Failure Is an Option

Plagued by shyness and anxiety, renowned classical pianist and musical educator Yelena Balabanova, DTM, AS, twice failed her audition to the national music conservatory in her home country of Russia. This rejection forced her to wait three years to continue her studies despite finishing at her prior academy near the top of her class.

Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, suffered a similar setback in 1993, when she joined a new Harvard doctorate program in organizational behavior. As part of a team conducting studies on medication errors at Harvard Medical School, she was devastated when her hypothesis—that better-functioning teams would make fewer errors—was proven to be completely wrong.

“Soon I would find myself thinking, not for the first time, that maybe I wasn’t cut out for a Ph.D. program,” Edmondson later recalled.

As daunting as those early failures were, both women now say they may not have achieved their current success without them. Failure can be heartbreaking, they say, but if you use it as a tool for learning and reflection, it can be invaluable.

“It’s hard to think of a worthwhile activity that you can excel in and be accomplished in that doesn’t require some failures,” Edmondson says. “Sports, science, cooking—if you want to be great at something hard, then you must be willing to fail at it. Even the best athletes on earth are winning just slightly more than half of their matches. We lie to ourselves when we think that we have to get it right the first time.”

Everyone experiences failure at some point in their life, whether it’s not landing a client, delivering a speech in less-than-stellar fashion, or not being offered the job you applied for. Although failure can be discouraging, it’s important to reflect on the experience and learn from it. There is a lot to be gained even if at first you don’t succeed.

Fear Factor

Why are we so afraid of failure? Simple: It’s embarrassing, it’s discouraging, and in a world where the efforts of a collective are often emphasized, a failure feels very personal, triggering deep fears of being unliked or not accepted.

Balabanova emphasizes one key thing about failure: You soon get over it, so don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying.

“Failure itself is not that big of an issue,” she says. “We get upset for a few days, maybe a month, but over time, you recover. The bigger issue is that we don’t even try, or don’t set a goal because of the fear of failure. If you really want to do something, you need to make a plan and follow your plan. It takes time, but having confidence in a plan is much more important than having a dream of some high achievement, but being scared that it won’t happen. That’s almost a guarantee that it won’t happen.”

Another guarantee is that everyone will fail at some point. That’s why it’s key to think about failure in advance and have a plan for what you’ll do when it happens.

In her work teaching piano to elementary school-age students and training them for competitions, Balabanova says, “I tell my students, ‘It happens to everyone sooner or later; this is what to expect, and this is what we will do about it.’”

Three Types of Failure

In her book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, Edmondson separates failure into three categories. A basic failure is one with a single cause—you were scheduled to give a speech, and you neglected to prepare. A complex failure has multiple causes—the speaker before you ran over time, the computer you were using for your PowerPoint stopped working, or you got an emergency call from your kids’ school minutes before you were scheduled to start. Basic failures are typically preventable; complex failures may not be, but they don’t provide a lot of learning opportunities either. Intelligent failures, on the other hand, are the failures that provide the greatest lessons that can lead to future success.

“An intelligent failure is the undesired result of a thoughtful foray into new territory,” Edmondson says. “Maybe you’re giving your first talk in front of a real audience, you’ve prepared a lot, you’re a little nervous, then you get out there, and it falls flat. The things you thought would be funny weren’t funny.

“[Intelligent failure] is a failure, but it’s a different type of failure from a basic or complex failure,” she continues. “You can think of it as an experiment or a first effort in new territory. And it’s a given that often the first effort in new territory will come up short.”

Tell the Story

The important thing about any failure, but especially intelligent failures, is to learn from them, Edmondson says. In the case of an intelligent failure, going into the task knowing you’re likely to fail removes a lot of the sting. Focus instead on what you can learn for your next attempt.

What’s the best way to begin the process of learning from failure?

“The most important question is ‘What happened?’” Edmondson says. “Tell the story as dispassionately as possible. Describe the series of events. We tend to jump to explanation or blame—we think we understand what went wrong. It’s important to start not with ‘why,’ but with ‘what.’ If you’re careful and thoughtful about going over what happened, you will see new things and things that you might have otherwise missed.”

Once you have the story straight, Edmondson says, “the next question is, what were some of the things I did that contributed to the failure? What did I do right, and what didn’t I do right?” Recognizing areas where you can improve will likely make things go more smoothly next time.

Experts say other important components of learning from failure include forgiving yourself, recognizing that failure is a part of life, giving yourself credit for trying, and realizing that other people are so wrapped up in their own lives that they aren’t likely to register—let alone remember—what might feel to you like the end of the world.

Hey, You Tried!

When the inevitable failure does come, Balabanova says, it’s important to celebrate the fact that you prepared and were brave enough to try, even if the outcome isn’t the one you wanted.

“You still have to reward yourself,” she says. “You still have to celebrate, because you played or performed or spoke or produced at a very high level, and you have grown tremendously through the preparation. It’s important to have the confidence that you did everything you could, that you had a plan and you actually fulfilled your plan. Then you will never fail, because what you learned and what you achieved is an enormous growth process that stays with you. It’s a win-win.”

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