Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that it may not be true what we all think, that we learn from failure. In fact, this study showed that between two groups of individuals after performing a task those who had received positive feedback highlighting the correct answers to a test rather than a second group who had received negative feedback on the wrong answers to the same test, the first group performed better in the following task.
Often people after a failure look the other way to protect their self-confidence and so they do not learn unless they are very motivated.
How can you not learn?
- Mindset - People’s mental patterns are a significant aspect. If they feel that making a mistake is a demonstration of their lack of ability, the next test will certainly not be improved, as their performance can only change positively over time and through a learning process.
- Subjective relevance of the performance - If people feel that the mistakes made are not relevant, the performance provided will be assessed as unimportant because, for example, it focuses on the detection of knowledge that is secondary to the person doing the test.
- Motivation - People may not be very improvement oriented as they should, in their opinion, invest too many resources to achieve success in a specific task and are therefore not motivated to go down this path.
- Skills - People may not know exactly what skills they should improve and therefore tend to repeat the same mistakes without having developed an improvement program.
- Performance anxiety - People who suffer from this difficulty tend to perform below their skill level. They can only improve in the following performance levels if they change this way of reacting to the test situations.
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