Coaching Vocabulary: Reflective Practitioner

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier, authors of Rework  believe that learning from mistakes is overrated. They advise to not listen to fail early and fail often, and argue that the only thing that you learn from a mistake is what you should not do again, but you are no wiser about what you actually should do. 

Failure does not make us more successful second time around

 “Failure is not a prerequisite for success. A Harvard Business School study found already-successful entrepreneurs are far more likely to succeed again (the success rate for their future companies is 34 percent). But entrepreneurs whose companies failed the first time had almost the same follow-on success rate as people starting a company for the first time: just 23 percent. People who failed before have the same amount of success as people who have never tried at all.” 

Success makes us less reflective

Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pissano agree, but raise an interesting point and an obvious obstacle - success makes us less reflective. In their recent article the authors say: "We all know that learning from failure is one of the most important capacities for people and companies to develop, let surprisingly, learning from success can present even greater challenges."

It is called the failure-to-ask-why syndrome

One of those challenges, according to the authors, is the failure-to-ask-why syndrome: "the tendency not to investigate the causes of good performance systematically." (...) "When you're confronted with failure, it's natural to ask why disaster struck. Unfortunately, success does not trigger such soul-searching. Success is commonly interpreted as evidence not only that your existing strategy and practices work, but also that you have all the knowledge and information you need." 

Taking time to reflect is the answer

Regardless of whether we failed or succeeded, it is the process of taking time to reflect and learn from those experiences that seems to be the key ingredient here, and a way to predict our future performance. This is an area where we are all gifted to a different degree, but the good news is that the ability to reflect is a skill that can be honed. Should you be interested, you can start by trying out this Free Reflective Practice Course from MIT.

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