The most transformative role I ever held was as a member of the Zenger Miller product development team. Those who’ve been in the learning and development field for a while will recognize the name. Founded by Jack Zenger, the organization was at the forefront of commercial leadership and management training, offering an extensive library of modules based upon behavior modeling methodology.

The product development team was charged with developing this training — to exceptionally high standards. Each module had to work for anyone, at any level of leadership, in any function or industry, in any part of the world. And it had to be delivered by internal client facilitators. We used to joke about “Fisher Pricing” the product, so it was fundamentally unbreakable under any circumstance.

As you can imagine, the testing process was intense. We went from pilot to pilot, always experimenting to discover what worked, what didn’t and how to continually refine our efforts. My mentor at the time frequently said, “There’s no such thing as a bad pilot,” because even when the content or activity didn’t land as expected, you still learned something. In those cases, we had proactively teased out a problem and were given the opportunity to fix it. These were considered the best pilots because of the rich learning they provided.

Enter me: a Type A overachiever who’d developed a fixed mindset. This role represented my own personal brand of hell: Being expected to make mistakes in a public setting.

But a funny thing happened after a couple of rounds: My internal critic gave way to greater curiosity. Rather than cringing in the back of the room when part of my design fell flat, I soaked up every detail of the participants’ reactions and formulated follow-up questions.

This sort of orientation toward experimentation, failure and improvement is what most leaders aspire to encourage among their team members. And yet, it’s all too rare in most workplaces.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Looking back on my piloting life, I can now recognize some of the elements that came together to make it work — elements that can be replicated.

• Respect for everyone’s expertise and perspective: We genuinely held each other in high esteem. No one had anything to prove, beyond meeting our shared goal of delivering the best possible training to clients.
• Mutual skin in the game: Each team member was running their own experiments. We were similarly vulnerable and psychologically exposed.
• A structured, predictable feedback process: This might have been the most important tactic. Feedback began with global observations — always with a focus first on what worked, followed by high-level questions or concerns. Then, we moved on to the nitty-gritty details, focusing on specific observations. But here’s the twist: With each observation about what might not have worked optimally came a constructive suggestion. “What if …” or “How about …” preceded countless great ideas that consistently contributed to a stronger next version.
• Active post-pilot support: After our feedback sessions, we’d share notes, huddle for short brainstorming sessions and test prototypes on each other. We knew that we weren’t in the process alone.

This team — and the processes that evolved to support it — instilled a distinct mindset. We understood that our job was to try, test, fall short and improve. That’s how we measured our success. And that’s how we created products that managers and leaders continue to rely upon today.

I recently spoke with one of my team members from those days and we reflected upon the experience. She asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone could enjoy that experience of experimentation?”

Wouldn’t it just? Because, after all, life is just one big pilot.