<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p>----</p> <p>A Harvard Business School professor discusses how to get good at "intelligent failure."</p> <p><br /></p> <p><a href="https://amycedmondson.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amy C. Edmondson</a> is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her latest book is called the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Right-Kind-of-Wrong/Amy-C-Edmondson/9781982195069" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Right Kind of Wrong</em></a>. Her research examines <a href="https://amycedmondson.com/psychological-safety/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">psychological safety</a> and teaming within and between organizations.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>In this episode we talk about:</strong></p> <p><br /></p> <ul> <li>The problems of shame, perfectionism, and social media</li> <li>How not to get caught up in analysis paralysis </li> <li>The importance of self-compassion and a growth mindset</li> <li>The benefits of worrying with someone else</li> <li>Why redundancy is your friend</li> <li>How to discuss failure without assigning blame</li> <li>Why accepting your smallness can be freeing</li> <li>Taking the time to learn from failure</li> <li>The cognitive framework: stop, challenge, and choose</li> <li>How to have a healthier relationships with anxiety and failure</li> <li>Creating a culture of psychological safety</li> <li>Recognizing that not everybody in society has the same permission to take risks </li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Related Episodes:</strong></p> <p><br /></p> <p><a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/kristin-neff-360" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Self-Compassion Ain't Always Soft | Kristin Neff</a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Sign up for Dan's weekly newsletter</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3QtGRqJ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>here</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Follow Dan on social:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3tGigG5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Instagram</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FOA84J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>TikTok</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Ten Percent Happier online</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/46TZglY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>bookstore</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Subscribe to our</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FybRzD" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>YouTube Channel</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Our favorite playlists on:</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Anxiety</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Sleep</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Relationships</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Most Popular Episodes</strong></a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Full Shownotes:</strong> <a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/amy-edmondson-2023" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/amy-edmondson-2023</a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Additional Resources:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: <a href="https://10percenthappier.app.link/install" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://10percenthappier.app.link/install</a></li> </ul> <p><br /></p>
Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Self-Compassion
After making mistakes, deliberately talk to yourself like a kind friend, acknowledging that everyone makes errors and encouraging yourself to move forward, rather than engaging in self-critical thoughts.
2. Practice Stop, Challenge, Choose
When negative thoughts or spirals begin, pause and take a breath (Stop), then interrogate the rationality and truth of those thoughts (Challenge), and finally choose a healthier, more productive response to move forward.
3. Adopt a Growth Mindset
Believe that your capabilities, including intelligence, are like muscles that strengthen with use and challenges, encouraging you to take on difficult tasks and learn from potential failures.
4. Embrace Intelligent Failure
Actively seek out opportunities for ‘intelligent failures’ by taking thoughtful risks in new territory, driven by a clear goal and a hypothesis, ensuring the experiment is as small as possible to learn effectively.
5. Foster Psychological Safety
Create an environment where candor and risks are expected and welcome by explicitly framing the work context, inviting input from everyone, and monitoring your responses to unexpected news with thoughtfulness and a forward-facing attitude.
6. Practice Non-Attachment to Results
Focus your effort on what you can control and work as hard as possible, but mentally detach from the specific outcomes, understanding that results are often beyond your control in an entropic universe.
7. Develop Contextual Awareness
Habitually assess the actual stakes (human safety, financial, reputational) and the level of uncertainty in any situation to determine if it’s a low-stakes environment for playful risk-taking or a high-stakes one requiring caution.
8. Avoid Blame and Shame
Recognize your natural tendency to blame others or yourself, then consciously shift to a more thoughtful analysis of what happened, practicing ‘wise remorse’ focused on specific actions rather than self-condemnation.
9. Never Worry Alone
When facing anxiety or problems, involve others to gain different perspectives and support, as this collaborative approach can help you see situations more clearly and find healthier responses.
10. Give Forward-Looking Advice
When providing feedback to others (or yourself), focus on what to keep doing and what to try next for improvement, framing it as ‘advice’ to inform future actions rather than just critiquing past performance.
11. Do Your Homework (Wisely)
Before embarking on an experiment, seek out easily known background information or consult a few thoughtful people to avoid wasteful failures, but don’t fall into ‘analysis paralysis’ by over-researching.
Be mindful of the pernicious effects of social media, which presents unrealistic images and can be anti-social; consider limiting its use, especially for young people, to foster real-world interaction and focus.
13. Reinforce Learning Continuously
Surround yourself with reminders, read books, listen to podcasts, and engage with admired people to continuously reinforce positive habits and mindsets, embracing redundancy in learning for deeper understanding.
14. Recognize Unequal License to Fail
Be aware that societal inequalities (e.g., based on gender or race) can grant different permissions to speak up and take risks; those with unearned privilege should cultivate humility and work to compensate for these disparities.
15. Practice Discernment and Humility
Cultivate the wisdom to discern what you can and cannot change, accepting your inherent fallibility and limited control over the universe, while fully committing to doing your best within your sphere of influence.