Whether it was a project that didn’t meet its targets or an important deadline that you all missed, what can you do to help your employees recover? How can you help them see the experience as an opportunity for growth instead of the kiss of death?
What the Experts Say
It’s often harder to lead a team past a failure than it is to help one person. “People are coming into projects with different expectations, perspectives, levels of investment, and different things at stake,” explains Susan David, a founder of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching and author of the HBR article, “Emotional Agility.” “Some people may be very resilient and others might feel more bruised,” Ben Dattner, an organisational psychologist and author of The Blame Game. “All the things that individuals fall prey to — misattribution and rationalisation — are compounded on a team and add exponential complexity to the process.” It doesn’t matter whether one person on your team is at fault or if everyone bears some of the responsibility, it’s your job as the manager to help the entire group move on. Here’s how.
First, take control of your own emotions
Research shows that a leader’s feelings are far more contagious than a team member’s so, while “you don’t want to suppress your emotions, you don’t want to get stuck in a moody, negative space either,” says David. Do whatever you need to move on from the disappointment so that you’re ready to help your team deal with theirs. And don’t try to fake it. You need to be genuinely in control of your feelings or your team will see through you.
Give them space
At the same time, you shouldn’t become a “beacon of positivity” before the team is ready, David says. It’s okay to let everyone wallow in “disappointment and negative feelings,” for a little while. She points to a client whose team lost a client pitch they’d been working on for months. It happened on a Friday and on Monday morning she came in saying, “Let’s move on,” Although she was trying to be motivating and forward-focused, to her devastated team, she “came off as uncaring and uncommitted.” In fact, negative or neutral emotions are conducive to deductive reasoning, which means they can help your team more effectively process and analyze the failure. When you acknowledge the disappointment — with comments like “We’re feeling down” or “This is tough for us” — “you’re not just stroking people’s emotions. You’re facilitating a critical appraisal of the situation.”
Be clear about what went wrong
Don’t sugar coat what happened or resort to “corporate speak” that abdicates responsibility. Avoid phrases like “let’s look on the bright side,” “we’re lucky it happened this way,” or “a mistake was made.” Instead, be clear: “We missed the deadline because we didn’t take into account how long each task would take.” When you focus on the facts, Dattner says, you can call it like it is without being demotivating.
But don’t point fingers
“It’s more important to focus on what’s to blame, rather than who is to blame.” Dattner says. If the fault really does lie with one person or a few people, then talk to those individuals in private and focus on their actions, not character. Dattner suggests you say something like: “Here’s the mistake you made. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, but we need to understand why so it doesn’t happen again and we can move on.” You can also address the group but be sure to do it in a way that doesn’t single anyone out. David recommends an exercise where each team member writes down and shares a piece of feedback for each person on the team. “This allows for personal feedback that is also equitable,” she explains.
Shift the mood
At some point, it’s also important to move on from analysing the failure to talking about what comes next. “The mutual commiserating and examination of what went wrong is useful only up to a point,” says David. After a day or two (or maybe longer if the failure was a big one), push your team to more strategic, open-minded thinking and discussing how you will avoid similar mistakes in the future. Call a meeting and make sure that the tone is positive and energised. Dattner says you can use humor to lighten the mood.
Tell a story
You can help everyone begin to see the experience as a learning one by telling them about a mistake you’ve made in the past. “It can be very powerful when a leader authentically shares a time when they have a crucible-type failure that became a stepping stone in their career,” says David. If you don’t have a story—or don’t feel comfortable sharing it—consider drawing one or two out from the group. You could say something like: “We’ve all been on failed projects that ultimately proved to be constructive. Would anyone be willing to share?”
Encourage collaboration
Then have a conversation about the lessons learned from this experience. Don’t lecture; discuss. David recommends dividing the team up into two groups: one half thinks through what could go wrong in future projects while the other half focuses on the positive—what the team can change going forward. It’s important to “focus more on solutions than problems, more on the future than the past,” says Dattner.
Principles to Remember
Do:
- Deal with your own emotions about what’s happened so they don’t unduly influence the team
- Give team members time to feel disappointed
- Talk about what went wrong and why
Don’t:
- Get stuck in a negative, analytical mood for too long — shift the conversation to focus on the future
- Allow people to point fingers at one another — give constructive feedback and move on
- Lecture the team about what they can learn — let the ideas come from the group
Image: Failure via Shutterstock
