Leaders Tips Videos

Fail Forward

August 17, 2015 in Leaders Tips Videos
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Anyone who tries to lead is going to make mistakes and fail at some point. How you deal with that or think about it can make or break you as a leader. Today we’ll look at one tip
for dealing with the inevitable failures we will face if we lead for any length of time.

 

 

Video Transcript:

Fail forward. If you walked into our church on any given Sunday, and started talking to people, there’s a good chance that someone at some point would be using those words… “Well we just need to fail forward.”

The idea there is that we want to have a culture where people are able to try new things and to take risks without worrying about performing perfectly every time. We’ve created a culture where people are free to fail. We just want to encourage people to fail forward, which means to try something and if it doesn’t work out, get up and learn from it. And try again. If it doesn’t work out, get up learn from it and try it again.

And the flip side is that if you’re not failing at anything, it means that you’re not trying anything new. You’re not taking any risks. Which means you’re not growing, and you’re not learning.

So we have intentionally tried to cultivate a culture where risk taking and the failure that comes with it is okay. Most organizations, including churches, celebrate success. And of course we do. We should because it just makes sense, but I want to encourage you to also celebrate failure.

Celebrate when people try something new. Celebrate when people take a risk, even if it doesn’t work out perfectly.

If you can create a culture where you’re people aren’t afraid to fail, where they’re able to take risks and try new things, you’ll create a culture, you’ll create a place where people can grow and some great things can happen.

People always grow when they’re not bogged down by fear, especially a fear of failure. So I want to encourage you to fail, and to embrace failure for your people, and for your organization.

Try something new. Learn from it and then go forward again. You can make an awful lot of progress if you just keep failing forward.