I go to a very niche private gym where we all get an insane amount of joy from lifting heavy objects. I was watching one of my friends trying to hit what we call a “PR” (i.e. a personal record). Our trainer was spotting him, which was a good thing, because it didn’t go so well. He “failed out” and then had the audacity to post it on Instagram as a point of personal pride.
Why?
Because we’ve all learned that when it comes to growth we know it only comes at the point of failure. We’ve all learned to be disciplined enough to push ourselves to the point of failure and then move that point farther and farther.
In our world, if you aren’t failing then you aren’t working hard enough.
The rest of the world still struggles with the idea of failure. We publicly praise the past failures of already successful people will privately ridiculing ourselves and, sometimes even our other employees, in private. In a really toxic culture that may include public ridicule. I hear many leaders tell their employees to not be afraid to fail. But considering the current culture can you blame them for still being hesitant? The problem is if you don’t push what you can handle as an employee, even to the point of potential failure, you won’t grow in that regard either.
So as a leader, how do you convince your employees that not only is actually okay to fail, at times it is even necessary?
There is one key ingredient: Trust.
I kept looking at the video of my friend’s spectacular fail and wondered what made him so comfortable taking that risk? What makes ME comfortable taking such a risk when it’s my turn?
The fact is we all trust our trainer to have our back even if we don’t trust our own body to come through. And we can do that because he’s proven time and time again that if we just trust him, we’ll be okay. We won’t get hurt and we will get stronger in the long run.
And that’s the key difference between the gym world and the corporate world. The corporate world sometimes asks people to fail without building and proving trust first.
The second layer is developing your people enough that they can trust themselves. Every line of work has a certain technique and general mechanics. When you “know your stuff” you can trust yourself in really hard situations. And when you can extend that trust to your leader even when you are unsure of yourself, then you can handle even harder situations.
If you’ve ever worked with a personal trainer or coach for a sport you know there is a great deal of time spent focusing on basic technique. But raise your hand if you’ve ever been in a corporate environment and thrown in with very little training. You’re having to think and rethink every move and every decision. It’s hard to trust yourself. As leaders, if you don’t take time truly develop your people’s skills and instill confidence in them they will never get to the point in their careers where certain basic skills are muscle memory.
And it’s that simple.
If you want to put your (often literal) money where your mouth is when it comes to failure make sure you’ve invested in your folks enough so they trust themselves and make sure you are proven trustworthy as well.
Then step back and watch the growth.