Not only should failures not be criticized, they should be praised for their courage and effort. Your trainees should ideally feel free to fall flat on their faces. Failure should be celebrated with the same energy and sincere feeling as success. This is the advice Jon Wilkerson gives in his principles of comedy improvisational theatre training principles.
Why celebrate failure? Well, if you do it right, it can be a launching pad for change. There are many well documented stories in business of how failure has led to success. The whole startup innovation loop is a learning curve based on trial and error. Sure, we love the Google and Facebook founder’s stories, but far more common are entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before nailing it. And what about relationships? You don’t need me to explain how failed relationships – personal, business, whatever – make you a better partner and team player. And I don’t care what business schools say; you don’t learn how to manage people or your own behaviour in school. You learn it on the job by making mistakes and learning what works and what doesn’t. Simple.
So, in the training room, if we are going to help people develop their soft skills and develop themselves, they have to get comfortable failing, making a fool of themselves. What’s more, YOU need to get comfortable as a trainer with stepping into the breach and being an even bigger fool than your trainees! What do I mean? I mean if you are encouraging learners to try out different communication styles, one thing that really works is getting them to exaggerate the very trait they either want to avoid (being aggressive) or want to strengthen (being confident) – so what sort of things does a confident person do, say and how do they act. The more you can get them to do this within a role-play or experiential exercise, the more they are going to widen their comfort zone. And if you step into the breach first, this creates an atmosphere of trust and a place where it is ok to fail, even better – failures are celebrated.
