It's my fault? Never :) How your brain works in regards of failures
Inspired from Amy Edmondson' book "Right Kind of Wrong"
You are on time for a meeting and a colleague is late for 10 minutes. What are you thinking? Sometimes you think that they are uncommitted, lazy, and so on…
But what is when you are late? It is because of traffic right? It is because of…It is not your fault, right? :)
Why is your perception changing about failures when it is about you?
You hate to be wrong, you feel embarrassed, and sometimes many thoughts, even disappointment about yourself pop up.
Failure, whether a basic or a complex one or even sometimes an intelligent one, comes with emotions in its package.
If there are relevant consequences of the situation you have created out of a failure and it is a situation when you are embarrassed, ashamed, and so on then your status button from the SCARF model is pressed down. So you prefer to bring the fault on something/somebody else to run away from these feelings right?
What happens when you run away from feelings that do not help you, you ignore or hide them?
These feelings are still there, they occupy your energy and headspace. And you cannot use that energy for the things that are important to you.
So how can you deal with failures next time?
Bottom lines:
Failure happens. It is usual. Important is how you react to it, what you learn out of it, and how you accept it/ deal with it and the emotions around it.
It is an article that invites reflection and thinking about what can you do differently if needed next time. That’s all!
Resources:
Book “Right Kind Of Wrong” by Amy Edmondson