Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has failed at some point throughout life. But while many of us try to avoid failure, some of us learn from it instead. Learning from failure involves a willingness to take risks, reflect on performance, and change.
Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp discussed learning from failure in school, sports, business, and life. Failure can become positive if we use it to learn and develop.
“The key takeaway is that the only way you can fail is if you fail to learn,” Ryne said.
Learning from Failure Across Contexts
Ryne, who coaches youth baseball, said that failing is an important part of the sport. “The greatest hitters of all time can fail 70% of the time and still be considered incredible,” he said. For those learning to play baseball, it’s impossible to avoid failure.
Part of being a coach is to help the players understand how to handle failure. “As long as you’re learning something, you’re not failing. That’s the message I want to convey to my youth baseball team,” Ryne said. If you lost, what did you learn? What can you change to improve?
This attitude toward learning from failure applies to students, athletes, entrepreneurs, and everyone who wants to shift their mindset about failing. Let’s look more closely at failure in different contexts.
For Students
When the instructor in a classroom asks a question, most students want to get the answer right. They’ll raise their hand if they already know the answer. This behaviour is partly motivated by wanting to create a reputation for being smart. “Ironically, when you answer that question right, you didn’t learn anything,” Ryne said.
A better outcome for learning is raising your hand when you aren’t sure if your answer is correct. Then, when the instructor corrects you, that moment of learning from failure will be more memorable and effective. “I would encourage students to take some chances if they might be wrong because that creates a great opportunity for learning,” Ryne said. Testing out your best guess or putting forth your best effort in the classroom always results in learning; whether you were right or wrong, you learned something either way.
For Athletes
Common wisdom holds that athletes and teams should resist failure because they want to win. Unfortunately, athletes who win consistently rarely get the opportunity to reflect on mistakes and improve. This is bad because others who do learn from losses and implement feedback can catch up.
Athletes typically receive immediate feedback, in terms of both losing and coaching. Reviewing and analyzing your losses or weaknesses is more valuable than replaying your wins. Likewise, coachable players learn from their errors and improve. “The athletes who never make it, the ones who coaches give up on, are the ones who seem to have no ability to learn,” Ryne pointed out.
Ryne and Blake compared two Major League Baseball teams: the Los Angeles Angels and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Despite having top players, the Angels made the playoffs only once in the last couple of decades. The money they’ve spent to bring in talent hasn’t resulted in winning teams. In contrast, the Dodgers have made dramatic changes during the last 20 years. Their new ownership in 2012 led them to the playoffs every year except for one. After many years of ranking in the top half of the league, they won the World Series in 2020. One franchise isn’t learning from mistakes. The other has learned from failure and committed to a strategy focused on long-term success.
For Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs tend to fail more often than they succeed, which makes learning from failure essential. “Every great entrepreneur can list all their mistakes and failures and things that have gone wrong,” Ryne pointed out. He named Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, and Thomas Edison as successful entrepreneurs who all had early setbacks. The invention of the light bulb is a classic example of iterative design improvements. As opposed to repeating mistakes or giving up, using mistakes to get better can lead to creating something incredible.
Ryne and Blake discussed a business that failed to learn and another that learned from failing. The Kodak company failed to adapt to the digital era, despite pioneering the handheld camera. Instead, they doubled down on their commitment to film, making themselves obsolete and resulting in bankruptcy in 2012. On the other hand, the Coca-Cola company famously launched New Coke, a huge failure. Within 90 days, Coca-Cola reintroduced its original Coke product and committed to developing new products and marketing strategies to diversify its brand.
Failure and Personality
What personality characteristics make someone more likely to learn from failure? People who can bounce back without giving up (resilience), who are eager to improve (learning agility), and who can respond well to ambiguity (versatility).
Tips for Learning from Failure
Even without these competencies, people who want to improve their ability to learn from failure can adopt two practices.
First, they can get comfortable with making mistakes by deliberately putting themselves in a position to fail. Just as students can gain learning opportunities by raising their hands when they aren’t confident, those who want to learn from failure should accept the risk of getting things wrong.
Second, they can improve their ability to recognize mistakes. People who are overconfident or tend to believe in themselves no matter what may be challenged to recognize when they’ve erred. “It can be helpful to have some trusted peers who can tell you when you’ve made mistakes,” Ryne said.
“That’s what we can learn,” he continued. “One, the ability to take some risks, to make some mistakes. Two, to be willing to admit that those are mistakes and they’ve helped me improve. The only way you can fail is if you fail to learn. If people can take that message with them, they’ll be more successful.”
