Admit It: Failure Happens
“Things will happen to you, but you will adjust.”
Those are the words that too many marginalized women are told in the face of oppression. They are the words a mother tells her daughters, the words a mentor tells her mentee when all other advice fails, and the words executives say to urge demonstrations of Olympic-level flexibility from women facing inequalities.
Failure is an idea that leaders who attended the 2017 Women Leaders in Global Health (WLGH) conference late last year wrestle with every day. Many of the conference attendees’ own global health journeys began with a frustration at how systems were failing people. When panelist Joia Mukherjee witnessed the AIDS crisis at its height in the 1990s, she felt “It didn’t make any sense that poor people, especially people of color, didn’t get proper care.” Her inquiry into a systemic health failure drove her deeper into global health work. She currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer at Partners in Health.
In a panel titled “How to Become a Change Agent in Global Health,” a group of highly esteemed women spoke candidly about their leadership journeys. During her time as Peru’s Minister of Health, panelist Patricia Garcia introduced countless achievements to the country, notably, creating an online network for Peru’s laboratories, increasing salaries of health workers, and creating an SMS-based electronic medical records system. Yet even with these national successes, her experience as a woman in politics was difficult at times as she faced challenges from men that wanted to fire her simply because their directives came down from a woman.
Audience members asked the panelists questions we all wonder of our heroes: How did you get here? What’s your proudest accomplishment? What can I do to be like you? Farnaz Malik, a young global health leader in the audience, asked the panelists a question that perhaps many had on our minds but hadn’t dared to ask. How do you deal with failure? With knowing looks and audible enthusiasm, conference attendees perked up with interest. Malik had struck a nerve.
“Fear of failure is a struggle we all share,” noted Geeta Rao Gupta, Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation. “Failure is incredibly important. If it happens earlier in life, it helps you so much more than it would later.”
Vanessa Kerry, co-founder and CEO of Seed Global Health, reflected on her unique leadership journey by noting that life is never linear and in fact, “Failure is critical in propelling us forward. If we’re failing, it means we’re taking risks and pushing limits.”
During Ambassador Deborah Birx’s incredible career in government, she’s combatted the shame associated with failure through daily mentorship. To Ambassador Birx, intentionally mentoring women every day means that “they’re in your space, in your office, and get to learn from you by example.” It helps that her attitude towards closed doors is that she doesn’t understand the word no. To Ambassador Birx, “No means try again; it will be a yes tomorrow.”
Aside from mentorship, global health organizations can hold themselves accountable by celebrating more admissions of failure. The organization Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada annually distributes “failure reports” to create a space for discussing what didn’t work. The failure reports are in their ninth year of production and aim to create a paradigm shift in public admissions of failure within civil society. EWB pairs their reports with a website filled with stories and resources for use by other organizations.
“…it’s clear that in order to rise up as leaders within global health, there is also a need to discuss personal failures as a strength. Perhaps in the end…’the only truly ‘bad’ failure is one that’s repeated.’”
Given the lasting enthusiasm surrounding this conversation at WLGH 2017 and planning already underway for WLGH 2018, it’s clear that in order to rise up as leaders within global health, there is also a need to discuss personal failures as a strength. Perhaps in the end, as Admitting Failure states, “the only truly ‘bad’ failure is one that’s repeated.”
Karen Maniraho was a 2014–2015 Global Health Corps fellow in Burundi.
