Here are some suggestions that leaders can try to make it OK to mess up ..

🚶‍♀️WALK THE TALK – Normalising failure by openly talking it with your team relating it to your own actions. Highlight when you are trying something new and it doesn’t quite go as expected. This could be about anything, a new way of running a meeting, a different lunch venue - we all mess up all the time.

🍰CELEBRATE – When something doesn’t quite go to plan then have a party rather than a post-mortem. I have one client who celebrates with the Cake of Failure. If you mess up then you have to buy everyone cakes on a Friday and that’s when they sit down and talk about lessons learnt.

🗣️FIND YOUR LANGUAGE – I was recently asked to remove the word ‘Failure’ from a slide deck as my client just didn’t think it was a good fit for their culture. Not that they didn’t fail, they just didn’t like the word. As Dr Sarah Lewis says ‘the word failure is imperfect… it’s hard to see without wincing…when we are ready to talk about it we often call the event something else.’ My client went with learning opportunity, as you can probably guess I like the phrase ‘messing up’. What works for you?

🤑REWARD – ‘Shame and blame’ is an outdated management style so praise and reward those that are willing to take the risk. Innovating is all about management of risk but usually at some point even after you have followed all the data, someone must take the leap of faith.

👂LISTEN - Get your team to listen to Elizabeth Days How to Fail podcast where some of the most successful people on the planet talk about what their failures taught them about how to succeed better. Can I suggest that you start with the Brené Brown episode, as she says ‘there is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period’.

Interested to hear how others normalise failure/messing up in their organisations …