Work in Progress is a column about finding your way in the working world. Have a question for Rainesford Stauffer? Send it to TVworkinprogress@gmail.com.
It’s enough to make your stomach churn: That project you poured sweat, tears, and time into doesn’t shake out. You flubbed something at work and are worried that one mistake will define the rest of your work life. It’s happened to all of us.
The aftermath of failure sometimes includes two stages: shame that we’ve experienced it, and pressure to immediately embrace it as part of an eventual success story. But there’s more that intersects with bouncing back from failure or mistakes at work that can help get us to the other side.
“It's inevitable that it's going to be a part of any process in our careers,” Nadia De Ala, negotiation coach and founder of Real You Leadership, tells Teen Vogue about failure. Through it, she explains, we can learn to be more resourceful, grow through learning from our mistakes, and be more creative.
Zooming out to look at who is impacted most by mistakes at work and structures that reinforce that, navigating shame, and figuring out who we want to be when we fail can help us understand how to move forward. We talked to experts about all the above.
What’s Considered “Failure” Isn’t Equally Applied
While we all experience failure or mistakes at work, the impact doesn't always manifest the same way for everyone. Christy Glass, Professor of Sociology at Utah State University, whose research focuses on workplace justice, told Teen Vogue that when one enters a space where they are underrepresented, or if they belong to a marginalized identity, there can be a “range of really predictable performance pressures.” Glass says that individuals might experience being subjected to negative evaluation or stereotypes, endure the burden of doubt in regard to competence or commitment, and face scrutiny and surveillance of not just one’s work, but of their overall presence.
For disabled workers, workers of color, trans and nonbinary workers, and workers in marginalized groups, you have to be twice as good and work twice as hard, Glass says–and are less likely to get second chances if you do make a mistake. “The ability to fail and then succeed is a privilege,” Glass notes. For some workers, while their mistakes might be doubly scrutinized, work they do that might get overlooked or discounted is work another colleague would be commended for. One person’s failure is another person’s “it’s great you tried something new and innovative!”
It’s important to make this distinction because “failure is in the eye of the beholder,” Glass says. “When you're in an unequal power relationship, as you are with an employer or supervisor, what they perceive as a failure is contextual.”
Glass explains that solutions have to be structural. Glass’s work shows that representation among those in authority can reduce bias in performance evaluations, offering more freedom in terms of innovation (and failure) for workers. She adds that more equitable representation can reduce the scrutiny and performance pressures underrepresented workers experience. To actually achieve this, she explains, employers have to have fair, formal, and transparent policies–policies that “reduce discretion, which is another way of saying they reduce bias at every stage of the employment process, from recruitment and hiring to performance evaluations and wage setting to promotions,” Glass says.
There have to be collective efforts to hold employers accountable, especially when it comes to workplace discrimination. “That's why unions are so important,” Glass says. Workers in non-unionized jobs can also advocate for better policies and practices, according to Glass. “Affinity groups, equity taskforces, working groups, and other means of organizing within the workplace are effective mechanisms for moving the needle on best practices and more inclusive hiring and promotion practices,” she says.
“Collective solidarity, collective social movements move history,” she says, noting that cultural norms filter back into organizations, creating the opportunity to make new norms at work.
So You’ve Made a Mistake
It’s happened, and it was your fault. What do you do from here? “If you made any sort of misstep or made a mistake, if it's genuinely your fault, I say absolutely apologize,” says De Ala. Don’t over apologize, or spiral out into people-pleasing, she adds. “What we want you to do is build that self-awareness to know how you're reacting to that mistake.”
After apologizing, whether that’s to a supervisor or team members, De Ala suggests breaking it down into small, digestible steps: “First step is what went wrong? What would I have done differently? And what can I do now if it still needs to be resolved? What are the next immediate steps?”
Sometimes, that means taking action yourself. Other times, that means asking for help. “You might feel like you don't deserve it, but you do,” De Ala says. “I like to tell people that a lot of times it's not how can I fix this? Sometimes, it's who can help me fix this?”
She explains that a lot of how we experience failure or mistakes at work comes down to psychological safety. Designing processes for what happens when a mistake is made upfront can be helpful. “[It] might be as simple as saying, hey, I want to know what happens when I or another team member or even you make a mistake?” De Ala suggests. “We can make a plan for that.” In general, apologizing as needed, course-correcting where you can, taking feedback, and developing a plan of how to proceed differently next time are solid steps.
Acceptance and self-compassion are also needed, according to De Ala. Fear of losing one’s job is real, she says, as is fear of being shamed or reprimanded.. Maybe people have already experienced this themselves, in childhood or school if not work, or maybe have witnessed a coworker get berated or shamed. “That instills fear in us and keeps those defense mechanisms up that stop us from asking for help or stop us from moving forward with confidence,” she says. But as professionals, we have to ask ourselves a different series of questions, according to De Ala: “Is that really serving me and my ability to grow, and move forward in this one mistake out of many I'm probably going to make in my career, or am I willing to set that aside and do what I need to do to help myself get resourced?”
De Ala encourages workplaces to cultivate curiosity, because that’s often the antidote to fear of judgment or failure, she says. De Ala suggests asking: “What do I want to learn from this? How do I want to hold failure next time? Who do I want to be when I fail?”
You’re More Than Your Last Failure
We’re all going to fail in ways that hurt and have consequences. In work we care about, and in work that pays our bills, and sometimes even with each other. But we can do both: Take responsibility and learn from what we’d do differently, and acknowledge that we’re more than our last failure.
Anishka Jean, a third-year PhD candidate in psychology at West Virginia University who studies anxiety and perfectionism, tells Teen Vogue that, in general, if we hold ourselves back due to fear of failure, we could be missing out on feedback that’s beneficial for growth.
“I think normalizing failure is one thing that could help,” Jean says. She suggests talking about mistakes with close friends or family. You could also reach out to mentors or peers for feedback and support. “Just processing how you feel about it with another person that you trust can really help out a lot.”
If you’re processing shame around a failure or mistake, Jean encourages people to avoid downplaying being upset. “You're allowed to be upset and it's okay to cry.” Then, she says, it’s about giving ourselves grace and moving forward from there. “You don't expect anyone else to be perfect,” Jean adds.
We asked for people’s advice on bouncing back from failure. Here’s what they said…
“Everyone tells you to “learn” from failures and rejection, but also let yourself sit with it. Sitting with it can look like letting yourself cry and not burying your feelings or just letting yourself be sad. Rejections hurt and we shouldn’t force ourselves to grow or push past it without processing it in our own ways.” - Emily Kong, Digital Manager
“Almost every mistake I’ve made professionally is putting off taking that deep breath and diving into the grimy muck of doing that one project or task that just keeps getting away. Do the high-effort thing that has low immediate benefit but will net out exponentially long-term… sometimes that’s just doing the software update and restarting the computer before the IT-auto-update ends up activating in the middle of a video call, and sometimes that’s tackling the planning spreadsheet you meant to do 4 months ago and have been able to scrape along the job not doing. The psychic relief of having done the thing is rejuvenating.” - Gina Chen, Licensing
“In my experience, embracing setbacks with grace, ease, and swiftly moving forward is key. The moment a failure starts to overshadow your identity signifies a crucial time for reflection, a time to reaffirm your worth and align with new opportunities for growth. After an initial rejection from MTV, staying connected opened the door to another role on the team, giving me the ability to shape campaigns like ‘A.S.K’ and 'Hidden Healers', and to create connections I value deeply with the team. This rejection wasn't a loss; it was paving the way for alignment with my true goals. - Cydney Knotts, Strategic Partnerships Manager
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