Dare to Fail Harder and Louder Together

Failure - genuine failure - how much of it have you had lately?

Probably more than you care to articulate or remember. We're not talking about failing at entire projects or missed major deadlines, not the catastrophic kind of failure, but the micro-failures. That wildly optimistic estimate. That ticket that had no business being moved from the backlog. That day you spent on the wild-goose chase. That rabbit hole. That time when you didn’t say what you really thought. That time when you didn’t admit you didn’t know something. When you first corrected course and only after showed your work. Or when you wanted someone’s opinion or advice but never asked for them to avoid looking stupid. When the solution you chose was inferior but you wouldn’t admit it. When you covered something up. Or saw someone else cover it up and never called then out. When you were too ambitious or when you were a perfectionist. When you didn’t really have your heart into it. So many instances of micro-failure in every work week and every sprint that if we can’t even bring one to mind and share it, then we’re not being honest with ourselves and others. 

How much of it have you communicated? Have you brushed it off or have you brought it to the team and celebrated it? Was it closer to “Damn, this was a mistake…” or to “Yey! This was a lesson!”? Without the lows how can we expect the highs?

One of my favourite stories that feature in my upcoming “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teams in the Digital Age” book comes from my interview with the one and only Gene Kim who recalls his first exposure to the topic of Psychological Safety through the prism of a story from a Google exec who soon realised how intensely connected people were to the stories of what went wrong in periodic reports to the point that when there were no failures to dissect they started discussing “near misses” in retros. 

The relationship between the permission to fail -and talk about it- and psychological safety, is evident and very deep indeed. When a team is psychologically safe, their impression management behaviours (where they are fearful of appearing incompetent, negative, ignorant or disruptive to each other and therefore don’t express themselves) are rare and they are instead wide open, connected, open-hearted. That’s what makes them competitive to levels that closed off teams can only dream of. 

No one reading this needs convincing when it comes to the importance of failing. We can’t make any magic unless we are willing to fail and willing to do so regularly and demonstrably. We all know that in theory and can lyricise about it at length. We talk about blameless retros, about a culture of encouraging extreme continuous learning, a need and habit of experimentation and above all, about the safety of daring. 

But what can we really do to drill this knowing into our teams? How can we ensure they truly believe the permission? That they know in their hearts of hearts, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that in their team, making and admitting mistakes is not undesirable or punishable but on the contrary, it’s needed and welcomed if not even rewarded. What a difficult lesson to learn for us all but so very true and so very necessary.

Honesty, extreme honesty, is the only way to turn wrong turns into right ones. Mistakes remain errors with negative effects without the articulation that turns them into lessons with positive ones. And lessons remain sterile learnings without acknowledging the emotional content that allows us to feel safe and “seen” while we acquire them. We need the communication that outlines what happened, but more importantly, we need the magical moment of dissecting what happened together, because when we invest in that moment, the emotional charge of having common goodwill for a common goal is propulsing us further and powering all the magic we do as a psychologically safe team. Whatever happened, happened to US. Whatever mistake was made, WE are discussing it and WE are learning from it. And it is US, a strong, supportive, warm “us” that I admit to or open up with. Bringing failure to the team is a bonding experience. It reaffirms trust and it self-fulfils the prophecy of it being a productive safe harbour. 

When you open up in spite of the fear - the overwhelming -and often paralysing- need for self-preservation, despite the reticence and the hesitation it eventually feels good. Being brave and vulnerable is addictive. Once you do it, the elation of having overcome a basal fear is palpable and once hedonic adaptation to that elation sets in, replacing it, there's an even more valuable and potent positive state- the knowledge that it’s safe to be vulnerable consistently with these people and therefore run and build as fast and as hard as you can with them.

When you listen to others opening up, you feel good. You feel trusted, leaned on, believed in. And you feel, let’s be honest- magnanimous, that you allowed for that opening. You aren’t, you’re lucky to have learnt the lessons and related to other humans, to have cosied to the moment where you knew it was ok to be vulnerable because they modelled it. 

And irrespective if you do the opening or listen to the opening, the good news is that science shows there's an undeniable connection between being kind and empathic and being happy. Those moments of connection, whether it was sharing a laugh, solving for a problem or finding ways to fail so you can find ways to succeed, they all add up and while your subconscious may not even attribute to that particular moment in work, they translate into a sense of overall wellbeing and positive affect afterwards. 

Being open-minded regarding what it all means and how much opening, communication and room for failure and blessed discomfort you may have, is really helpful because we operate with a myriad of preconceived ideas of what is “professional” and desirable at work and almost none of those are true or useful when it comes to allowing us to be authentic and brave.

Disagreement is not automatically conflict and not all conflict must be avoided, on the contrary. Beating dead ideological horses is not a waste of time if there are feelings to be processed or points of view that hadn’t been put across. Exhausting a discussion is necessary. Squeezing every thought out of every member of a team, beyond facts and into fears and hopes always pays off. 

So if you want more of the bonding, the safety and therefore the performance - open up further. Probe. Ask. Provoke. Stand up against check-list retros and remind everyone “blameless” doesn’t mean silent or fake. Take more chances to say everything that crosses your mind, to contradict, to admit, to dare, to let your teammates see you, really see you and see them back, make mistakes together, jump, try, fail and learn. Only then will you be psychologically safe enough of a team to grow and soar. 

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Don't send your teams home with a laptop, a Jira and Slack account and a prayer!

Get in touch at www.psychologicalsafety.works or reach out at contact@peoplenottech.com and let's help your teams become healthy, happy and highly performant.