Do You Feel Like You Are Failing At Your Job?

Three strategies when you feel like you are failing at work.

Dede Henley

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Photo: Getty Previously published on Forbes

First and foremost, here’s what you need to know: When you feel like you are failing at work, it doesn’t mean YOU are a failure. And this is important to remember. In their book Humility is the New Smart, Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig point out that as humans, “we tend to ‘defend, deny and deflect’ when confronted with failure.

Our evolutionary fight-flee-or freeze response is triggered by fear of failure and embarrassment that interferes with our ability to engage in creativity, critical and innovative thinking, and emotional engagement with others.”

In other words, if you tell yourself that you are a failure, you’re unlikely to be able to engage the emotional distance necessary to reflect on what happened and learn from the situation. You are more likely to go into a tailspin of remorse, anger and blame.

Most of us have had no formal training in how to think, listen, learn or experiment through inquiry. No one really taught us how to emotionally engage, to manage emotions, to collaborate, or embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. Instead, we sometimes get invested in being liked or admired by others and making sure we don’t look bad. We want to be right. We are intent on not making mistakes.

In the process, we’re doing ourselves a disservice. As Daniel Dennett writes in Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, “Mistakes are not just opportunities for learning; they are, in an important sense, the only opportunity for learning or making something truly new.”

3 Steps for Reframing Failure

I don’t use the word “failure” anymore. I prefer the word “breakdown,” which I define simply as an interruption in what you thought was going to happen. Things just didn’t go the way you anticipated. A breakdown typically causes either a surprise or an upset, or some kind of disturbance.

Being upset about the breakdown isn’t a choice; it’s an automatic emotional response. But the key is to build “muscle”…

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Dede Henley

Founder of Henley Leadership Group. Developing leaders who create happy, productive workplaces. Thought Leader | Executive Coach | Forbes Contributor | Speaker