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Failure
In my experience, there are two things that are guaranteed to kill aliveness, authenticity, creativity and innovation: Looking good and Getting it right.
From the time we learn to walk and talk, we are trained to look good and get it right. In school and even as little children, we are taught to be clean and tidy with our shirt tail tucked in and all of our bodily fluids where they belong, which is most definitely out of sight.
We strive to be slim, fit, firm, flexible and fashionable. We want to make sure we both fit in AND stand out. . . or that we stand out but not too much. It’s quite a challenge to hit the bull’s eye defined by a peculiar balance between fading into the wall and standing out so much that we are labeled odd or different.
We most definitely DON’T want to look foolish, stupid or worst of all, uncool.
Paramount to looking good is getting it right. We are carefully taught that there is ONE answer to just about every question. We either have it right or wrong and if it is the latter, Heaven help us. When we do get it wrong, we go to great pains to make it clear that we didn’t FAIL really, we were just “creating another learning opportunity.”
When we fail, we are afraid that we ARE a failure. No wonder people don’t like to fail and go to great lengths to avoid it, often spending lots of time trying to figure things out before trying something new.
Most of the time, however, learning and true success comes only with extensive experimentation and failure. Trying to avoid failure in our minds seldom works because things rarely go according to plan and the best learning comes when we are forced to improvise. It’s true that we learn a great deal from our failures, however we learn more if we fully experience the failure first.
At CTI we encourage students to experiment, try new things and, of course, fail. We encourage them to celebrate failure because we know that if they can step beyond that need to get it right and the fear of failure they will be free to try new things, to experiment, improvise and evolve into a dynamic and extraordinary coach rather than one who plays by all the rules.
When something is as chaotic and messy as failure, it helps to break it down a little so I’ve created five stages in celebrating failure. Each step is important and adds to the value overall.
Stage One: Resistance. In this stage, one attempt to prevent failure, to hold it together, to cover it over, to pretend that whatever “it” is, “it” didn’t happen. There is embarrassment at this stage and generally a desire to fix “it” before anyone notices.
Stage Two: Acceptance. In this stage, there is surrender to what is and an acceptance of what is unfolding. One might ask for help at this stage. There is vulnerability, connection and relationship.
Stage Three: I’m not sure what to call this stage. Time? Healing? I just know that, especially for really big failures some time needs to pass before one is ready to look at learning. This is the pause, the breath, the place of being.
Stage Four: Learning. After some time has passed (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) it’s time for debrief and learning. What didn’t work? Where was I blind? What’s the new information to incorporate?
Stage Five: Transformation. As the new information is integrated, transformation occurs.
These stages can unfold over a matter of seconds or a matter of months. In order to truly celebrate failure, we must embrace and celebrate all of the stages.
My husband Henry loves a quote from Winston Churchill “Power or Success is moving rapidly from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” I love the energy and inspiration of this quote, and I think it is also important to take a little time with each failure so that one can learn and incorporate the new information.
With respect to Mr. Churchill I might shift the comment a little. From my perspective, success is moving consciously from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. In this way, the learning from each failure can be integrated and incorporated into the next attempt.
KKH
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Matt Collins
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Karen
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Matt Collins
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