HOLDING TENSIONS Blog: Embracing the FAIL

By Valerie HD Killebrew

Yes, I said it, that was a fail. 

A failure may be deemed as something that didn’t go as planned, have a non-desired outcome, or be something tried that simply didn’t work. Some failures may even result in negative repercussions. They may cause us surprise, embarrassment, frustration and all kinds of unwanted feelings. They should be avoided at all costs- right? 

Failures are often the things we fear. 

Over the years, I have become fascinated with the concept of embracing the “fail,” an acronym for a “First Attempt In Learning.” 

When I first learned about this concept, it instantly resonated with me. When examining our experiences with failure, I noticed that the details of why or how something failed are often left out. So, it’s actually a learning opportunity. As someone who tries to always see value in tough situations, this felt like a great practice in turning something that I was initially disappointed, frustrated, or potentially embarrassed about into something valuable, something actually desirable that yields lessons that can be applied in the future for myself and often others. 

Facing the Fail

Putting this idea into practice proved a bit more difficult. I faced discomfort at the need for vulnerability to acknowledge something truly failed. 

This was especially challenging to do in the workplace as I was a younger professional, eager to prove myself to my team, colleagues, and leadership. Part of building my own credibility to me meant defending my decisions and spotlighting what was working and how I was evolving. I even remember early on in my career informing a supervisor that our intended goal may not be reached because of certain circumstances. The response to that update was, “that’s not an option, work harder.” I recently had a family member who is in a new leadership role asked me, “what do you do when your team realizes you’ve made a big mistake? How do you recover?” Admitting something we tried didn’t work out the way we planned or even work out favorably is TOUGH! Let’s recognize it takes courage to face the fail. 

Dr. Brené Brown, world renowned research professor, spent decades studying and teaching about courage, vulnerability, and shame. Her TED talk, Power of Vulnerability, is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 60 million views. She discusses vulnerability in her book, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, “The definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness; it's our most accurate measure of courage. When the barrier is our belief about vulnerability, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to show up and be seen when we can't control the outcome?' When the barrier to vulnerability is about safety, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to create courageous spaces so we can be fully seen?” The Forbes Communications Council also released an article on the Twelve Benefits of Embracing Vulnerability in Leadership, such as making you relatable, driving trust and encouraging psychological safety. 

So, with all these benefits to being vulnerable and admitting something didn’t go as you had hoped or planned, now what? How can we translate this to our work at the intersections of culture, education, and social change?

From Fail to “First Attempt in Learning”

After being vulnerable and admitting something didn’t work, seeing a failure as a “First Attempt in Learning” takes critical reflection (a concept we employ a lot at Creative Generation; see Dr. Stephen Brookfield’s work on this here). I saw two ways to analyze the experience in effort to identify what lessons could be leveraged:

  • Identify what was lost: This is reflecting on what the intended outcome was and what was “lost”: this might be information, connections, intended learning or outcomes.

  • Identify what was found: This is reflecting on what was learned or gained upon reflection or feedback from others afterwards. These might be things that were a bonus or unintentionally gained. 

Knowing that others can often gain not just from your demonstration of vulnerability but also from your reflection on your failure, led me to conceptualize an activity called a “Failure Summit.” The idea is to engage individuals who have identified a recent “failure”- something that did not go to plan or result in the desired or intended outcome -and spend time with others to understand their actions from different angles, reflect on what learning was gained and how the work could be expanded and built upon for the future. 

Taking it to Action

In July 2022, we gave it a go: I facilitated the first Failure Summit with the Creative Generation team members at our annual retreat. I grounded our team in the idea and proposed process. Here is a basic overview:

Part of this orientation involved agreeing upon engagement guidelines such as active listening, speaking truth and seeking to understand. These guidelines were set in effort to create a greater sense of safety in the group in hopes those who share will feel courageous to share their stories.

Three volunteers offered to share their own stories of a time they felt they failed at something. Their stories detailed what was intended and what actually happened. The last piece of their stories included a personal reflection on what they perceived had been lost through the experience and what had been gained. 

The last part of the summit was a group reflection that was grounded in Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process as well as the Problems of Practice: Peer Consultancy Protocol. Both the sharers and listeners were able to acknowledge the experience, ask and answer questions and have a brief dialogue about the experience, the reflection and how the lessons could/do apply beyond the particular scenario. 

The dialogue in the reflections from both sharers and listeners was active and insightful. Discussing a failure and dissecting the experience landed differently than a more routinized project reflection or post mortem. In an article titled Learning From Others’ Failures: The Effectiveness of Failure Stories for Managerial Learning, the researchers discuss this power “failure stories” have on engagement and learning: “We argue that failure stories are more likely than success stories to activate the central route so that learners are motivated to allocate cognitive resources and intensively elaborate on the content of the stories. More specifically, failure stories should seize attention and elicit reflection so that the learner actively decomposes the story and analyzes the critical elements that were responsible for failure.”

I left the experience excited and inspired to continue thinking about this idea of reframing failures, the process of a Failure Summit and how to support others to hold that tension between admitting failure and seeing (and embracing) their first attempts in learning. 

So, when’s the last time you “failed” at something? What was lost? What was gained? Who did you or could you tell?

1. An adapted process for helping a program team think more expansively about a particular dilemma, based on the work of Gene Thompson-Grove as part of the Coalition of Essential Schools' National Learning Faculty Program and later revised as part of the National School Reform Faculty Projec