Catmull is honest and human in acknowledging that failure hurts. Embracing failure is far easier to say than to actually put into practice! “To disentangle the good and bad parts of failure,” he says, “we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.” He points out that it's not enough to simply accept failure when it happens and move on, more or less hoping to avoid it going forward. We need to understand failure not as something to fear or try to avoid, but as a natural part of learning and exploration. Just as learning to ride a bike entails the physical discomfort of skinned knees or bruised elbows, creating a stunningly original movie requires the psychological pain of failure. Moreover, trying to avoid the pain of failure in learning will lead to far worse pain. Catmull: “for leaders especially, this strategy – trying to avoid failure by outthinking it – dooms you to fail.

There’s a quick way to determine if your company has embraced the negative definition of failure. Ask yourself what happens when an error is discovered. Do people shut down and turn inward, instead of coming together to untangle the causes of problems that might be avoided going forward? Is the question being asked: Whose fault was this? If so, your culture is one that vilifies failure. Failure is difficult enough without it being compounded by the search for a scapegoat.

In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative. But if you can foster a positive understanding of failure, the opposite will happen.

The instinct to exhort people to do their best work in challenging times is understandable. It’s tempting to believe that if we just hunker down, we can avoid failure altogether. It’s also wrong. The relationship between effort and success is imperfect. The world around us changes constantly and keeps presenting us with new situations. The best-laid plans encounter problems in an uncertain context. Even when people work hard and are committed to doing the right thing, failure is always possible in a new situation. Sure, sometimes failures are caused by people who are careless or don’t work hard, but even hard work can end in failure when a situation is new and different or some unexpected event happens. Finally, and most perversely, sometimes sheer luck allows you to mail it in and succeed anyway.

First, fear inhibits learning. Research shows that fear consumes physiologic resources, diverting them from parts of the brain that manage working memory and process new information. In a word, learning. And that includes learning from failure. It is hard for people to do their best work when they’re afraid. It’s especially hard to learn from failure because doing so is a cognitively demanding task. Second, fear impedes talking about our failures. Today’s never-ending chore of self-presentation has exacerbated this ancient human tendency. The pressure to look successful has never been greater than in this age of social media. Studies find today’s teens, in particular, are obsessed with putting forward a sanitized version of their lives, endlessly checking for “likes” and suffering emotionally from comparisons and slights, real or perceived. Our emotional reaction to a perceived rejection is the same as to an actual one, because it’s how we interpret a situation that shapes our emotional response. And it’s not just the kids who worry. Whether in professional accomplishment, attractiveness, or social inclusion, keeping up appearances can feel as necessary as breathing to full-grown adults. The real failure, I’ve found, is believing that others will like us more if we are failure-free. In reality, we appreciate and like people who are genuine and interested in us, not those who present a flawless exterior.

I’d go so far as to say that insisting on high standards without psychological safety is a recipe for failure—and not the good kind. People are more likely to mess up (even for things they know how to do well) when they’re stressed. Similarly, when you have a question about how to do something but don’t feel able to ask someone, you’re at risk of running headlong into a basic failure. Also, when people encounter intelligent failures, they need to feel safe enough to tell other people about them. These useful failures are no longer “intelligent” when they happen a second time.