Sparking Success: LinkedIn Book Club

We know intuitively, however, that without failure, we’re unlikely ever to experience dramatic success. And if we don’t share failure, our colleagues are more likely to make the same mistakes. Read more on how to move a team’s attitude toward failure in the #LinkedinBookClub excerpt from my new book, Sparking Success. To shift a team’s attitude toward failure requires fostering an environment of vulnerability, where colleagues are comfortable, eager even, to share their learning from every experiment they attempt. One way to do this is for the leader to host a failure party. I hear you guffaw but hear me out. One of the many reasons that Pixar’s mantra is always to ‘Display’ is to invite critique, sharing, building on ideas and socialising what isn’t working. A failure party is simply to celebrate that spirit of Display. Colleagues become more comfortable as psychological safety grows to push the boundaries of what they think is possible, knowing that their personal reputation does not depend on inauthentically trying to communicate an aura of omniscience. In the failure party, each person in the team who has explored a new avenue, experimented with a hypothesis, tested a prototype or interviewed a stakeholder or customer, and it did not go to plan, would share their activity, the result and, most importantly, the learning. Colleagues may ask questions, can build on the ideas and even pursue avenues that the speaker had not. The one thing that no one must do is belittle or criticise the speaker. Each dialogue ends with the conversation ‘what we learned here’. Some leaders of failure parties even toast every speaker when they finish with a ritual, be it ringing a bell or everyone shouting ‘Huzzah!!’ The speaker’s candour, vulnerability and creativity are acknowledged. The ‘party’ element, which can simply involve refreshment and an informal environment, is proposed in order to put people at ease as quickly as possible. The failure party is also a tremendous opportunity for the leader to share directly and obliquely what the boundaries are of acceptable risk. Over time, the team understands explicitly and implicitly what they can try right away and what they need to share first before trying.  For more on my book 'Sparking Success: Why every leaders needs to develop a creative mindset': https://lnkd.in/eKUyD4kF