The importance of being a failure

What a strange title you must be thinking, surely we don't fail we just find ways that don't work! or we re-frame "failure" in classic NLP style by reclassifying it as "feedback".  Well, yes there is value in both approaches, but I was recently inspired by an article in the Harvard Business Review written by a CEO who had constructed a "failure" wall in his office on which he encouraged employees to write their failures and what they learned from them.

What an interesting idea!  Could it be that we are so worried about failure, so keen to avoid it, side-step it, deny it, re-frame it that we are missing the importance of being a failure ourselves?

Ah but, I hear you say, failing is one thing "being a failure" is quite another as it suggests a state of being which affects our very identity.  What if being a failure is an important part of our identity?  If being a failure is part of what it means to be a human being, then can't we all relax a little, or a lot?  If failure is part of who I am, how might "owning" it be useful?

I might give myself permission to try impossible things, or dream impossible dreams.  I might take up hobbies that I have little hope of excelling at just for the fun of having a go.  I might put myself forward for promotions that seem well out of reach, or bid for contracts that seem impossible to achieve.  I might actually celebrate my failures and write books and articles about my learning.

And I might just inspire others to have a go at failing too!  What if the worse thing that could actually happen is not failure after all? What if we've all been misled?  What if the worse thing we could do is to deny that failure is part of the experience, a valuable part of the journey?  A question often asked by development coaches such as myself is "what would you do if you knew you could''t fail"?  but perhaps a better question would be "what would you do if failure simply didn't matter?"

Failure has the potential to provide the richest and the most valuable learning for all of us, if we would stop for long enough to embrace it!