How can you conquer the fear of making mistakes?

"There is no room for emotions in business." These words could not be further from the truth. Business is all about people and people have emotions. The first step to conquer the fear of making mistakes is to acknowledge and accept your emotions. It's OK to have emotions. Embrace them. Embrace your mistakes as well. I have been told that I am too emotional. Their words hurt and I believed for many years that there was something wrong with my leadership style. What I have learned is my emotions are what make me great. Today, I wouldn't change a thing.

Emotions provide us passion for living. For taking risks. An emotionally intelligent person senses their emotions in the moment, and responds appropriately. While emotions provide us passion, our integrity serves as the needed guidepost. We need both emotion and integrity if we are to thrive in life, and be a positive influence on others.

Understand that mistakes are a natural part of learning and growth. They are valuable opportunities for improvement and development. Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of a mistake, focus on what you can learn from it. Analyze what went wrong, why it happened, and how you can prevent it in the future.

Sara Blakely shares her powerful story of how her family used to sit around the dinner table, and her father would ask, "How did you fail today?" It became a way of seeing failure as an important part of learning and a sign that you are pushing yourself to achieve more than you thought possible. Seeing failure as part of success helps us see it as valuable versus something to avoid.

It's best for us to say "I don't know how to...YET!" That's one way to reframe our mindset toward growth. As such, we position ourselves for personal and professional development.

Someone recently shared this with me on reframing failure" "today I am a person learning to....." - reframe the failure as learning!

Fear can be paralyzing. However, facing your fears and determining if they are facts or feelings based will help. Once you know if there are factual risks and fear is founded, pre-solve the issues and build action around the "what-ifs". Don't sit still, plot to prevent the risk and plan for growth.

Empower your organisation by FAILING FORWARD. Check it out … Failing Forward is a process of learning from mistakes and using those lessons to create better solutions. It involves taking risks, experimenting, and iterating on ideas to create something that works. It is a way of thinking that encourages teams to take risks and learn from their mistakes, rather than being afraid of failure or apportioning blame. Failing forward means that when a team encounters a setback, they don’t give up. Instead, they use the experience to identify what went wrong and how to do better next time. They take the time to reflect on the failure and use it as a learning opportunity. FAIL stands for: FIRST ATTEMPT IN LEARNING.

Conquering fear as a leader isn't about eliminating uncertainty but embracing it as a pathway to innovation and growth. It's the courage to face the unknown, guided by empathy and precision, that turns challenges into opportunities. Whether in healthcare, technology, or any field, this fearless approach builds resilience and fosters collaboration, setting the stage for success across various domains.

The more practice you have with handling failure, the easier it gets. Therefore, it's best to find low-stakes environments where you can practice taking risks and knowing that you will fail part of the time. Improv is a fantastic tool for this - in the beginning, you actually celebrate your mistakes! Over time it helps you avoid freezing out of the fear of failing.