I have colleagues on here who will baulk at the word ‘failure’. But hear me out!
Inclusive Delegation is one of the courses that I facilitate in my Inclusive Leadership consultation work. Recently, I made the point to some directors, that when delegating they ought to learn to invest in failure. The immediate response was, “What? Huh? What on earth are you talking about?” This led to a passionate discussion about the (false) need to succeed with no margins for error. For some reason, I explained, we fall into the trap of thinking that what we want to be achieved when delegating has to be perfect. Then to guarantee this, our delegatees turn out to be risk-averse and cautious. This almost invariably results in stunted growth and linear, predictable results but with diminishing returns.
Top leaders will tell you that part of the act of delegation is to allow for margins of experiment and self-determination, empowering the delegate, who is already equipped and knowledgeable, to own the project and prove themselves.
This is particularly crucial for diverse talent. Diverse teams bring different ways of seeing the delegated tasks and therefore bring a variety of ways of executing them. And when empowered, they often fail fast. They fail, after first testing and exploring. Then they value and account for the inevitable deficiencies they see. Then they make adaptations. Then try again with flair. In this sense, failure is not seen as a loss, but as a gift.
Therefore, in the words of Samuel Beckett, “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better!”
I actually have another word for failure. But I will tell you another time…
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