Mastering the Science of Failing Well

If accepting fallibility is a first step, what else helps us thrive as fallible beings in an imperfect world? Failing well is not an exact science. The manual is still being written and will forever be revised. To begin, when you consciously stretch to try new things, your experiments necessarily bring the risk of failure. This is how you get more comfortable with it. When you take more risks, you will experience more, not less, failure. But two good things happen. One, you realize that you don't die of embarrassment. Two, you build muscle so that each next failure stings less. The more you experience failure, the more you realize you can still be okay. More than okay: you can thrive.

To do this, it helps to incorporate a few basic failure practices - persistence, reflection, accountability and apologizing - into your life. Although not intended to be a complete or perfect list, each of these practices can help build a healthy relationship to failure.

Reflection

Most serious musicians keep practice journals. Typically arranged chronologically, like a diary, practice journals are basically notebooks to jot down what was done during each session, how it felt, what to work on next, and yes, mistakes. Preparing a piece of music for performance means many, many mistakes during rehearsals and learning from those mistakes to not only hit the right notes, but also to improve in more nuanced challenges such as phrasing or tempo.

Percussionist Rob Knopper has spent so much time reflecting on his mistakes and failures that he's become an expert who coaches other musicians on how to handle and make productive use of their mistakes. Failed auditions are his specialty. Now a percussionist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, he readily admits, "I failed my way through years of unsuccessful auditions and rejected applications" before he got his job. Among other things, he advises aspiring musicians to keep a practice journal for each individual piece, which includes a systematic record of obstacles encountered and solutions found that can be consulted as necessary in the future. Knopper also shares candid, detailed descriptions of performances at crucial moments in his career that were marred by shaky hands, wrong notes, or less-than-satisfactory musicianship. Painful, cringe-inducing experiences. What he's learned: "Bad performances give you two of the most important things you could have to make improvement: an indication on what needs to be improved and the motivation to do it"

Accountability

Taking accountability for our failures requires a small act of bravery. But an important part of thriving as a fallible human being is noticing and taking responsibility for your contribution to a failure without feeling emotionally devastated by it, or wallowing in self-blame or shame. Taking accountability means saying such things as "We'd agreed that I would call the plumber about the leaky sink, and because I put it off, there's now a problem with the floor" or "The instructions I gave to the team were confusing and contributed to the misunderstanding" or "I didn't listen when you told me how important it was to attend your soccer game and missed it because I let myself get too busy at work."

A beautiful strength lies in the willingness to say "I did do it" rather than blaming others, which is our default position (not because we're bad people, but because of the fundamental attribution error hardwired into our brains).

Saying you're sorry

With fallibility comes failure, and with failure comes an opportunity to apologize. A good apology wields almost magical powers in repairing the relationship damage failures cause. According to recent research on forgiveness, "thorough apologies" increase positivity, empathy, gratitude, and yes, forgiveness, while reducing negative emotions and even lowering heart rates. But if apologies are so effective, why do we so often avoid them? And are all apologies equally effective?

Understand that when you do something wrong - with or without intent - a rupture occurs in that intangible thing that exists between you and another person. The role of an apology is to repair that rupture. A good apology signals that you put the relationship ahead of your ego. Instead, effective apologies send a clear message that you care about the other person. Effective apologies do more than repair a relationships; they can deepen and improve it. By the same token, a bad apology makes things worse.

This article on "Mastering the Science of Failing Well" is excerpted from Amy Edmondson's book titled "Right Kind of Wrong"