Avoiding an Epic Culture Fail

I began climbing the corporate career ladder in middle school. So needless to say I’ve washed a lot of dishes and had a lot of bosses. On one occasion, I was sitting behind my desk and the senior leader of the organization stormed into my office. Furious that something had happened, he demanded answers. As he began to describe the situation, the vein on his neck began to get bigger and bigger mirroring the decibel level of the conversation.

It was clear to me (and everyone in the offices around me) that I had done something wrong. I had failed in my responsibilities.

Then the conversation turned and he began to use declarative statements about who I was as an employee and who I was as a person. He began to tell me what my motives were.

I always…
I never…
I was the type of person who…

The “discussion” went from failing in a responsibility to failing as a human being.

Looking back on that interaction, I know that the leader was attempting to provide correction over a failure in a responsibility or task. Whatever I had done (or failed to do) needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, that conversation reinforced one important thing about the culture of the organization:

Failure was not allowed.

It communicated to me that, if I was going to be successful here, I would need to hide my failures, or blame someone else for my failures, or never start or participate in anything that could end in failure.

Both of my boys played Little League. Little League is a failure rich sport. As a batter, the best players in 10 year old baseball, fail 50% of the time. There are boys, learning the sport, that fail 80-90% of the time. I cannot tell you how many coaches I have heard yelling at their team for making errors or striking out. What do they think that is communicating?! And should I be surprised when my kids come home blaming the umpire, or accusing the other team of cheating, or not wanting to play the next year?

The most powerful culture setting action we have with regard to failure in the organization is not in the weekly staff meetings or some catchy motivational phrase by Henry Ford or some ancient philosopher. People leave corrective conversations with an acute understanding of the organizational failure values. It is our job, as leaders, to reinforce the right values. I left my exchange with that senior leader embarrassed. I knew that my co-workers heard me getting yelled at. I left with less respect for him as the leader of the organization. I left angry. I left knowing that failure was not a option. My boys left their post game meetings with their coach embarrassed they struck out. They left with less respect for their coach. They left angry. They left with a clear understanding that failure was not acceptable.

So how do we leverage these corrective conversations to fortify a positive failure culture of our organization? Two ways:

We have to Control our Emotions.
If their failure has caused us to be angry or frustrated, we need to get to a place where we are not allowing our emotions to muddy the cultural waters. Our corrective interactions cannot be therapy sessions for us. The goal has to be fueled by a desire to move our direct reports forward, not to vent or unload on them to make ourselves feel better. Remember, this conversation is going to shout our values, throughout the organization. Your direct report, will tell their co-workers, who will tell their co-worker how you handled it (or mishandled it).

We have to Console their Failure.
If our desire is to reinforce a positive failure culture, we need to acknowledge the upcoming generation has been raised in an environment of false confidence. Ashley Merryman, co-author of the book, “Losing is Good For You” describes the next generation of business professionals as “respond[ing] positively to praise; they enjoy hearing they’re talented, smart and so on. But, after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.”

Regardless if our direct reports were raised in the “everyone gets a trophy” culture, we are going to have to be intentional on consoling their failure. Consolation is one part recognition of positive motivation surrounding the attempt and one part assistance in establishing a clear path toward success.

Our people are going to take something away from their corrective interactions with us, let’s just make sure it is the right thing. Otherwise, we will be the ones who have failed.