That’s the theory, anyway. But, outside of elite sports environments, how many of us can really treat pressure as a privilege, and enjoy the freedom to fail?

Broken Promises

It’s the time of year when failure is in the foreground. How are your New Year resolutions going?

Not well is my guess. Research shows that most resolutions have been broken already. January 17 – yes, just seventeen days in – was dubbed National Ditch Your Resolutions Day. Two-thirds of my own resolutions (eating less chocolate and journaling every day, if you’re interested) didn’t even make it that far.

And research shows that around half of us expect to fail anyway! I guess we’re picking promises that don’t matter that much to us.

So why do we bother? What’s in it for us?

Do we have some inbuilt urge to fail?

Maybe we’re just not very good at figuring out what’s really important to us. We’re expecting failure – so anything that works must be significant and worth paying more attention to.

It’s also a safe way to test our skills. And if we quickly spot things we can’t do, I guess we can focus on areas where we show at least some promise.

If nothing else, it’s an annual reminder to reflect on our goals, maybe talk to others about them, test new strategies, and aim to improve on last year. Even if we then forget about them for the remaining eleven months, before starting the whole cycle again!

Riskier Behavior

But, of course, we don’t always have the luxury to take risks. Many challenges we take on, in and out of work, involve much more jeopardy. And many of us have a severely curtailed capacity to take risks at all.

As I joke about failed resolutions, I’m very aware that I was born into privilege because of factors like my gender, ethnicity and health. I have resources and support networks to fall back on. So, like my New Year resolutions, many of the risks I take in life aren’t really risks at all.

Many aspects of our circumstances and personalities influence our attitude to failure. For example, in our Expert Interview about “Fail More,” author Bill Wooditch says that Elon Musk considers a 90 percent failure rate to be good. “He'll say, ‘I'll take it and, you know, even if I fail 100 percent, 100 percent of the time, then people can take my mistakes and make something from them to improve in the future.’” But... Elon Musk has a track record of success, a couple hundred billion dollars in the bank, and fairly good self-confidence by all accounts.

So how can the rest of us free ourselves to fail?

Failure Is an Option

It’s a valuable mindset if you can manage it. Inventor Thomas Edison is famous for talking about finding 10,000 ways that don’t work, rather than suffering from each “failed” attempt.

And in “Experimentation Works,” Harvard professor Stefan H. Thomke presents many persuasive examples of organizations harnessing the power of testing, failing, learning, and growing and succeeding as a result.

So, how do you adopt this conscious, concerted, confident attitude to failure?

Embracing Failure, for Us and Our People

First, here are three things we can all do.

1. Weigh up the risks and rewards. Ensure you’re doing things that are worth failing at. Remind yourself of everything you’ve got to fall back on – as well as everything you’ll gain – if you fail.
2. Mitigate the risks. What safety measures can you put in place – to protect your reputation and self-esteem as much as anything tangible in your business?
3. Embrace the privilege and purpose of failure. Seize opportunities to experiment and make testing yourself a habit. It’ll start feeling a little less risky each time, and you’ll see more and more of the learning that failure brings.

And, what about managers? How can they create the right environment that enables and encourages people to take healthy risks?

1. Encourage everyone to offer ideas and answers. Even if some ideas seem off-the-wall, are they? What if they actually worked? Encourage people to try their ideas out in a purposeful way by focusing your energies on what problem might get solved if the idea is a success. Build a culture of psychological safety and worry-free experimentation.
2. Praise what people learn from failing. Even if something wasn’t a success, there will undoubtedly be things that you learn from your experiments. Use retrospectives to ask your team members: what did you learn? What could have been done differently? What will you do next?
3. Assess failures with the heart as well as the head. Research into our responses to failure shows that focusing on emotions can help us to understand failure better and motivate us to go again.

So, if you’re in the majority of people who’ve already broken their New Year resolutions, don’t lose heart. And don’t give up. In fact, celebrate! There’s plenty to gain from finding even more opportunities to safely try and fail.

We just need to be more purposeful in our experimentation, do it all the time (not just days one to seventeen!), and make sure that we learn from our experiences – whether we succeed in a particular challenge or not.

That way, as individuals and teams, we’ll enjoy the freedom that comes from being able to fail – and fail well.

What's Next?

Ready to risk more failure this year? Keen to get your team experimenting and learning?

Here are some resources from Mind Tools to help you enjoy more freedom to fail – and opportunity to flourish! – in 2024.

Fixed Vs. Growth Mindset. In this video, learn to adopt more of a growth mindset, to boost healthy risk-taking and resilience.

Business Experiments. Use our step-by-step guide to taking intelligent risks.

Winning From Failing. In our Expert Interview, author Josh Seibert explains why learning from failure is key to business success.

Tip of the Week

How to Worry Less About What People Think of You

By Lucy Bishop, Mind Tools Senior Editor

One problem I really struggle with and, if I’m being really honest with myself, probably have done for most of my life is being way too worried about what other people think about me.

Now, most people worry to some extent about how they come across. This is natural... we instinctively, as humans, have a desire to fit in with others and seek out other people’s opinions. But what if that fear of other people’s opinions (or FOPO, if you like an acronym) is holding us back? What if it’s actually harming us by causing us anxiety or by damaging our self-esteem? What if our desire to fit in means losing our own sense of self?

According to psychologist Dr Michael Gervais, author of “The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You,” if you struggle with FOPO there are some things you can do to limit its impact:

1. Focus on what you can control. While we cannot control how someone might judge us, we can control our reaction to it. In other words, if you know you’re being true to yourself, being your authentic self and acting as such, why should you really care? And, if you decide you don’t need to care all that much, why waste time worrying about it?
2. Live by your values. If someone does think differently or has a very opposing opinion to you, that’s all good; it’s an opportunity to learn and question things. But it doesn’t mean you automatically have to agree with them or their worldview. You have no obligation to do so. Instead, Gervais says, “Even when there is somebody that their opinion of how well you’re doing or who you are holds weight in the trajectory of your future, make sure you’re living your life on your terms, in harmony with the suggestions or the opinions that they might have.”

For more confidence-boosting tips, check out our video, Top Tips for Boosting Your Self-Esteem.

Pain Points Podcast

Do you ever feel like an impostor? This week the Pain Points team take on the complex topic of “impostor syndrome” – that feeling of being a fake and a fraud, often despite the evidence.

What can you do to overcome these feelings? What can managers do to help? And is it even real? Find out the answers to all this and more in this week’s podcast!

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News Roundup

This Week's Global Workplace Insights

Are You a "Personality Hire"?

Do you know every person in your company? Are you the one always asking people about themselves? Do you believe time spent talking about things other than work at work, is just as important as the work? Then, you might be a personality hire.

Yes... yet another term that has been trending recently on TikTok, it’s all about #PersonalityHires. These are the people that are hired, not just for their skills and experience, but also because they have that special ability of bringing positive energy to a workplace.

That’s not to say the term hasn’t received some backlash, with some naysayers arguing that problems can occur if someone’s personality is being prized over their actual ability to do the job they were hired to do. On the other hand, hiring someone who has the likability factor can bring added value to an organization. For example, by motivating staff, improving communication and collaboration, building a positive culture, and injecting fun and enthusiasm into work.

Oscars Nominations Demonstrate the Importance of Celebration and Commiseration

Oscars season is once again upon us. And, as usual, while there were some nice surprises – Justine Triet being nominated for Best Director for "Anatomy of a Fall" – there were also some shock snubs, with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie missing out on nominations for "Barbie," despite it being the most successful movie of 2023.

All that aside, a video showing the reactions to those who were nominated demonstrates just how important it is to celebrate success, if and when it does come your way.

The problem is we’re not all that good at it. In fact, most organizations have become worse at it since the pandemic. This, despite research revealing that employees who do receive regular recognition at work are 3.7 times more likely to be engaged at work and are more strongly connected to their organization’s culture.

According to Gallup and Workhuman’s 2023 report “Empowering Workplace Culture Through Recognition,” there are five main pillars that can help organizations to celebrate and recognize their employees more effectively:

1. Fulfilling employees’ recognition expectations in terms of salary and praise.
2. Making praise authentic – not just a checklist.
3. Giving personalized praise and feedback.
4. Being equitable – giving praise fairly, without playing favorites.
5. Embedding recognition in culture – so that it’s integrated in the day-to-day.

If you want to learn more about how to recognize, reward and celebrate your people more effectively, check out our article, Celebrating Achievement.

See you next week for more member-exclusive content and insight from the Mind Tools team!