“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” is a question that often finds me through books, social media, loved ones, and my therapist. I don’t particularly like this question. It makes failure seem like some giant dangerous thing to avoid at all costs. I’d like to propose a rewrite – What would you do if you knew you COULD fail and you’d still have a team to support you anyway? What would this world look like?

When I was in college, I worked at a popular sandwich shop that would often get busy with a line out the door. During downtime, my coworkers and I would joke around, dance, and sing along with whatever was playing on the radio.

Things would start to change as the line got longer; we’d go from playful college students to individuals hyper-focused on our individual tasks, each hoping it wasn’t our station slowing down the assembly-line sandwich-making process.

On a particularly busy night, someone came in, ordered their sandwich, and I completely botched the order having misunderstood what they were asking for. Avoiding eye contact with my coworkers and the inevitable judgment for messing up the workflow, I tried to retreat to the back room where my manager stopped me and told me I had to get back out there and finish the order. I can still feel the heat running through my body as I shakily fixed someone’s order who was visibly angry at me and asked how I could be such an idiot. Let’s just say I didn’t feel particularly supported by a team that night and it shifted the way I interacted with them moving forward. For me, it wasn’t a safe place to make mistakes.

In the grand scheme of life, this moment of making an honest mistake is insignificant and yet it’s lived in my memory rent-free for 20 years. It was one brick in the foundation of a work-life where perfection is expected. This expectation of perfection gets reinforced by colleagues, community partners you’re working with, and people you’re serving, even from within…

And it’s exhausting.

White Supremacy Culture defines perfectionism as “the belief there is one right way to do things. [It’s] connected to the belief in an objective ‘perfect’ that is both attainable and desirable for everyone. [It’s] connected to the belief that I am qualified to know what the perfect right way is for myself and others.” The pursuit of perfection is one characteristic of white supremacy culture I have to constantly keep in check. I will ruminate for days, weeks, months, and (sometimes) years over something I messed up and be repeatedly told I’m being too hard on myself. Recently, I mishandled how to communicate an anticipated shift. When it was brought to my attention, the full-body heat from my sandwich-making days set right back in, and this time with a side of “I think I’m going to be sick.” Colleagues leaned in as gentle and curious thought partners to help me piece together where the breakdown in communication was, illuminated where I misstepped and helped me plan for the next go-around without judgment, punishment, or passive aggression. This is a work culture I’m relatively new to. And it’s one way a safe and strong culture of collaboration can look; it serves as the proverbial blankie as collaboration waxes and wanes, conflict is invited, difference is embraced, and progress (not perfection) is sought. It’s what makes the full-body heat tolerable.

One tool I like using is Before and After Action Reviews. This exercise helps create space for intention setting, planning, and reflection on how a process went. While there’s no ‘perfect’ way to do something, it opens a window into how something could go better next time based on how it went this time.

Here I’ll end and ask again: What would you do if you knew you COULD fail, and you’d still have a team to support you anyway? What would this world look like?