Team Failure and Personal Failure

Regardless of fault, the team's failures are your own personal failures

Which means, the weight behind lessons and outcomes can belong to you too

Mindset: I see team failures as my own personal failures

I think we underestimate how empowering failure can be.

As I mentioned on Extreme Ownership, “Outcomes” are important to own. Besides the nice-to own positive outcomes, it’s just as important if not more so – to own the negative outcomes and failure. Both before, during, and after it happens.

Attribution Bias, self-serving bias

A common attribution bias (the tendencies to misattribute actions to internal or external factors in a way that is unfair or skewed) is self-serving bias:

• credit success to internal factors, and blame failures on externals
• e.g.
  • do well on a quiz = I’m intelligent!
  • do bad on a quiz = the questions were hard

This is a common tendency because it’s easy, avoids hard truths, and often – valid on some level! Perhaps the quiz questions were harder than the previous year.

Unfortunately, as valid as it may be to attribute blame on externals – it never changes the outcome and removes power from the oneself as much as it absolves one from the responsibility of the failure. Additionally, it removes the weight of any potential lesson or learning to take forward into the future.

An opposite of self-serving bias is extreme ownership. I’m focusing here on an important sub-mindset of “team failure = personal failure”

Why see your team’s failures as a personal failure?

Fault and blame is rarely black and white, often it’s a combination of internal and external factors that led to an outcome.

Nonetheless, were you not involved in the team? Are you truly completely powerless to be fully absolved?

It might not be your fault, but it can be your personal failure.

The main reason to see your team’s failures as your own personal failure,

It shifts weight into the right fruitful places, to maximise:

• your sense of ownership
• your focus on what you can control
• learning efficacy with weight behind lessons

Conversely, when you don’t consider team failures as your own, unhelpful mindsets can seep in:

• It’s not really going to affect me / I really don’t care
• I couldn’t do anything about it
• Unlucky, better luck next time!

my context

I’ve had past experiences and many distinct ones in army that led to the formation of this mindset over time. Especially in the army, where individual failure = team failure. Often individual mistakes leads to collective punishment. I distinctly recall as an Officer Cadet when my Sergeant Major shouted at my face “BECAUSE of YOU, your WHOLE platoon will now suffer”, as he made me remain standing while my peers knock-it-down. While the military is exceedingly great at translating any personal failures into a team failure, the converse is less obvious sometimes.

I clarified and internalised this converse mindset in my 3rd hackathon (Make the team more fun than Dota 2) where I took it outside of the army.

Ahahah at one point, I recall defining it as,

It’s all your fault. The team’s failures are your own personal failures

Which was not the healthiest way of framing it 😝

I think it’s important to realise that poor outcomes isn’t always your fault / it might not be directly attributable to you. However, to understand that absolving oneself from the negative outcomes is also a removal of control and potential.

the double-edged sword of modern society

Over the years, it seems to be becoming more doable and convenient for individuals to live in a isolated-manner.

A single individual is able to work, socialise, play, get things and order food – all without ever leaving their home.

Convenience is great – yet, sadly many convenient paths are sub-par or incomplete experiences compared to what they replace.

	modern convenience	traditional effort	what’s lost
work	Freelance solo work. Remote work.	Go into office, Live collaboration with others.	Serendipity. Learning to work with others. Cross-pollination of skills and ideas
socialise / relationships	Discord, Reddit, Twitter…etc. Anonymous participation. Parasocial relationships.	clubs, church, community centres, campuses, bars, libraries…etc.	The full scope of authentic human connection. Body-language. Less layers between empathy. Learning to communicate with others.
play	Gaming. Netflix. YouTube. Reels. Twitch.	Less-virtual hobbies and activities. Playgrounds. The outdoors. Parks. Sports.	A more accurate understanding of effort-reward curves. Health and well-being.
get things	E-commerce.	Buying in store.	Reduced time outside. And a more societal problem of increased consumerism and downstream effects on communities/small-biz.
get food	Order-in.	Go out and get it.	Nutritional quality (I feel that’s often a trade-off to make the economics more feasible). Reduced time outside.

In general, it became easier than ever to live and meet basic human needs – as an individual with less interactions with others.

Meaning that people have less interaction experiences and opportunities as they grow up to mature. It generally leads to a more individualistic mindset (because it’s doable) and the corresponding lack-of-skills further lock them down that path.