Learning to fail
i was eight years old
it was the christmas nativity play i
didn’t get to play mary
i didn’t even get a costume but
i had a special part i was the narrator
in reality it was a bit of a continuity
announcer to allow
time for set and scene changes and
costume changes backstage
we got to the final dress rehearsal in
front of the full school
the full school slightly more terrifying
than an actual performance in front of
parents who let’s face it
want you to do well so
the final things were nearly upon us
and i skipped a line just one line
but it was a very important line
it was the line that signaled to the
backstage team
to open the curtains for the final scene
so they didn’t
i carried on we got to the end the
curtains opened
there was applause i could feel
the eyes of the entire cast burning into
the back of my neck
my cheeks burned my eyes filled
with tears they had missed their entire
final thing because i had failed
nowadays they’d call it an epic fail
these things can really shape you as a
young person
i might not have gone back for the final
performance
i might never have spoken in public
again
even worse my teacher might have decided
to get somebody else to do it
i had failed
i still remember how it made me feel
embarrassed at getting it wrong
and shame shame because i had let down
the group of people i worked with
in my work i find it really interesting
to see how we teach young people to
learn how to cope with failure
for me there is a real culture of shame
particularly around failure in northern
ireland and it’s something that we need
to challenge
when i was talking about how we cope
with this with a colleague in finland
she said but why do you call it failure
it’s just learning
it was a moment that maybe really made
me stop
and think she was right
it wasn’t necessarily failure it was
just learning
but it made me realize that the
vocabulary and the language
that we learn that we use around failure
really forms our culture and reactions
to it
it is within our gift to do something
about that
we can create a culture that will allow
our young people to learn
to experience failure and to learn
how to come back from it
i find that in finland they have
a day for failures every october
it was set up a decade ago and it was
created
for the purpose of people to share their
failures
on social media to share them so that
they could be used
as learning experiences famous people
talk about failures they have had and
how
they have learned they have created
a language of learning
i’m slightly more surprised to hear at a
recent conference
that nasa has an award for failure
now nasa is the sort of organization
that i would have expected
would seek perfection at all points
but they do indeed have a smart
fail award under the innovation category
because nasa have recognized that you
cannot create
a culture that seeks innovation and
creativity
if you don’t allow some space for a
level of failure
i read the award criteria because yes
there are criteria
and in the criteria it talks about
productive
and unproductive failures
productive failures are the ones they
are looking for where people have taken
the failure
and learnt from the experience to go
forward
and to do better next time
they’ve created a language of learning
it’s within our gift to do this it’s
within our gift to create that language
and culture of learning around failure
for our young people to create an
environment where we can
coach them and provide them with
feedback
where they learn not to fear feedback
but actively seek it
to understand that feedback when it is
given with good intent
can truly be a gift
i find that many people as they move
through their careers
often start to understand this and
really take on board the concept of
coaching
maybe it’s because we’ve got a bit older
and we’re slightly less worried about
what people think of us
but when they undertake coaching they
start to seek out feedback
and gain great personal development they
listen to others and they learn
and they grow what a gift
it would be if we could support our
young people
to start their careers with this sort of
a mindset
as parents as managers as leaders let’s
work to create
a culture where we learn from those
failures
certainly we want to help young people
to strive to achieve
challenging goals and to stretch
themselves but a true part of that
is also making sure that they have the
capacity to learn
when it doesn’t go to plan and do better
next time
to help them make their failures become
productive for me as a parent
that means that i’m trying to learn to
work with my children
on how they approach different exams and
tests that they undertake
what i want them to do is to be able to
view a test as an
opportunity to test their learning which
is what it’s really meant to do
it’s not meant to be just about the
score
to let them learn how do they use it to
identify the gaps in their knowledge
so that they can go back and understand
where they need to focus
to help them learn their strengths and
weaknesses
we’re preparing young people for a world
that is constantly changing
we know the often quoted statistics that
many of the jobs that they will be in
have not yet been created they will
change different career paths they will
move into different sectors
they will constantly need to learn and
adapt
i find often as adults we present this
uncertain future in a way that can
create fear
for the young people instead
let’s think about how do we create that
culture
where they can learn and adapt and know
how to improve
when i think back of the young people
that i’ve worked with over the years
the ones that have gone on to the
greatest success
were not the ones that got all the wins
and the awards
they were the ones that had failures and
challenges
and turned those into productive
failures
when they didn’t win an award they went
and asked for feedback
why did we not what criteria did we not
meet
they took advice from their business
mentors they heard the feedback that the
customers were giving them through
selling or not selling
they heard that information and they
converted it
into learning they have learned
they made the most of their dress
rehearsals
as for me i did go back i did do
the final performance in school i
faced that failure my teacher worked
with me to understand that lines aren’t
just for learning to say back
they serve a purpose and they had a cue
so i needed to understand the purpose
beside them
my mother who’s from this very city
worked with me to practice until i was
confident
and able to go back on stage i was
fortunate that i had a network of people
around me to support me
and help me learn to ensure that that
failure
became a productive one meant i was able
to turn
that bad dress rehearsal into a great
performance to re-establish the
relationship with my friends
and also learn that the worst could
happen
and i could recover
it’s time for us to change our
relationship with failure
let’s use that vocabulary to build a
language
so that failures can be used
productively
let’s create that culture’s support
around everybody at school
and in the workplace to encourage
feedback and learning
let’s recognize the failures and move
forward
just imagine what we could achieve then
you