Today has been a really interesting day, as a couple of things have happened that are kind of all connected. Firstly, one of my colleagues is in the process of changing his customer base from large to small clients, as he thinks he would be better suited to it, while struggles with some of the large companies, due to the sheer number of project people involved and spread across the world. It is just not his thing. Second was with a client of mine who stacked a group of employees into an admin course I ran, even though most of them were not the kinds of people interested in or capable of performing in that role. And third, was in a meeting where I had an idea an idea for something and because it was my idea, I should take it forward, even though I am not suited for the application of the idea.
These are common enough scenarios and take on many forms, but what is interesting is how we judge based on the results of them. My colleague feels like a failure, even though he is very good at what he does. My clients feel they are now in over their head, because the content of the session was outside of their skillsets and the idea I have will be judged on the result of my activity, rather than the activity of someone qualified to develop, apply and implement it.
The problem is that when we identify with our failures even though our skillset wasn't suited, we are judging ourselves as the proverbial, fish climbing a tree. The failure made might be because of us, but it isn't necessarily our fault. My colleague didn't choose his customer base originally, the participants were selected by their organization and I can't help it if there are no open resources to take the idea forward other than me.
What is more important to recognize in failure than the failure itself, are the reasons for the failure and whether corrective action needs to be taken. It isn't always possible to "retrain" skills, so if there is value in performing the activity, new resources may need to be brought in. I would far rather have my idea driven by someone else than myself, because the idea is decent and deserves more skill and attention than I am able to provide it, even if I did have more time to commit to it.
Failure is an interesting concept when it comes to judgement and I have written a few posts on it over the years, but the thing with it is, failure happens before it is recognized as failure. For example, putting the wrong person in the position or course, or having the wrong person take an idea forward is the point of failure, it isn't at the time of performance. Yes, there are ways to mitigate the risk (like doing pre-mortems), but there is only so much a person can do and when they are doing their best, there is nothing more they could possible have done.
When talking to my colleague, I was saying how intuitively we feel like we make decent judgements because we make so many a day, without the feedback of whether we were correct. We judge people we see and at the time of judgement we feel like we have made a good call, but unless there is confirmation, we can't know - but there usually isn't. However, when we do get the feedback and are proven wrong, it becomes an outlier in our experience, the one wrong judgement in the last 1000, it just happens that we only got feedback on 2 of those thousand, giving us a 50% strike rate, while we feel we are batting at 99.9.
I have friends who tell me they are good judges of character, yet in another conversation will be complaining about how the person they have recently met turned out not to be what they had expected. At what point do they recognize that their judgement is not as good as they feel it is? Intuition is a tricky horse to handle, because it informs our judgement based on past experience of feeling right, but doesn't necessarily carry all the information of all the times it was wrong.
A lot of people like to identify themselves with their failures, a lot of people also like to only recognize their successes. This makes it like a gambler who only brags about the odd win between the sea of loss, which is obviously an unhealthy position to take, if the losses are never assimilated into the world-view for developing better judgement. Or like the depressive who only focuses on the negatives, without acknowledging all of the other feelings they might have between.
It is an imbalanced view of the world and one that will more likely lead to far more pain than resolution, as it limits the amount of data available to inform decision making in the future. And of course, it sets up a cycle of polarization in emotional state, rather than a balanced and more nuanced position. We become continually pushed and pulled by the acute extremes and forget that most of life is lived in the middle.
Some people take the "failure is not an option" approach, but to actually live this in conditions that do not demand it, means to not do much at all, not explore possibility and potential, not to go out on a limb and test the strength of the ability. I'd rather fail than live in a cage of my own design, I'd rather be in over my head, than cruise by on a cloud, but I want to be able to recognize when I am not ready and have to possibility to change direction. I think this is a skill in itself, both the recognition and the ability to prepare for a pivot.
Failure is a human concept and happens entirely in the head, but if we consider it well and learn from it, it generally holds far more value in the lesson than the cost of the failure itself. It is even possible to get that lesson from others - but there is nothing stickier than paying the cost directly - at least occasionally.
We all fall down.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]