The Axela Group™

Tips to “Fail Well”

At The Axela Group, through our coaching, team development and organizational effectiveness consulting, we’ve gathered some practical approaches to help you to “Fail-Well” and destigmatize failure on your team. Many of these are called out as important in the work of researchers like Amy Edmonson and Daniel Coyle – we’ve seen them in action firsthand and put them into a framework you can use and remember. Why? Because we’ve heard from one of our affiliated experts, Kemy Joseph, that “Frameworks make the brain work!”

Create a No Judgement Zone:

Cultivate a team culture of psychological safety where people can speak up about what’s on their mind without fear of reprisal or judgement.

Give Failure a Home (or “Fail with Purpose”):

Be purposeful about including failure in your expectations. Make it clear that intelligent, praise-worthy failure is a normal part of “how we do things around here”. To make progress and grow in a complex world, not everything will go well – and learning as we tread new ground is valued.

Fail Loud and Proud:

Talk about your failures, don’t hide them. This will help the team to identify failure more quickly. Celebrate the learning that you gain from failure and celebrate the “new” starting point you are gaining by learning and iterating.

Name It and Claim It:

All failures are not created equal. In her “spectrum of reasons for failure” Amy Edmonson clarifies different reasons for failure and categorizes them from “blameworthy” where there is deliberate deviation from process or rules to “praiseworthy” where there is thoughtful experimentation. Be clear about the reason for failure, then take ownership for it. Ownership means taking time to analyze the failure so learning can be applied moving forward.

Be a “Fail-Well” Role Model:

“I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say.” – David Cooper, US Navy Seal. Showing vulnerability and ownership lets your team know it’s OK to fail and opens the door to thoughtful experimentation on your team.

Stop the Blame Game:

Instead of assigning blame for failures, focus on what you learned and what the next forward step is. Blame is scary, and when we’re in a fear mode, we are less likely to take ownership of finding a solution.

Practice Curiosity:

A growth mindset means getting curious. There’s a German Proverb that says, “You will become clever through your mistakes”. This is true IF you take the time to reflect on your mistakes, analyze what went wrong (and right) and deploy that learning the next time. That takes curiosity.

Emphasize Learning:

In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle says, “We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it’s a really terrible way to learn,” and he’s right. Effortlessness- or flow - does not breed discovery. It yields consistency – and there is a place for that. But here we are talking about learning and growing. Learning takes sweat and grit and stick-with-it-ness.

Take it Step-by-step:

Thinking about facing a major project or unmapped path can be daunting. Teams who ultimately succeed in these types of endeavors start where they are and take it step by step. Often their steps go something like this quote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett”

Tips to “Fail Well”

Tip 1: Make it Safe

Tip 2: Own It

Tip 3: Get Unstuck