As a business leader, you routinely jump into experiences that are new to you. And when things don’t go exactly as planned, it can help to know you’re not alone. There’s even a term for it: “failing forward.”
In addition to Michael Jordan missing 9,000+ shots, Albert Einstein wasn’t able to speak until he was 4-years-old and his teacher said he would “never amount to much.” Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as a news anchor because she “wasn’t fit for television.” And Decca Recording Studios rejected the Beatles because they said we “don’t like their sound – they have no future in show business.” So what do all these people have in common? They’ve all taken risks and leveraged their mistakes in order to learn, grow, and succeed.
There’s a framework to make periods of trial and error easier to endure. It’s called the “Hierarchy of Competence” developed by Noel Burch of Gordon Training International in the 1970’s. Briefly, the model works like this:
The Four Learning Levels of Competence
- Unconscious Incompetence When we do something new, we’re unaware of the mistakes we’re making. We don’t know what we don’t know.
- Conscious Incompetence After receiving feedback, we enter the most stressful stage because we’re now aware we’re error-prone.
- Conscious Competence As we persist through the discomfort, we now know we’re succeeding, but with a great deal of mental effort.
- Unconscious Competence As we keep investing time and energy in developing our skills, we achieve success readily and with much less effort.
A good analogy is learning to drive. When we begin, we consider (and sweat) every detail. After years of driving, we don’t think about it, it’s as if we’ve always been behind the wheel!
So, when taking on a new challenge and trying out new behaviors, rather than interpret the discomfort as failing, choose a growth mindset and view it as failing forwards and gaining new competencies. And take heart in this quote from Robert F. Kennedy: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Further Reading
Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success – John C. Maxwell
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success – Carol S. Dweck
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