Someone recently asked me what my professional superpower is. It took me some post-call reflection to realize it's probably this:
I'm a super-failer.
I've had several conversations with clients recently about how to counter perfectionist tendencies. For me, it has come down to training this superpower, and constantly. While I have no data to back this up, my hunch is that I fail at least 10 times more than the average person throughout the day. I'm actually quite disciplined about it.
As a child, I was so paralyzed by the fear of failure that I wouldn't even attempt anything that seemed out of my wheelhouse. Of course, as a kid, I didn't actually know what my wheelhouse was or could be, so I conceptualized it based on what I saw my parents do. My mom was a writer with a background in theater, and my dad was a business owner. So, I entered writing contests, tried out for the leads in plays, and ran clubs at school.
What I didn't do was sports. After all, athleticism just didn't "run in our blood." (To be fair, I did play basketball in the fourth grade, but I never even tried to make a shot because I couldn't deal with the risk of missing.)
So, when I decided to become an aerialist as an adult, I came face-to-face with my anxiety around failure. Not only was I failing often, but I was doing so in front of a group of other people. The physicality was certainly a struggle, but more than anything, it was a mental challenge. Yet, every time I made a mistake, I realized I could learn something new about myself, the apparatus, or my environment. And the more I grew as an athlete, the more inspired I felt to keep testing and expanding my limits in everyday life.
The resulting "failure practice" I've adopted is still physical in nature, as that seems to work really well for me. And here's how it works:
I like to dream up something a bit absurd to do that may or may not be possible... like dribbling a ball with my feet while upside down in a headstand. I aim for a scenario that loosely fits the following criteria:
Perceived difficulty: 9.5 / 10
Perceived usefulness: 0 / 10
Absurdity is actually significant here because it keeps the focus on the process rather than on developing a skill I may legitimately need.
Once I have my goal, I prepare myself for experimentation: I think about the types of balls I could use, the force at which I could "throw" the ball, and the various movements my legs could make in the air. Then, I test my hypotheses in a gym to get comfortable publicly failing over and over and over...
My "failure practice" has not only helped me take myself less seriously, but it's also made me a more confident problem solver. Interestingly, I've also found it to be contagious. During one session, I remember looking around and seeing more and more people in headstands, trying to pick up random objects with their feet. They wanted to know what was possible, too, and soon we were running experiments as a team.
High-performing leaders, I'm talking to you now. This is really important.
If you want to develop a workplace culture rooted in experimentation and innovation, think about your own relationship with failure first:
Do you give yourself opportunities to fail often?
Does your team or company get to see you fail?
How do you respond (both privately and publicly) when you don't achieve the expected outcome?
If your palms are sweating from considering the above, just remember: it's never too late to become the superhero of your own story. Take a breath and start developing those powers.
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