How to Learn from Failure By NOT Just Giving it Fake Lip Service
It sounds so, so good to say there is no failure, only learning. Especially in the moments immediately following a failure. However, the truth is that most failure is failure because most people don’t know how to learn from failure. Learning from failure doesn’t just happen because someone is a good person and they work hard. On the contrary, failure doesn’t care if you work hard and it definitely doesn’t care that you’re a good person.
In order to learn from failure, research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business suggest that one must do at least 2 things.
First and foremost, if you want to learn from failure you must “tune-in” as the researchers describe it. Going through the motions just doesn’t cut it. Learning from failure requires paying close attention to the details and separating the ego from the causes of failure. This means focusing intensely on the causes of failure that are under one’s control and not using what one doesn’t control to excuse the failure. To put it differently, those who have big egos, make excuses, and ignore details don’t learn from failure.
Secondly, in order to learn from failure, you must also experience success. In fact, the University of Chicago research strongly supports that you learn more from success than failure. This suggest the need for a trial and error process that supports incremental corrections pushing one in the right direction. Failure followed by more failure will not support learning. Instead, failure followed by success then more failure and then more success is a more realistic process. While one can’t always engineer a trial and error process in the real world, a progression of difficulty or a breakdown of goals into logical bites is possible.
In short, learning from failure is a process that requires deliberate practice. It doesn’t just happen. So, the next time you get ready to tell someone that there is no failure only learning, think about how you can actually help them implement a process to learn first.