Recently, I’ve been ruminating far too much on mistakes I’ve made. Replaying scenarios in my mind, thinking of what could have been done differently, rather than focusing on how I can improve and move forward. Soon after my own failure, I watched someone I love go through a similar internal crisis, they made mistake. I coached, consoled, and encouraged them to learn from it and move past it. As did everyone around them. They bounced back and moved forward with the same confidence as before. They made a mistake, but wasn’t overthinking it. So what was the difference between us? We both made mistakes, we both acknowledged our failure and wanted to move forward positively. So why the overthinking?
Failure, after all, is a necessary and often unavoidable part of life as countless quotes, Ted Talks, tech giants, and motivational speakers will tell you. For me it was not the mistake, not the failure that was the most difficult to process, but the focus on fault.
In software testing, there are three distinctions between failure, fault, and errors.
- Failure: a difference from the expected result
- Fault: the cause of the failure
- Error: the mistake which caused the fault to occur
Let’s say you were typing too quickly and spelled something wrong in an email, this would be the error. The fault would be you dismissed the spell checker. The failure would be you sent out an email that had spelling errors. We all have examples of this, some are just more impactful than others.
I believe the difference lies in where teams focus their energies. If it’s on the failure, the team will often focus on the problem and look into how to solve it. The team might reference the fault and error but rallies to get it fixed, fix it, and move on. Perhaps it’s brought up in a retro meeting but it’s acknowledged and the team moves forward, much like my loved one and his team did.
In my case, leaders and team members continued focus on the fault overlooking the failure and the path forward entirely. When a team focuses on the fault, it’s looking at the wrong point. The fault is often inextricably tied to an individual who either caused or overlooked an error. “To err is human” after all. The team that digs into the fault can quickly dissolve into subjective rather than objective rhetoric. “Why’d that happen?” “Why did you do that?” “What were you thinking?” This focus on fault does nothing to move the team forward or move past the failure. Rather it seeks to find fault, point or deflect blame, and fails to acknowledge the failure.
In my experience, high performing team members know when they make mistakes. They’ll actively seek to fix them, with or without help, and desire to make amends and move past it. Leaders and team members who focus on fault can indirectly cause a rift and can negatively impact morale. Miscommunication can also happen when two parties or groups are focusing on two different parameters. So how do you move past it?
- Acknowledge the failure. We all make mistakes, the faster it is acknowledged, the faster the fix can be remedied.
- Align your team and leaders on the focus on their attentions. If they are focusing to much on the fault, simply accept the fault and try to refocus their energy and attention to the failure a d path forward. Often people will follow this lead if it’s well thought through and acknowledged
- Accept what happened. You cannot change what happened, you can only learn from it. We are our own biggest critics and high performers will always be more critical of their actions than anyone else. We often need to forgive ourselves more than have others forgive us.
- And finally, move forward even if others won’t. You can be on the last row boat on a desert island and some people will still not get on board. So is true with fault. Just because others focus on fault doesn’t mean you have to. Keep moving forward.
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” So don’t be like me and ruminate too long on your failures but strive to be better, benchmark yourself, and know where failure leads, success is sure to follow.
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