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PITTSBURGH — Contrary to the widespread belief that people learn from their mistakes, new science suggests that failure is not always the best teacher.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Clark University recently discovered that there is a limit to how much a person can learn from failure. Some people are better at withstanding failure, while others can learn to fail strategically.
Published in the Strategic Management Journal this past May, the study looked at which learning outcomes — if any — individuals might gain through the experience of personal failure. To do so, researchers focused on the high-stakes field of cardiothoracic surgery, where even the slightest mishap can mean irreparable harm or even patient death.
The study examined 300 surgeons across 133 California hospitals, who all performed coronary artery bypass graft surgeries between 2003 and 2018. Heart bypass surgeries are a major medical procedure used to restore blood flow to the heart in the case of a blocked artery.
Researchers defined failure as the number of patient deaths during surgery. Investigators then measured whether surgeons had learned from their errors by assessing their performance in the aftermath.
Limits to failing forward
"Our findings suggest that not all experiences necessarily lead to learning, and that repeated failures can have both beneficial and harmful impacts on individuals' learning processes," explains Dr. Jisoo Park in an article for the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon.
Data shows that no one can learn infinitely from their mistakes. While most subjects initially learned from their errors, all individuals reached a point of saturation. After crossing that line, no amount of additional failures improved the surgeons' performance or reduced further setbacks.
"I would feel so frustrated. I would seriously doubt whether I deserve to be a surgeon," confessed one surgeon who participated in the study. "A few negative events could be learning opportunities but if it happens more than that, I don't think I qualify."
Because of this dynamic, study authors suspect that there exists an optimal window of time during which a person's mindset can best transform mistakes into lessons, like a "learning from failure" sweet spot.
"I think you need a day or two to process it emotionally," reported another study participant. "Then, you start thinking about what you could have done or, like, at least know what would have helped in those situations so that you don't make similar mistakes in the future."
However, this learning-from-failure threshold is not the same for everyone. Researchers found that certain people can withstand more defeat than others.
Experiencing personal failure has two simultaneous, contradictory effects on a person. Although making mistakes increases an individual's learning opportunities, experiencing failure also decreases the motivation to learn. Rather than focus on negative emotions and self-doubt, individuals with a higher learning-from-failure threshold could set their feelings aside and turn these setbacks into professional skills.
"Understanding this dynamic process is crucial to predicting more effectively how a particular failure affects learning," explains Dr. Sunkee Lee, co-author of the study and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon.
Lee thinks the study findings have multiple real-world applications, most of which are, "especially important in contexts where failures carry high stakes, such as patient-care settings." Dr. Park and Dr. Lee feel their research is highly relevant to organizational learning, especially when hiring and training new employees.
"Our results suggest that organizations can improve performance by hiring employees who are more resilient to repeated failures or training them to become so," the co-authors write.
Why learning from failure is so hard
If the idea of "failure is life's best teacher " is such a pervasive belief, why do people struggle to learn from their mistakes? Two University of Chicago researchers maintain that the answer is very straightforward: Individuals allow their bruised egos to prevent them from transforming mistakes into learning opportunities.
In their 2019 research entitled "You Think Failure Is Hard? So Is Learning From It," Dr. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Dr. Ayelet Fishbach explained that individual failure can harm a person's ego — their study participants reported feeling lower self-esteem after failing a task. Such negative emotions impede a person's ability to learn from their mistakes since they consider failure a threat to their egos. Consequently, people often ignore failures in misguided attempts to protect their sense of self-worth.
"Most of the times when we failed, we just didn't pay attention.," Dr. Fishbach opined in a blog post for the World Economic Forum.
Those who want to learn from their mistakes must recast uncomfortable failures as learning opportunities. Dr Eskreis-Winkler and Dr Fishbach argued: "A failed experience is a success when the goal is learning. Indeed, people who hold a growth mindset — those who believe that their abilities and beliefs can develop — persevere in the face of failure."
How to fail smarter, not harder
For the modern worker, education no longer ends with a diploma and graduation stage. In 2022, companies worldwide spent an average of $1,220 per employee on leadership training and professional development.
For experts like Dr. Amy C. Edmonson, learning from failure is a skill. The author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, Edmonson teaches leadership and management at the Harvard Business School.
According to Edmonson, learning from failure means figuring out how to fail intelligently. These are her tips for turning failure into success:
- Pick new battles prudently. Failure is most instructive when it comes to pursuing a well-defined goal. Approach new endeavors with as much information as possible.
- Don't ask "who" or "why," but "what?" Instead of playing the blame game when something fails, aim for creating "a thoughtful retelling of figuring out exactly what happened points to the places where it broke down."
- Create a safe environment for feedback. Mastering failure often requires a space where colleagues feel comfortable asking questions and giving honest opinions.
