with a higher rate of yield.
This is failure as an iterative experience without catastrophe.
With a continuous cycle of experiencing, evaluating, editing and executing you rapidly change course.
And when you do, the mission or goal may change.
A change that might just have an even bigger impact than the original goal.
This isn't just for organizations.
Take this approach to your diet. Your marathon training. Your life.
If you are considering working with a Coach or want to know more about the components of a Coaching engagement, let’s get on a call with this link.
The question I get most frequently on these calls, ‘what results can I achieve?’ Here’s what one client shared:
I was floundering in a way that I had never experienced before in my professional career. Emotions were high, I couldn't manage my way out of a difficult period at work, and I was desperate to regain my footing. Through my work with Christina I was able to not only successfully get through that tough time, but I turned that challenge into an opportunity to completely re-vision my professional future.
-Pharmaceutical Executive
