Being scared to fail: unpacking the importance of psychological safety
I'll start this one off by defining what psychological safety is.
Organisational behavioural scientist, Amy Edmondson, first introduced the construct of “team psychological safety” and defined it as "a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking".
Perfectionism
As a self confessed perfectionist, it can be challenging for me to accept that failure is part of the process and is inevitable.
I tend to hold myself to a high standard, and sometimes these standards are impossibly high. It leads me to panic at the thought of screwing up at work, and I start overthinking about how it can alter how others perceive me and the work that I do.
I used to think being a perfectionist was my superpower as it usually lead to high quality work. But the reality was that it also caused me a lot of anxiety, criticism, failure to internalise my success and also a tendency to overwork as I often felt like the things I produced weren't "good enough".
It wasn't until my Mum showed me this video, where Brene Brown says:
"Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of blame, judgement, and shame"
- Brene Brown
Damn. It was me in a nutsell.
Brown goes on to share that perfectionism is about trying to earn approval.
I am in SHOCK. It was me to the core and I had never realised this was my subconscious thoughts that I wasn't necessarily conscious aware of.
It explained why meetings with my managers to gauge what their thoughts were of my performance at work was so important to me. I needed constant reassurance that I was doing well, and any areas that I needed to improve on.
Early praise for achievement and performance has become a dangerous and debilitating belief system: “I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it, please, perform, perfect, prove.”
How psychological safety makes all the difference
Working as a Software Engineer, it is a career that involves a lot of learning - CONSTANTLY. It can feel like you're always a beginner at something, which can be daunting when you want to be an expert (because of the high standards you hold for yourself).
I used to be terrified of making deployments because my biggest fear was breaking production.
I remember I communicated this to a manager at my first role as a Junior Software Engineer, and I got the most helpful response.
He told me about a lot of incidents that he has successfully broke production/ created bugs in production, the fact that my team members have, and essentially to embrace the chaos.
Well not like that, but there will always be someone to help you out, and failing is part of the job.
This gave me a sense of relief, especially because it wasn't a blame like culture.
Plus, I was working in a team that was very supportive, understanding and patient with me. I'd sometimes request to have a second eyes to share my screen while I pushed to production, *just in case* I missed a step or did something wrong.
That helped with the transition of being panicked, to feeling reassured with someone else there to help if shit hit the fan, to then feeling confident making deployments on my own.
I'm very grateful to have had such a good experience with this in my first role, especially with the self-induced added pressure feeling the need to prove myself.
I have been speaking to other engineers about this, and some fears around breaking production come from working in a company that has a blame culture, with little room to see failure as part of the job and also a learning experience.
Managers creating an environment where employees feel safe to fail, contributes to innovation, retention of staff and more productive employees.
If you're reading this, and you're working at a company that leaves minimal room for failure, then please know it isn't YOU that is the problem - is the company that is the problem.
People cannot feel empowered to make decisions, perform, or take risks without employers creating a psychologically safe environment.
I have found that employers who have this kind of environment have a high turnover, demotivated staff, and lack of innovation.
If you personally are working in such an environment, if you can, I would recommend that you move teams (or move company!), communicate with your manager about how you're feeling and get an understanding if there's room for improvement, or speak with HR about concerns you're having.
Let me know your thoughts!
Mending my relationship with failure: how to overcome it
I'll start off with speaking about how I failed my way into tech. In 2018, I realised that I didn't want to pursue my dreams of working at a Big 4 firm in finance but instead I wanted to learn how to code and eventually become a software engineer.
I started with the Code First Girls Web Development course, and I have to say it didn't come naturally to me. Every week, we were asked questions about things we covered the week beforehand and I hardly ever knew the answer.
It was brand new to learn that it was so normal to break things and to get used to not only seeing error messages but using them as a tool to debug. This was definitely not encouraged in finance. I highly doubt they say, if you get the numbers a bit wrong, it's all good!
The experience allowed me to assess my relationship with failure, and how I let it dictate how I felt and the decisions it led me to make.
You can read more about my journey into learning how to code and landing my first software engineer role.
When you think about failure, how does that make you feel?
For me, it is:
- Panicked
- Embarrassment
- Low self-esteem
- Feeling like all eyes are on me and everyone can see how awful I am
- Low mood
- Fear
- Heightened levels of anxiety
- Demotivated
- Feelings of wanting to escape
The list could honestly go on.
The questions that have helped me through this
Failure is an inevitable part of life, and finally accepting this fact made me ask myself a few questions when I failed at something.
- What can I learn from this failure? Knowing that everyone fails and that most people learn and grow from it.
- Should I look at this as a failure or a learning experience?
- What would have happened if I didn't fail?
Doing technical interviews coming from a non-technical background was extremely challenging. I had a nightmare interview where I thought I was going to be asked behavioral questions but it turned out to be a full-on live coding interview. I was completely unprepared and I needed guidance throughout - it was my first ever front-end interview and I didn't have a clue!!!
However, despite me screaming internally throughout the whole thing and strongly considering just turning off my wifi in an attempt to save me from embarrassment, I learned so much from that interview.
Instead of looking back on it as a complete and utter failure, I had a great learning opportunity which was an insight into how front-end interviews are conducted. At the time, I didn't know about the importance of being able to work with APIs and what kind of questions were asked for a front-end role.
I truly believe that everything that has worked out for me comes from so many things I have failed at. The question of what would have happened if I didn't fail helps me to recognise that my greatest lessons have come from failure. If I hadn't have failed the sales graduate roles applications, I may have never ended up in tech.
Bouncing back from failure
Do not get me wrong, this DOES NOT happen overnight. When I had that awful interview, I had the worst imposter syndrome, I started to think I wasn't good enough to land a front-end role, and that maybe I should give up on my pursuit in coding.
I truly believe that failure is not who you are, it is something that you experience. When I stopped attaching myself to being a failure, I focused on my goals at hand and sourced inspiration by watching a bunch of videos of people who came in with no CS degree.
If I was truly going to land my role as planned, the options were to either quit, or keep going. I've also written a blog post with 6 tips on how to make the most out of your interviews.
When you get to a point where you are able to bounce back from failure, you can then learn to be able to mend your relationship by embracing failure and welcoming it to teach you lessons - not only something that everyone does, but that it is a necessary path for you to grow and reach your full potential.
Fail early, fail often, fail forward
Will Smith has such an inspiring video where he says that successful people fail a lot, but they extract the lessons from the failure to come around to the next phase of success. Failure actually helps you to recognise the areas where you need to evolve.
So now we know that failure is not only necessary but its beneficial - how do we start the journey to overcome our fear of failure?
What you can do right now
- Remember that social media shows the highlight reels. We all know it, but sometimes in the moment when I'm doom scrolling on social media and in particular with LinkedIn, I feel bombarded reading about how everyone's lives seems to be doing so well.
When I saw people landing their roles, it made me question if I was good enough. The reality is that most people fail a bunch of interviews before they land their first roles.
In 2020, my friend got two amazing offers to pursue a technical role. I was so happy for her and it was inspiring for me to see as she was so talented. She reminded me that she failed interviews at the top companies before she got these two great job offers.
I kind of shrugged off that she failed so much because who cares now that she's in such a great position. And I realised that for others, I could focus on their wins and not on their losses, but for myself, I focused so much on my losses rather than my wins. - Document your wins. Sometimes, we are more likely to define ourselves based on the times we failed rather than the times we won. It can be so easy to forget the little wins, but it really helped me out to create a wins tracker. I got the idea from attending a Confident and Killing it workshop, where the founder Tiwalola showed us the template that she created called the monthly wins tracker.
When I was having my low days, where I questioned all my abilities and felt like I haven't done much, I would look back at my wins tracker which told me otherwise! I still do it to this day, and it makes such a difference. - Feel the fear and do it anyway. Sometimes we can't necessarily get rid of that feeling of fear. I've heard people say that when you feel fear, it's the same feeling as excitement and to reframe your mind to see it as you being excited (sometimes this works for me, but also a lot of the time it doesn't).
People don't necessarily think that every time I post on LinkedIn that I'm always so scared. I start thinking about what if people think this is cringe, or what if they don't like the message, what if people judge me because I'm THAT person who is active on LinkedIn.
However, despite that, I continue to post anyway. It makes a huge difference when people go out of their way to comment or message me about the content I've been creating, and I add all that feedback to my monthly wins! - Don't feed the critic. Our inner critic can tell us that we can't, that we're not good enough, and that the worst-case scenario will happen.
It look me a long time to actively become aware of this and to challenge those thoughts. Looking at my wins, starting to consider the best case scenario, getting therapy, reading, and reaching out to people have all helped with dealing with those thoughts.
Please remember, that it this takes time, and to give yourself some grace knowing that we are all a work in progress. - Know your strengths. When we are so afraid of failure, we are convinced that our weaknesses outweigh our strengths.
Confidence comes from knowing who you are and especially what your strengths are. This involves quite a bit of self-awareness, but explore what your strengths are, and also ask other people who you spend the most time with what they think your strengths are.
When you focus on your strengths it is much easier to have faith in yourself.
Now you've finished reading this, I'd love to know what you'll do differently the next time you fail.
How Spotify helped me to create Code Her Journey
So let’s go back in time to 2020 *yikes*, I was in the final year of my Economics and Accounting degree.
In March 2020, like many people, it felt like my world had turned upside down. Lockdown happened, but my housemates and I remained hopeful, give it 2 weeks, two months at maximum, we’ll be back at university living our best lives.
As the months went on, it was getting more and more clear that this virus wasn’t going to disappear as quickly as it seemed to appear.
I started getting emails left, right, and center about my assessment days being canceled due to the lockdown and uncertainty.
I lost so much motivation to do anything and was panicked at how I was meant to do my final exams. Turns out, the exams were open book (which was absolutely delicious) and we had 24 hours to do them.
Because I knew they were open book, I struggled to motivate myself to *truly* revise for them. I felt like my discipline was at an all-time high during my first term in 2019, and I didn’t recognise myself anymore.
To procrastinate from the bore of this weird kind of revision, I started going to a lot of online events. I signed up for a bunch of General Assembly events and decided I’d work on self-development.
What was helpful about the lockdown was that there were all these events and courses that I now had access to without the worry of having to travel to get there.
After my exams, I made a dedication to really push myself to get back into coding.
Little did I know, I was stuck in tutorial hell, and constantly kept getting overwhelmed with everything I needed to learn, plus the scarcity job market was terrifying and anxiety-inducing.
I wanted to give back to Code First Girls and add more structure to my life, so I volunteered to teach their Web Development course. It was amazing, I loved the experience and to help with my imposter syndrome, I made sure to come EXTRA prepped for the lessons I taught.
I joined the Mentor Circle, founded by Tunde Yusuff, which was a free business and career bootcamp. We had speaker sessions, group workshops, and cash grants!
That’s how I connected with a mentor who said I should launch a podcast. I was like, nah! No way. I want to be low-key and don’t want to put myself out there too much online, to be honest.
As soon as that virtual call ended, I go onto Twitter and see applications for the Spotify Sound Up programme. I had applied with the same idea in 2018 and was rejected, but I had faced so much rejection already, I decided to apply anyway.
Normally, I would write down all my answers for applications, but this time, I was so confident that I would be rejected again, that I didn’t even bother to save my answers somewhere.
When I received an email notifying me that I had been shortlisted to their top 30 podcast ideas, I was honestly shocked. HOW?!!!! I was literally rejected got the same idea 2 years ago.
I had two interviews with Spotify employees and some time afterward, I found out that I was shortlisted again as the top 20 podcast ideas and that I would be going through the first phase of the programme.
WOW. I was genuinely so shocked. I said that if I got it, it would be a sign for me to stop living small and to really put myself out there.
The programme was amazing, and just what I needed to lift my spirits at the time. It was crazy because this was legit a programme with Spotify, yet it didn’t feel real at all because I was attending virtually from my room. I can do a whole separate blog post about my experience.
By the end of the 4 weeks, we were given around 3-4 weeks to create a pitch deck and a trailer to be shortlisted as the top 10 podcast ideas. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up making the top 10.
But I wanted to continue with Code Her Journey with or without Spotify. From Sound Up, I felt so equipped to launch a podcast and I had a genuine passion for the tech topics I wanted to discuss. A few months later, I find out that I can’t actually release episodes without their approval.
I’m actually still waiting to be able to release some of the amazing episodes recorded. Fortunately, they’re helping me out by providing me with a team to help with my vision, but I can’t share too much yet!
So in January 2022, I decided to challenge myself by creating daily JavaScript challenges for absolute beginners on Twitter and Instagram. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work!
Now in February 2022, I’m experimenting with different content creation for the page and plan to keep creating this year.
I can’t wait until I can release my podcast and share it with the world!