Britt Andreatta – Our Failures Remind Us That We Are Learning Beings

Dr. Britt Andreatta is an internationally recognized thought leader who creates brain science-based solutions for today’s challenges. As CEO of 7th Mind, Inc., Britt Andreatta draws on her unique leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and learning background to unlock the best in people and organizations. Her series of books, The WIRED TO™ Series: Books on the brain science of success, focuses on how we are wired to grow, resist, and connect.

“Failure is information, and it helps us get better as long as you know what to do better.”

Dr. Britt Andreatta

In today’s episode, rather than focus on Dr. Britt’s story, we will focus on what she has learned about failure as a brain science researcher, author, speaker, and consultant. Leaders can apply these lessons to bring out the best from their teams.

Lessons learned

• Biologically, we are constantly sensing our environment, trying different actions, and trying to maximize our positive results. We are wired to learn through trial and error.
• Having goals and setting a standard, and achieving that standard is essential. But, it is also important to celebrate progress and effort.
• Leaders should refrain from focusing on their team members’ faults and instead focus more on their accomplishments. If a leader is all about the numbers, they will have a disengaged workplace.
• Care about how people feel, their sense of satisfaction, their sense of purpose, and their sense of feeling respected. These are the real performance indicators.
• When conducting performance reviews, have two scores: individual contributor score and team score.
• Using fear as a leader will always undermine performance because people cannot perform at their best when they are in a fight or flight state.
• Competition is excellent for driving performance but be sure to nurture healthy competition instead of a toxic competition.

Andrew’s takeaways

• There is a difference between training and education. Training is about acquiring a skill, and education is about expanding the mind and bringing new information into the system.
• As a leader, it helps develop a common goal rather than giving everybody separate KPIs. Working separately makes it a lot harder for the team to cooperate and achieve a common goal.

Actionable advice

Embrace your true nature as a learning being. Failure is just the first attempt at learning. Therefore, create space for making mistakes, taking risks, failing, picking yourself up, learning from it, trying again, and letting yourself get better at something. Mastery takes time.

No. 1 goal for the next 12 months

Britt’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to launch her Brain Aware Manager training, a program on how managers can use brain science to bring out their teams’ best. She is currently putting the finishing touches on the training and will be launching it soon.

Parting words

“Go out and learn something fun.”

Dr. Britt Andreatta

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Andrew’s books