Why your employees are not learning from their mistakes

They say failure is the greatest teacher, but research show this may not be the case

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Management Today

We often hear that failure is common, or even necessary, on the road to success. A book by Elizabeth Day coined this as Failosophy and, rather optimistically, attempted to turn all errors into lessons. However, a recent study from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, concluded that people do not learn from mistakes and that, in fact, failure may undermine learning. Professor of behavioural science and marketing Ayelet Fishbach explained that “people don’t learn from failure because it negatively impacts self-esteem, threatening the ego”.

Professor Fishbach believes that an employee who repeatedly fails, or who is constantly receiving negative feedback, learns that they cannot master the task, instead of how improve at it. Being able to pick yourself up after a setback is a skill that takes time and courage and there are ways managers help develop this and, therefore, achieve greater overall success. The study found that, in order to learn from failure, we must first remove our ego. As a result, the best way to achieve this is to learn from someone else’s failure.

As a manager, you can and should inspire your team by admitting your own shortcomings. Being open about your mistakes will, at the same time, encourage others to communicate their errors and make failure seem less personal.

Communication is vital, and the answer to many of our problems. Encouraging openness around failure makes our ego less sensitive and helps to cultivate a culture which embraces errors and supports our development.