Failure Forum
Collaboration & Performance
Workshop Goals
- Gain an understanding of Process Goals vs. Outcome Goals
- Increase psychological safety around perceived failures
- Encourage performance and risk-taking through re-framing failures as opportunities for Process Success and personal growth
- Build stronger personal relationships
Description
Life is more complicated than a KPI. Discuss what failure means to you and practice re-framing them to honour process goals instead of focussing only on final outcomes. Success is not only contingent on an outcome, and a team can accomplish much through failure. Learn to recognise the effort put forth, and honour transitions in our lives, and make failures a form of achievement!

Quick FAQs
TIME
60 mins
TEAM SIZE
2-unlimited people
FORMAT
Virtual with slide deck
EXPERIENCE CATEGORY
Collaboration & Performance
What you'll need
Materials
For this workshop, you'll need:
- A copy of the slide deck template
- Access to Netflix (for recommended pre-work)
Templates
Use this template for your experience. Make sure to add your own failure story to the template.
You can share slides 6 and 7 with your team if you'd like them to prepare their failure stories in advance.
Facilitator Notes
Facilitator notes can be found directly in the slide deck template. No additional notes are needed.
We encourage you to add your own pesonal flair! This activity lives best, when you share personal examples. Adjust the notes to suit your story best.
Step-by-Step
- Ask your team to watch episode 5 of Netflix's LOSERS in advance of the experience (optional, but a great way to launch discussion about the concept of failing without it being too personal)
- Prepare your own Failure story in advance.
Let participants know you'll be discussing the concept of re-framing failure, and sharing your own story. Participants are encouraged to share as much or as little as they like, but don't need to talk about their own failures if they don't want to.
Consider running Failure Forums regularly on your team, to encourage an environment open to learning from mistakes and an appreciation of process goals. Re-framing failure into a positive growth experience takes time and practice!
- Always start by sharing your own experience. This helps establish psychological safety.
- Don't use this experience to provide feedback or input about what went wrong with failures your team shares.
- If your team is not comfortable discussing their own failures, spend more time discussing the example from Netflix and what we can learn from Mauro's experience.
- If your team is not comfortable discussing their own failures, simply ask them to share examples of process goals (when learning from a journey was more meaningful than the result).
- Follow up in later team meetings or through Slack by asking how your team is honouring their transitions
- Encourage other team members to host a Failure Forum in the future
- Consider sharing weekly successes and fails
Not quite right?
If these sessions don't cover the topic you're looking for, seem too light-touch, or you want to take a deeper dive, we recommend taking another look at our Facilitated Team Development offerings instead. Unsure exactly what's right for your team? Contact L&D for a consultation and we'll help you find the right training for your needs!