In today’s social media-driven world it is easy to get caught up in the pursuit of perfect. Pursuing the perfect spouse, job, kids, or bank account balance and comparing our version of those things to the “perfect” version that others portray on different platforms completely skews that it is okay to fail. Let that sink in – it is okay to fail.

As a husband, father, team leader, and coach, I see daily instances of comparison to the perceived “perfect” or a fear of failure. I’m not immune to it either. I catch myself doing the comparisons. “I’m not as smart as <insert name here>” or “I don’t earn as much as <another person>.”

I also see instances where the fear of failure is paralyzing. I see it in team members who are afraid to try new solutions to problems. I see it in my children when a project doesn’t turn out exactly as they envisioned and, to them, it’s “ruined” or “terrible.”

Some of my best learning experiences, personally and professionally, started with failure. I failed. I messed up. I didn’t get the job. The code I had worked on for hours didn’t work as expected. Failure made me stronger, more resilient, driven. I’ve had several great teachers and mentors in my life, and failure has been one of them.

Failure as a Leader

Leaders are often seen as “the guy with all the answers.” I certainly don’t have all the answers. I have many that I’ve picked up over the years, but certainly not all the answers for my team. 

Personal failure as a leader reinforces for the team that it is okay to be imperfect; however, how leaders respond to that failure reinforces how the team will react. Teams whose leaders fail but dust themselves off and try again will follow suit. Successful team leaders portray the behaviors they expect from their teams. Show the team that failing is acceptable, but the expectation is that they rethink their approach and charge up the hill again.

Leaders must embrace failure within the team and encourage team members who’ve hit that wall. The leader’s role is to help assess what happened and what new learnings come from it to continue moving forward. A good leader will help the team work through the failure, not blast them for failing. There may be correction or coaching needs resulting from an “oops”, but beating the team down doesn’t help anyone in the long run.

Failure as a Team Member

Some of the best teams I’ve worked with didn’t have a standard of perfect; however, we did have an extremely high standard for our quality, but not perfect. Pursuit of perfection often results in “paralysis by analysis.” We over analyze a situation, attempting to cover every possible outcome to build the perfect widget. The high-functioning teams I’ve been a part of had members who tried different solutions. We missed the mark on many of them; however, each failed attempt was a learning experience.

The best leaders I’ve had allowed their teams the room to try new solutions and support them through a failure. They helped our team mitigate risk associated with a new method by pointing out some boundaries to be aware of or providing a contrarian viewpoint. They allowed space to work and try new things, but they were the first person to help pick us up when we crashed and burned.

Normalizing the Imperfect

It’s okay if things aren’t perfect or don’t measure up to the image protrayed on social media or whatever the comparison “standard” is. As leaders, and team members, we have to normalize the notion that not every attempt results in the perfect widget. But we do have to normalize a culture of learning from those attempts and not making the same mistakes more than once.

A famous quote from Thomas Edison usually comes to mind when discussing learning from mistakes.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Thomas Edison

I’ve always looked at my failed attempts in this manner. We only completely “fail” when we stop trying. Keep going.