Why ambition and failure go hand in hand

While you can’t run a mile in close to four minutes, there is still a lesson you should take away from Faith Kipyegon’s career.

Last week, the four-time Olympic medal winner from Kenya attempted to become the first woman to complete a mile in under four minutes. Several experts discredited any woman’s ability — let alone Kipyegon’s — to run a mile in that time, but that didn’t stop her from going after it publicly. She wasn’t successful, but her attempt at a world record that can only be described as a moon shot showcases an important skill for the workplace: overcoming a fear of failure.

Starting at a young age, girls tend to fear failure more than boys do in part because of the messages they get from adults. Adults tend to hold girls to higher standards than boys, meaning that girls may be more likely to blame themselves when they make mistakes. And this fear of failure extends well into adulthood: women hold themselves to higher standards than men, which may be because women are judged more harshly for failure. Also, performance missteps are often perceived as signs of a lack of ability in women, whereas they are seen as simply a lack of effort in men.

Let’s be clear: Kipyegon really didn’t fail. Indeed, she beat her own personal best time by 1.2 seconds. But failure and ambition go hand in hand: the more audacious your goal is, the more likely you are to fail. That’s why it’s so impressive that Kipyegon attempted a near-impossible record on such a global stage. When ambitious women like Kipyegon “fail,” they role-model both positive risk-taking and failure for girls and other women. In turn, this helps encourage others to pursue bold goals of their own.

So where do you start when trying to overcome your own fear of failure?

• Adopt a growth mindset: Having a growth mindset means choosing challenging tasks that will help you learn, rather than opting for easy options to minimize mistakes, and is associated with a more adaptive response to failure.
• Avoid perfectionism: Perfectionistic concerns make people overly sensitive to failure and mistakes, focusing more on avoiding mistakes than learning.

Before going after the world record, Kipyegon said she wanted the feat to “give hope to other women that everything is possible.” I hope she knows that simply attempting such an amazing accomplishment does just that.

For more, check out this article from the Lean In Girls team on how to help girls embrace failure and take positive risks.