Yesterday I found this recipe for a sourdough Turkish bread with nigella seeds and garlic. I’ve been meaning to learn how to make Turkish bread for ages so I decided to try it with this recipe. I mixed the dough yesterday to be baked this morning, and the house smelled like garlic this whole time. This morning, I had three breads ready to be baked. The first one came out not golden enough, so I left the second one for longer and changed the oven setting to fan-forced. Then the third bread went into the oven while it was still on fan-forced. So in the end my breads came out more like elongated pitas that were either slightly undercooked or very over-cooked. None came out tall, fluffy, soft, and with the right golden colour. It was still yummy, but not technically Turkish bread. And I have learnt some lessons today!
As a leader, we play a critical role in shaping the culture and success of our team. But to be an effective leader, it is important to recognise that failure is a natural part of life, and it can actually be a valuable tool for growth and improvement.
One of the most important things you can do as a leader is to cultivate a growth mindset in yourself and your team members. This means viewing challenges as opportunities for learning and development, rather than as obstacles that should be avoided. When everyone on the team is willing to embrace failure, you become better prepared to handle setbacks, and you are more likely to take risks and try new things.
It is also important to remember that failing does not define you as a leader or a person. Rather, it is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and grow. By taking ownership of your failures and using them as stepping stones for improvement, you can demonstrate your commitment to growth and development to your team members and inspire them to do the same.
If this is not enough to convince you, let’s consider the opposite situation. What do you think will happen if you bite someone’s head off when they come to tell you something broke? Next time, they will not come. They will hide their mistakes from you. They will aim to appear capable and all-knowing. They will be afraid to take risks in case they make a mistake and fail. And this is how you stymie innovation.
So what can you do? Here are a few suggestions for you to consider:
- **Don’t avoid or conceal your own mistakes. **Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and share your own failures with your team members. When you open up about your own struggles and mistakes, you create an environment of trust that fosters experimentation and innovation. Your team members will be more likely to feel comfortable sharing their own failures and learning from each other, leading to greater success in the long run.
- **Treat all information as neutral at best. **If team members come to you with issues, work together to fix them.
- **Incentivise people for knowledge sharing. **Ask people to share what they learn after a mistake. This practice will improve team collaboration and reduce the number of mistakes. Value what can be learnt from the mistake. So in essence we celebrate the lessons, rather than the actual mistake.
- Foster a blameless culture. When an incident happens, fix it as quickly as possible. Once all systems are back online, run a blameless postmortem. It means that we believe that the problem was not one person’s fault but that the system was not set up for success. Adopt an investigative and reflective approach to uncover systemic or process failures. This will help people feel more at ease to share information, which will help find the root of the problem, as well as foster trust and strengthen the team.
Failing can be a valuable tool for growth and improvement for you as a leader as well as for your team. By cultivating a growth mindset, taking ownership of your mistakes, and being vulnerable with your team members, you can create an environment that fosters creativity, experimentation and innovation. As for me, I’m going to learn from my experiment to find the Turkish bread goldilocks and try again.