In this blog I explore how leaders use failure in their leadership skillset. I will argue that when they do, they are in a great place to start building and leading a high-performing team.
Wait – what? How they USE FAILURE?
That’s right. Failure is not the same as slow success. I am defining failure here as 100% foul-up, errors and not doing things properly. Failure is really easy to allow. You can simply be too busy to keep sufficient attention on the elements of your team’s work that really matter, either to the customer or to your organisation. Or your team may not know how to do what it needs to do. OR you might not know, either how to do it, or how to explain it – or even how to spot the signs others don’t know.
So it’s about being attentive to details?
Yes, but that isn’t all of it. You need an attention to detail, for sure, but you also need to understand why you’re all doing what you’re doing. It is important for you understand the strategic context and direction for your organisation. Add to that engaging your team in the vision and journey and you will have your big picture, your vision, your goal. This gives you your collective “why” (please see another of my blogs to get some ideas about this topic). It is not enough to understand why you all need to do what you do, to prevent failure. It is, however, very hard to succeed 100% if you don’t.
It’s also about learning. As a leader, you need to learn all the time, so you can make your leadership better, every day. David Kirk, in his classic article for McKinsey, refers to several elements for a high-performing team. Two resonate particularly with me: what he calls “divine discontent” (the constant hunger for improvement and further knowledge which characterises the most successful leaders); and “lack of mistakes”.
Lack of mistakes is pretty basic – it is what it says it is. Not making mistakes means not failing, correct?
Not exactly. In order for your high-performing team not to make mistakes, and thus not fail, there are a myriad of other elements which come into play. It’s the attention to detail, the lack of errors, the understanding of the collective direction as we have mentioned here. It is also having the right people, doing the right things well, sufficiently.
There also needs to be a policy framework which allows the improvement to “high-performing” – red tape can really hamper innovation – if you let it.
And, as a coaching colleague reminded me on a recent post of mine, there is also the important imponderable element – luck.
So the next time you fail, don’t beat yourself up as a leader. Use failure. Take the learning, learn the learning, and do it better next time. Be forensic and specific. Take your time to examine what went wrong. Avoid the knee-jerk lurch to the other end of whatever choice spectrum you used last time.
First, check it WAS a failure. Was it a complete disaster, or are you being a perfectionist too early in your team’s development? (Is this possible? I would be interested in your thoughts about whether, on the way to leading a high performing team, with an agile mindset, the pursuit of excellence can ever be too early).
What worked? Some things will have gone well, so make sure you keep them and build them into your learning. And understand WHY things went wrong. It might have been lack of information, or bad timing, or poor leadership by you or a colleague. Heavy workloads or poor prioritisation of resources might have played a part. It could also have been really bad luck.
Whatever the cause of the perceived failure, share your analysis process and learning with your team. Seek to establish a no-blame learning culture. This is where colleagues collaborate to build better systems and processes to achieve better collective results. Such a culture would build the ideal foundations for the high-performing team you want to lead. Your people will surprise and delight you with their bravery – and their successes. The fewer mistakes you all make, the closer you will all be toward your goal of high performance and success.
If you need a handy reminder of this, you could do worse than keeping a copy of Samuel Beckett’s famous quote from “Worstward Ho!” nearby for reference.*
All effective leaders have someone with whom they discuss their ideas, check their thinking and generally use as a critical friend or confidant. It can be lonely as a leader, even of a high-performing team (when everyone wants to be your mate). If you could use a confidante and would value someone holding up the mirror to your thoughts from time to time, you might like to get in touch. We can discuss how I can help you to build your high-performing team … and to learn when you fail.
* The quote is in the cover image to this blog. It should be noted that Beckett’s quote is actually only a snippet of the original piece of prose. The full piece appears to use this wording as an ironic, perhaps even sardonic, commentary on optimism in the face of supreme difficulty. Maybe that can be a metaphor …