Act - fail - learn

 Isn't it interesting that when you are open to hearing the cue for a different conversation, it's very easy to go there almost immediately? This week I seem to have been having conversations about authenticity and the importance of learning from failure (or more helpfully, things that didn't quite go to plan).

In most walks of life we fear failure - after all, we are taught from an early stage that's its important to win. Just look at my daughter's lessons in school - my youngest (just turned 8) has a weekly spelling test and we have been praising her for habitually getting 9 out of 10 with the occasional 10 out of 10. At 8 with some relatively tricky words, that feels pretty good, doesn't it? So I was shocked when we got to parents evening to be shown the spellings star chart where you only get a star if you've scored full marks. Funnily enough we were lagging behind. So now she's feeling bad for having tried hard but not quite scored top marks, rather than encouraged because actually she's consistently doing pretty well. I'm certainly no slouch but I resent my child thinking success is all about top marks - the effort she's put in counts for so much in my book.

In the work place it differs massively depending on the sector and culture (think aviation investigations v medical cover ups), but more and more organisations are beginning to understand there must be an allowance for failure otherwise who will ever be compelled to 'fess up as to what went wrong and share learning on how to avoid it in the future. In the new digital age, Generation Y expects to fail, and learn, and fail again before success. That's scary for Generation X.

The authenticity piece in this is that so often when asked how things are going we give an overly positive response ("How it's going?" "Just fine!"), rather than an honest reply which might include some of the challenges and how you've worked to overcome them. We do this all the time - we are conditioned in our professional lives to be always at the top of our game - that's just not possible. A bit of authenticity about adversity might make the workplace a stronger, more resilient place to be.

So what does this mean in a quest for purpose? I guess it's the realisation to have the courage to turn up our radars and see the opportunities for trying something new, stretching some different muscles and maybe accepting that for every 3 new things, 2 might not be right. I suspect most of us would be very happy to take that risk if the one thing was spot on and made the difference between a dull day and a brilliant one.

So in a spirit of not self framing with all the reasons why I can't, my challenge to myself is to remember all the reasons why I can and more to the point, why I should!