Failing Forward : How to reframe Failure into Power

Failing at things suck right ? ! Its a tough feeling to get used to and all the well meaning platitudes from friends only ever seem to scratch the surface on how bad you can feel. Sleepless nights beating yourself up over what you did or sometimes more importantly what you didn't do.

I failed recently; it not a feeling I'm used to which in itself has given me space for reflection. Why am I not failing more often ? I could tell you that ,like Mary Poppins, I am practically perfect in every way but I think we both know thats not the case. Am I not pushing myself frequently enough into my stretch zone? not pushing enough for growth? If I am going to embark on a life which includes more growth and more learning there is going to be the inevitable failure along the way. So how can I reframe my view of failure to make it more powerful for me.

In my search for answers I've come across some concepts which I wanted to share with you.

The Concept of Failing Forward

Failing forward is the concept of leveraging failure as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block. It’s about recognising that setbacks are not the end of the road but part of the journey. This mindset encourages leaders to learn, adapt, and improve continually.

John C. Maxwell, a renowned leadership expert, encapsulates this idea perfectly: "Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward." This means that the frequency of failures isn’t as critical as the lessons learned and applied from each experience.

So what can be some of the advantages to failing ?

Encourages Innovation: Innovation requires experimentation, and not every experiment will succeed. If we can move into creativity to come up with new learnings or ways round our problem without the feelings of fear or shame that failure can evoke, thats where we can really begin to become innovative thinkers.

Builds Resilience: Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks stronger than before. Building resilience is a concept any parent of a school aged child today will be very aware of. We agonise over how we instal this gold dust of a quality into our most precious people. How much time and focus do we give on how we build this in ourselves.

Promotes Continuous Learning: Each failure is a lesson in disguise. Failing forward promotes continuous learning if you're able to analyse your failure in a logical manner. Someone wise once said to me that if you look at everything as "data" you can position it with the value that "data" is worth to you, an no more.

Enhances Problem-Solving Skills: Identifying problems early, thinking creatively about solutions, and implementing effective strategies swiftly continually build our problem solving muscles.

Fosters Trust and Collaboration: Being open with our set backs should not be seen as weakness. Being able to be vulnerable and ask for help or support to resolve your problem fosters an open and trusting relationship with those around you.

So given that my logical brain and my mum brain preaches all the time that failure is an essential component to growth and learning how can I start to "feel" better about the concept?

Redefine Failure: Shift the narrative around failure. View failures as valuable feedback rather than dead-ends. Celebrate the effort and the learning process, not just the outcomes.

Encourage Risk-Taking: Acknowledge calculated risks are okay. Recognise and reward innovation, even if it doesn't always lead to immediate success, give yourself that pat on the back when you take the leap of faith even if it doesn't pan out exactly how you thought.

Reflect and Learn: After a failure, take the time to reflect, how much accountability are you taking for the failure - check out the accountability ladder for an eye opening test as to wether you're really "owning your failure"

Develop a Growth Mindset: Acknowledge to yourself that taking the decision to grow and push yourself is going to involve the inevitable set back. Once you've really owned the failure then look to a plan as to how things could bet better next time. Use the failure data to learn something about the situation - the "what" - but also about the "who" what have you learned about yourself and what do you want to do about it?

So what did I do when I last failed ? I moved myself up the accountability ladder. I owned my failure and treated it as feedback data then came up with a plan as to how I was going to move forward.

Mary Popping can stay in Cherry Tree lane - perfect must be awfully dull !

When was the last time you failed at something and how did it affect you ?

Learning from failure -