Why I Hire People Who Fail – Jeff Stibel – Harvard Business Review.
Jeff Stibel hires people who “cherish failures”. Is he crazy?
The last week I have been helping a non-profit hire their first CEO, and the question that has revealed the most about the candidates has been the question ‘Tell me about a time that you have failed’.
Its a pretty stock-standard interview question, but for some reason all of the candidates struggled with it. They follow every gulping admission of a minor failure with endless excuses and justifications.
Why do we struggle to admit failure? Because all through our lives we are taught that failure is something to be avoided at all costs, and certainly not admitted to.
It’s only when you are failing yourself that others around you feel permission to share their failures.
Whilst struggling to find a fulfilling job in New York City earlier this year, I was shocked to discover how many of the people I looked up to had failed spectacularly at some point in their lives – in business, in their personal lives, and often both.
The truth is that sometimes when you are unwaveringly committed to seeing something through, and you put everything you have into it, and you don’t give up….you will fail.
The truth is the more spectacularly you have failed, the more likely you are to create breakthroughs.
Now there is a difference between failure due to a desire to push the boundaries of what’s possible, and failure due to carelessness.
But I would rather hire a person who has given everything and failed, than one who has stayed safely within the confines of their carefully defined career path.
According to Jeff Stibel hiring for failure is the key to a thriving, transformational organizational culture where breakthroughs happen.
Give people permission to dream, and to fail. Create a failure wall in your workspace and start releasing creative potential!
take a breath 