The "Make Space for Failure" Activity
Last week on the podcast, we discussed the difference makers - the people who are always on top of the list when we need somebody who can get things done and lead us well. But they often tend to be perfectionists, which leads to putting all the weight on their shoulders for their team's success.
So I want to dive deeper into this topic by analyzing Liz Wiseman's research that explores the idea of creating an environment that embraces mistakes and failures as opportunities for growth.
Leaders need to understand the significance of embracing mistakes and failures as catalysts for personal and team development. Tune in for more insights!
On this episode you’ll hear…
The importance of reflecting on personal mistakes or failures
An introduction to Liz Wiseman's study on creating an environment that allows for mistakes within teams
Differentiating between when it is okay and not to fail
How to connect risk-taking to innovation and growth
Understanding nimble leadership and its significance
Ready for more?
Listen in:
-
** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
When was the last time you made a mistake or failed in your work or in your leadership or in your life, you can probably think of something that happened recently because we make mistakes all the time. And failure is truly a part of how we learn and grow, right? You've heard me say on this podcast, I love the design thinking perspective of fail fast, fail forward, meaning grow from your failure, learn from it, figure out how to iterate and try something new. But last podcast episode, we're talking about difference makers. These are also our impact players, our MVP is the people who are always on top of the list when we need somebody who can get things done and lead us well. But here's the thing, something about difference makers is that they often tend to be perfectionist, and that's a really hard thing to break. Because often, they have been different speakers on their teams for so long that they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders when it comes to success of the team. So for some of you who listened to last week's episode, and really identified with a) being a difference maker on your team, or within your organization, or b) leading someone who is an impact player or a difference maker within your organization, I thought of an activity that Liz Wiseman does. She's the author of multipliers. And that's another name we can use for this group of folks who are constantly outperforming others. But she came up with an activity to help make space for mistakes within teams. And it's something that you could do with your team at a staff development day, or part of a retreat. And I think it's really, really important because it's an activity that will help your leaders at all levels, not just the impact players, but leaders throughout your team employees throughout your team understand when and where is the appropriate place to take risks. I think we often hear organizations saying that their culture values risk taking, and they value innovation. And that's what they're striving for. But how do we connect that greater core value and vision for innovation and growth and doing that through resilience and risk and failure? How do we set some base level understanding are foundational pieces of information that we can portray to our teams so that they know when it's safe to actually do something risky, or lean into something that could lead to failure, because that's a hard line sometimes to know. And that can cause some of the pressure that people on your teams are feeling. And when it comes to performance, they might feel this heavy, heavy weight of the world like is that impact players hold but weight of the world on our shoulders and yet not know when it's okay to go outside of boundary lines and to let themselves live a little and perhaps fail. But hopefully in the right direction that we will be walking towards innovation and productivity and higher performance, right. So this activity that Liz Wiseman came up with, is simple, you're gonna grab post it notes, that's the tool that you need, and your team. And on a wall or a whiteboard, you're going to create two columns. On one side, you're gonna write okay to fail. And on the other side of the line, you're gonna write not okay to fail. So those are your two column titles, okay to fail and not okay to fail. And here's what you're gonna do, you're gonna ask people on your team, to write on post it note, and list out various scenarios where it's okay to fail. And they're going to do the same for the other side where it's not okay to fail, and they're gonna put those posts up on the board. And you're gonna leave time for people to do that with some freedom, where you're gonna say, you know, for the next 10 minutes, we're gonna fill this out. And so you want people to put tasks up there that they identify with, for their roles to write and for the team, so you want them to be thinking individually and more broadly for the team. But then, here's what you're gonna do. At that point, when people have their post it notes up on the board, you're gonna create time where you would have them to debate debate which category each post it note belongs in, because while one person might put, oh, it's totally okay to fail on this area of our work. Another person might say what? That's a non negotiable that is absolutely not okay, right. So let folks debate and figure out where they want to put them on the board. Because you want to push them to be thinking about as many scenarios from as many perspectives as possible, especially to go into the ok to fail category. Those are going to be the most difficult for people to come up with, especially if you their leader is facilitating This activity, then after you've set up where the posts can land, and remember, you're letting your team's work this out to you're a part of it, but let them kind of wrestle with this, you're going to give them the opportunity to group and to identify themes. So putting scenarios together that are alike with those post it notes and themes in each category that feel like they belong. So you might have a category where you know, like, it's okay to fail when the learning is greater than the cost, or we have additional resources, it might be that it's a new project. And so New Project launches, there's a season of failure associated with adoption, right. And then on the flip side, it's not okay to fail when, and you're gonna have major themes that come out of there, where you're gonna identify them and actually specify what that scene would be like, it violates our values, or that is a specific client who we can't risk that type of mistake on. Or maybe you'll identify that, that is a brand damaging area for you. And your company, right or your team. It could also include that it could hurt someone else that could be career ending, and for someone on your team or a leader, or it could cause a result in someone getting fired if you lean that way. So you, you are going to group those themes. And the beauty of that is you can begin to record those principles, right, and have this as a shared language and shared document with a team that's up in front of you. Because then here's what you're gonna do, you're gonna find a way to talk about this as a risk and innovation statement of the team. Right? We know that when teams collaborate and work together and are high performing and high functioning and effective and productive and communicating well, that they naturally tend to be more innovative, because they're safe spaces. And there are enough checks and balances for failure, but then they know how to pick themselves up and keep going. Right fast iteration is is the name of the game. So create some sort of risk and innovation statement based off of what you found on that chart up on the wall with post it notes, the themes that you've identified, where you can sum it up in like one sentence with your team of when it's okay to fail and when it's not, because what you're doing is creating boundary lines, right? When I was teaching at the university level, day one, going through the syllabus, the main thing that students wanted to know, going through that syllabus are what are the assignments that we have over the course of the next semester? And what is the general outline of information that needs to be in that assignment to get the grade that I want? Right? They didn't have capacity on day one to be thinking about? What is the best paper that I can write? Or what is a topic or theme that really tethers in with the texts that we'll be reading across the semester? Or how can I really show in this project that I have been studying these leadership topics and really understanding them and synthesizing them? They're not thinking about that? No, they're just thinking about how do we bottom line this? What at a basic level do I need to know? So that I can either stay above the line and succeed, and hopefully not fat? Right? So it's no different with our teams in the workplace. They need to know when we as leaders bottom line it, when is it okay to fail? And when is it not okay to fail? Okay, so what's interesting is Liz Wiseman, who came up with this activity and does it in workshops with different teams do this with banana republic. And here's what happened. So they're already in there, okay to fail and not okay to fail posted stuff on the thing. They start grouping them by themes. Then by the end of the day, their bottom lining, or by the end of the session, their bottom lining what their primary theme is. And Banana Republic, as you may know, is a retail company. Do you know what their bottom line was? Like their base level, this is when it's not okay to fail. They were able to sum it up in one word. One word summarize the entire workshop and chart of when is it not okay to fail. And the that was December. Because if you have ever worked in retail, you know, that holiday season is the most important season for any company in that space. The holiday push is the most important season in that space because it's when you're doing a huge chunk of your sales for the year. And it's when you're also closing in on your end of your sales goals. Right. So there's a lot of pressure in December on teams like banana republic. And so the President in the room was able to sum it up with December, that is the one month that it is not okay to fail. And if it is associated with a project launching in December or a push happening in December, or anything related to December, that's off limits. But you know what? I love that that's what they were able to boil it down to in that room doing this activity, because that one word, not only identifies a really memorable way to know like, is this risk I'm about to take worth it? And will this be okay? But it also gives framework for the 11 months out of the year that are not summed up into summer, right? There are 11 other months when employees on that team standing in that room for Banana Republic know that they can choose and take ownership of the risks that they are taking in the projects that they're taking on, or the innovation that they're shooting for, or the ways that they're trying to think outside the box because it's safe to fail in those seasons. And they've been given permission to do so. So thinking about our leaders who are holding everything together, they are our glue on our teams. How might this activity impact them where they would maybe feel empowered, to see opportunity to innovate, to risk, I'm going to throw out a key one here to perhaps delegate, maybe there's an opportunity to have a conversation with them of the risk is not so high that you cannot delegate this to someone and train someone out to do that right to help take some of the load off their shoulders. But then also think about the ways that in framing this, you have opportunity to teach leaders to become more nimble, to approach risk with wide eyes and consider that there is opportunity to think more innovatively and to think outside the box. And to really empower them to see when and where is the right place, you might not be able to sum it up in one word, like December. But you might have the opportunity to really identify some key places where you either need to bring clarity to the way your team works, or set up new rules or new guidelines for how they work. So try this activity. If you do let me know if you don't consider doing it just at your own desk for yourself. And see if you can identify the places in spaces where you can be more innovative and where you can lead more nimbly tomorrow. Cheers