Facing the Fear of Failure

With MyBeast I’m encouraging colleagues to be more open about failure in order to improve creativity, innovation and their sense of camaraderie.

In this spirit - it’s only fair that I share my own failure stories to set an example.  We’ve all had plenty of unlucky and embarrassing experiences in our lives and we remind ourselves about our less fortunate moments too much.  

This is why vulnerability is so important - it reveals our shared imperfections and cuts through the invisible grey mist of self-doubt, illuminating a path to genuine human connection. 

So, my failure experience I’m writing about today exposed my naivety and happened in Colombia where I lived for a couple of years from 2012. 

I was working as an English teacher in Bogotá but didn’t feel particularly invested in that profession, so I kept an eye out for other roles and always thought that working in the British embassy would be cool.

I wasn’t qualified for most of the Embassy jobs advertised, until one day, a junior administrator role came up and even though it said fluent English and Spanish required, I applied anyway.  I was learning Spanish at the time and although I was proud of the level of fluency I achieved after 2 years, during my first year, I was still a beginner/intermediate.

It was for a junior position and I was confident I could perform all the admin tasks and responsibilities required.

I was invited in for an interview.

Despite my Spanish level I was really confident I’d get the role and thought being British was a massive advantage and started imagining visions of myself as a diplomatic legend.  This is quite embarrassing because it disregards all the brilliant Colombians who would be capable of the job.

Anyway, I practised a couple of basic interview questions with my Spanish teacher but NAIVELY didn’t put too much effort in because I thought it was junior role role the interview would be a bit of a chat, a background check and a tour round the building.

On the day of the interview I get all dressed up and headed off to the embassy.  It’s in a nice part of Bogotá in a really cool building which gives off a bit of an aura.

My previous interviews in the UK had been more of a chat which I thought this would be too, in your bog standard office meeting room. Well, I was wrong - I was led into the grand ambassador's office and invited to sit down at this huge oak table opposite a panel of three important looking Colombians.  My sweat glands immediately went into overdrive.

The interview commenced … in Spanish.  Anyone who has tried to learn a second language at a beginner level will know that you just need to add a tiny bit of pressure for it all to go out the window.

Throughout the interview I kept repeating a phrase in Spanish which was “puedo hablar con la gente” which means “I can speak with the people” - which is strange because I was clearly struggling to communicate in Spanish.

After a while the interviewers switched to English but because I was so flustered I couldn’t really answer those properly either.

I have a really vivid memory of when it was all over and I got home, I threw myself on my bed and CRINGED so hard.  Unfortunate experiences are made a lot worse because of our expectations - it’s hard to not make assumptions in life but when our ideas about future events are so wrong - it makes it more difficult.

I obviously didn’t get the job and still cringe a little bit at my naivety.

Amy Edmonson who promotes openness about failure to foster psychological safety prefers to approach failure as a learning experience.  So instead of hiding from failure at work or being embarrassed about it - we can work together to learn from experiences and improve outcomes.

I learnt to prepare for interviews a lot more thoroughly which I genuinely did when I got back to England.  I carried on working as an English teacher in Colombia and enjoyed many more adventures in beautiful Latin America.

My approach to improving team culture and creativity is with humour.  Being open about our humorous failure experiences helps to create a sense of belonging and overcome the fear of failure.

I was recently on a call with a U.S. based team-building company, pitching MyBeast workshops. During our conversation, a remote team member from Argentina brought up a brilliant comparison from Harry Potter.  She referenced a Boggart - an evil supernatural spirit that takes the form of your greatest fear.  And the key to defeating a Boggart: humour.

It was such a fitting metaphor for MyBeast workshops: transforming vulnerability and fear into connection and empowerment through storytelling and humour.

If you’d like to learn how a MyBeast workshop can help improve team creativity, courage and connection - please reach out at jason@mybeast.life

Thanks for reading.