Failure can feel detrimental to progressing in your career, but it doesn’t have to signify the end of a path. Learning how to fail productively and harness the lessons learned along the way can be an avenue to professional growth and success.
Author and professor Manu Kapur details the importance of learning from failure and the science behind failure leading to success in a TEDx Talk.
Embracing Failure
Harnessing productive failure starts by embracing failure. When failure becomes a learning opportunity and a chance to improve instead of a defining feature of your skills, abilities, or characteristics, it is a tool for growth. Failing is uncomfortable. Lay the groundwork for productive failure with these steps:
- Understand everyone fails. Countless business leaders have faced failure before finding success.
- Acknowledge your shortcomings. Whether you admit failure to yourself, your peers, or your boss, power comes from recognizing failure. Only when you acknowledge failure can you identify areas of improvement and create a plan to learn from the experience.
- Create opportunities for productive failure by approaching work tasks in new ways and taking risks. Structure the environment to allow for failure without compromising the integrity of the work. By creating opportunities to fail, you may experience newfound success.
By embracing productive failure, leaders can transform setbacks into valuable lessons for future success.
