Are Leaders Really Learning From Failures?

You may have heard of the 10,000-hour rule, a theory developed out of research in the ’90s and made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. The ‘rule’ essentially says that you need 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery. You’ve also, no doubt, heard about how failure is a learning opportunity, but how often do we actually learn from our failures? 

These two ideas intersect in a crucial way: deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is more than mindlessly repeating a task; it’s about practicing systematically with the intention to improve. Deliberate practice necessarily includes operating at the edge of your current skill level and working to the point of failure. When you hit that failure point, you assess what went wrong and apply your learning to the next practice round. 

It’s easy to see how this applies to kicking a soccer ball or playing the violin, but how does this apply to leadership behaviors? In many ways, they are not different at all. In all of these examples, you must begin by clearly defining success. You must also be able to tell the difference between your attempt and successful performance. And most importantly, you must be disciplined enough to try repeatedly until you get it right. 

In our practice, Stone House Coaches are typically working with subtle differences in behaviors that significantly impact the leaders’ careers and the success of the organizations they lead. Oftentimes, these differences are not obvious to the leader herself, so we invite others to watch for and report on her progress. It’s the equivalent of a quarterback watching game tape; it provides valuable insight that helps the leader improve. 

Simple, right? Not quite. Most leaders refuse to ask for or accept feedback from the people around them. Don’t be most leaders—set a clear, meaningful goal, describe it in detail to a handful of people you trust, then build a work cycle: practice, assess, tweak, repeat. In other words, if you want to stand out from the crowd, watch the game tape.