Challenge Yourself With a Failure Twister
Failures, mistakes, and difficulties are opportunities.
How do you feel when you make a mistake? Angry? Sad? Embarrassed? Stressed? Silly?
How you cope with mistakes and challenges tells a lot about your mindset and flexibility. Shi* happens, as my grandpa used to say. But you always have options on how to deal with it.
Welcome unexpected situations. They teach you something.
Challenge yourself and play a twister. You’ll see no failure is too big to be sad about, and no weakness can stop you from getting what you want.
What is difficult about failures?
Three things make mistakes difficult:
Feeling like a failure
Admitting you made mistakes
Apologizing
You may have trouble with one or all. Or maybe with none! Either way, train your empathy the next time you speak with others.
Feeling like a failure can be a sign of imposter syndrome. It is often unnoticed and underestimated. People who suffer from it doubt their abilities and accomplishments. So, when you tell them about mistakes they made, they are likely to be hijacked and embarrassed.
Others might have trouble to admit they made a mistake. So, their strategy is to play a victim. “It’s not my fault I missed the deadline. They did not deliver inputs to me on time!” There is usually someone to blame for mistakes. Admitting mistakes means accepting you are not perfect. And we all know some leaders have a huge trouble admitting that.
Last but not least, the difficulty is to apologize. An apology can make you feel vulnerable. You may feel discomfort when you own your behavior and need to ‘fix’ what you said or have done before.
Every failure is a challenge. Every mistake is a challenge. How do you cope with it?
Challenges help stretch your flexibility.
When people ask me what great leaders need to have, I say flexibility and communication. If you have them, you feel healthy and keep your decisions on the rails.
Like this dad mowing his lawn in a tornado, it needs practice and experience to keep it ‘cool’. One strategy to stay flexible is to embrace a growth mindset. You can choose to:
Learn something new over feeling comfortable.
Hear feedback over ignoring it.
Master your work over ‘good enough’.
Be willing to fail and restart over giving up.
Embrace challenges rather than avoid them.
A structure for communication is to say what is happening, why, and what it means.
WHAT - WHY - SO WHAT
Difficulties only feel terrible when you don’t know why they are happening and what they mean for you. So, always communicate clearly and start discussions with intention instead of freaking out.
Example:
Big challenge: “The project is delayed. How will we fix this mistake? Uaaaaaa. What are we going to do?!”
Smaller challenge: “The project is delayed because the supplier did not manage to implement the quality measurements, and now we need to fix this mistake. We are in touch with the respective team to find a suitable time to do it ASAP. We will check with the client if there is any flexibility for final report delivery since we will be doing quality checks now.”
Play a twister
Twister is all about stretching and finding what is possible. If you think about your career and life, you find moments when you are over the Moon, and moments you are ashamed of.
Use failure moments to design a better life and see new opportunities. Challenge yourself and try this exercise from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, who wrote Designing Your Life.
Play a Twister:
Make a table (or download a failure log), and think about your last month, year, etc. What failures have you experienced? What have you messed up? Common, admit your mistakes. No one is watching. :-)
Categorize them
Screwups: Simple mistakes that you normally do well. Not much to learn from them. Admit them, apologize, and move on.
Weaknesses: Mistakes you make regularly. Even if you try to correct yourself, they happen again. It would be best to avoid these situations (delegate?) than to endlessly try to improve them.
Growth opportunities: These failures didn’t have to happen. The causes are clear, and there is a correction available. Focus on this column the most.
Identify the growth opportunities and learn from challenges.
Do this exercise regularly (Monthly? You can do this!)
Example:
Reflect on what went wrong. What could you do differently next time? Twist mistakes and failures into opportunities and growth. Focus on insights and growth opportunities. Challenge yourself.
TL;DR
Reflect on what you find difficult about failures, mistakes, or challenges. How do they make you feel?
Stretch your flexibility whenever you can. Put your frustration aside.
Communicate clearly. See and present solutions, not insurmountable boundaries.
Play a twister and reframe your failure into opportunities. Do it regularly and watch yourself grow.✅
PS: Check this book by Amy C. Edmondson: Right Kind of Wrong. It is a guide that will transform your relationship with failure.