Using Failure as Feedback and Challenges as Enhancers.

How we Orient to Failure.

Most of us were educated in very competitive environments where success was the only acceptable outcome.

Teachers and parents may have paid lip service to the virtue of students failing in a bid to learn. But we saw how kids who struggled were treated with very little patience. We knew success was the only acceptable outcome and pursued it with intensity.

Then we entered the job markHow we Orient to Failure.

Most of us were educated in very competitive environments where success was the only acceptable outcome.

Teachers and parents may have paid lip service to the virtue of students failing in a bid to learn. But we saw how kids who struggled were treated with very little patience. We knew success was the only acceptable outcome and pursued it with intensity.

Then we entered the workplace where failure is stigmatized twice as much. Workplaces are just an extrapolation of the kind of academic competitiveness we grew up in.

It may even be worse given the high stakes associated with failing in most workplaces. Failure in an environment that is not accommodative of it may lead to lack of trust from your boss.

The milder consequence of this lack of trust is stagnating for a long time in your job position. You watch as new hires whizz past you into better positions. It is devastating.

The extreme outcome is losing the job. As a result, our relationship with failure has continued to deteriorate.

For this reason we get anxious when we are assigned challenging tasks at the workplace that remove us from what we can do comfortably.

These challenges present an opportunity to fail and the prospect of failing devastates us.

While these challenges may present opportunities to learn, we see them only as opportunities to fail and we resist them.

Most of office strife revolves around attributing our failure and ineptitude to processes and to others so that we do not risk looking like failures.

We are not entirely to blame. At no point in our lives have we been trained to genuinely orient positively to failure.

The Need to Reinterpret Failure and Challenges.

Perhaps one of the most important skills we can now cultivate, is the ability to reframe failure as feedback and challenges as enhancers.

While we may have been socialized to view failure as something negative that measures us, this orientation to failure is debilitating.

We need a new mindset that regards failure as something that happens for us to help us grow.

Each failure should be regarded as a data point that informs us about our process of improvement.

As I have mentioned earlier, where failure is stigmatized, challenges make us anxious.

Challenges come across as disruptions to the bubble we have created for ourselves. They seem to us as impediments to our goals, wishes and dreams.

Chiseling Away for Growth.

A better mindset about challenges would be to view them as critical drivers for our success. They should be thought of as chisels that shape us into masterpieces.

The chisel analogy is a rich one. Sculptors use chisels to strip away the material that gets in the way of the envisioned end-product.

If unfinished sculptures were alive and could feel pain, chisels would be their biggest fear.

This however, if the sculptures could see, would be misplaced fear.

The chisels would be doing the work of bringing them alive. With each chipping away at the sculpture there is transformation. So it is with our challenges.

With reframing of failure as useful feedback and challenges as enhancers, there is a shot at growing to our full potential.

et where failure is stigmatized twice as much. Workplaces are just an extrapolation of the kind of academic competitiveness we grew up in.

It may even be worse given the high stakes associated with failing in most workplaces. Failure in an environment that is not accommodative of it may lead to lack of trust from your boss.

The milder consequence of this lack of trust is stagnating for a long time in your job position. You watch as new hires whizz past you into better positions. It is devastating.

The extreme outcome is losing the job. As a result, our relationship with failure has continued to deteriorate.

For this reason we get anxious when we are assigned challenging tasks at the workplace that remove us from what we can do comfortably.

These challenges present an opportunity to fail and the prospect of failing devastates us.

While these challenges may present opportunities to learn, we see them only as opportunities to fail and we resist them.

Most of office strife revolves around attributing our failure and ineptitude to processes and to others so that we do not risk looking like failures.

We are not entirely to blame. At no point in our lives have we been trained to genuinely orient positively to failure.

The Need to Reinterpret Failure and Challenges.

Perhaps one of the most important skills we can now cultivate, is the ability to reframe failure as feedback and challenges as enhancers.

While we may have been socialized to view failure as something negative that measures us, this orientation to failure is debilitating.

We need a new mindset that regards failure as something that happens for us to help us grow.

Each failure should be regarded as a data point that informs us about our process of improvement.

As I have mentioned earlier, where failure is stigmatized, challenges make us anxious.

Challenges come across as disruptions to the bubble we have created for ourselves. They seem to us as impediments to our goals, wishes and dreams.

Chiseling Away for Growth.

A better mindset about challenges would be to view them as critical drivers for our success. They should be thought of as chisels that shape us into masterpieces.

The chisel analogy is a rich one. Sculptors use chisels to strip away the material that gets in the way of the envisioned end-product.

If unfinished sculptures were alive and could feel pain, chisels would be their biggest fear.

This however, if the sculptures could see, would be misplaced fear.

The chisels would be doing the work of bringing them alive. With each chipping away at the sculpture there is transformation. So it is with our challenges.

With reframing of failure as useful feedback and challenges as enhancers, there is a shot at growing to our full potential.