Many high achievers have experienced little to no failure during their years growing up. Due to high skill levels and relentless effort, these top performers excel at sports, school, and in their lives in general. While the road takes a lot of effort, some even move through college with a 4.0 GPA and avoid most types of failure altogether. 

But then the real adventure begins. These winners inevitably encounter some level of turbulence out in the real world, and high functioning professional workplaces are a major area where this can happen. Everyone else has been rolling for years or even decades, and in walks the new kid on the block. Despite ample passion and want-to, perfection is simply no longer possible, and a few mistakes occur. These young professionals now find themselves in uncharted, dangerous waters.

At this moment each person faces a fork in the road. Go left and it feels like the world is ending. As Brene Brown says, this realm is “I am a failure”. Here fear rules and a person is insecure, embarrassed, and defensive. 

In my years with Chick-fil-A I have seen this play out time and again. A younger employee will make even a small mistake, and sometimes they will get stuck dwelling on it for a full week. They hang their head and display a visible lack of confidence. At times they will even begin trying to hide mistakes from their leaders in an effort to avoid feeling terrible about not hitting the mark. 

On the flip side, when a mistake occurs, a person can choose to go to the right, where the failure becomes an opportunity to learn something and to course correct in the future. Here creativity rules and it is simply “I failed”, not “I am a failure”. With the lesson learned here the person is able to fail FAST by rebounding quickly, getting back in the game, and getting some wins in the win column again. The key rests on avoiding the same mistake in the future so as to avoid this becoming an ongoing pattern.

Left or Right?

The question becomes which path will be chosen, left or right, any time there is a failure. No realistic person expects perfection from someone else, but to respond quickly and positively is a requirement. Leaders must be quick to address the failures of their people while focusing on how to help them learn and move forward. Leaders should function like professors. If an employee turns in work that is not up to standard, give it back to them and encourage them that they can do better and that you believe in them but that they must fix the issue. In contrast, dwelling on mistakes for TOO long while continuing to look backwards can demoralize employees. But ignoring mistake altogether leaves the employee to wallow in it while not learning anything from it.

Core Causes

What are some of the root causes of failures in young professionals?

1. Lack of systems. An employee will be asked to do something, and they respond with “I got it” but then lack any system to ensure that they don’t forget. Paper planners, phone reminders, email reminders, etc. are simple systems that ensure that important items do not fall through the cracks. Early in their careers, employees are unaware of their need for strong systems and thus they miss things. 
2. Focusing on the wrong thing. Employees often have numerous things that they need to get done. Lack of ability to effectively prioritize what is most important can lead to someone working on the fifth most important thing (which is often whatever they enjoy the most) while failing at whatever is the most important thing.
3. Lack of effort. Early in their careers, some individuals lack an understanding of the effort and consistency required to be a professional. Their output ebbs and flows based on how much sleep they get or even just how they are feeling on any given day. This inconsistency leads to mistakes being made simply due to lack of putting in the hard work required to get everything done at a high level of quality.

In closing, the words of legendary women’s basketball coach Pat Summit sum it up so well: “Make yourself accountable for mistakes. How will you ever get better if you are never wrong?”

One tangible action:

Commit right now to failing FAST and building forward whenever your next failure occurs, and to helping others do the same. Do this the next time that a failure occurs and then see if you are pleased with the outcome.

Pro tip:

Failure is only of value to learn and move forward from if you gave your best effort and still came up short. If a person gave say only 70%, then the lesson for the next time is simply to try harder, and you haven’t really learned anything. Give your best effort, and require this of others as well.