How to Help Girls Embrace Failure And Take Positive Risks

Sophie Broxton has always been ambitious. At age seven, she started computer coding. At 12, she began teaching herself new languages, including Japanese and Haitian Creole. And by 13, she was writing a science-fiction book series.

Sophie’s appetite to pursue big goals appears to have no limits. But her mother, Samantha Broxton, says there is one thing that her now 14-year-old daughter does hesitate to do: take risks. “Sophie can be very risk averse,” said Samantha, who lives in Irvine, California. “She wants to do the right thing and get straight A’s. She has such a stark perfectionism, and that makes her nervous to try things.”

Sophie’s fear of failure is all too common among teenage girls across the world. No matter where they live, girls tend to worry more than boys do about mistakes and failures.¹ And this pattern really matters, because failure is crucial to learning and growth, especially in adolescence.²

Girls tend to fear failure more than boys do in part because of the messages they get from adults. Adults tend to hold girls to higher standards than boys and may therefore criticize girls more often when they fall short, meaning that girls may be more likely to blame themselves when they make mistakes.³ “When girls fail, they tend to internalize it,” says Professor Francesca Borgonovi, author of the largest-ever study of girls and fear of failure. “But when boys fail, they are very comfortable attributing it to circumstances.”

All of us can positively impact how girls see themselves and their possibilities. Here’s how adults can do this most effectively:

Foster a growth mindset 
Girls’ anxiety about failing is also fueled by “fixed mindset” messages: the belief that our abilities are innate and hard to change. A fixed mindset is often shared with girls through gender stereotypes, such as “girls are bad at math.”⁴

The antidote to a fixed mindset is a “growth mindset,” the belief that everyone can grow their abilities with persistence and effort. When all genders have a growth mindset, they are able to learn more effectively and take more positive risks. Fostering a growth mindset can start with celebrating all of the effort they put into different activities—especially when the payoff is not earning an A or winning the game. “Sophie had a year where she got almost all A's and one C in math,” said her mother, Samantha. “We celebrated that C so hard because she struggled in math and really earned it.”

Kassie Gray, who runs Female Footballers, a Bay Area nonprofit that mentors girls and women soccer players, explains how she coaches these skills: “We start small and tell players to add ‘yet’ to their negative self-talk: ‘I can’t do something—yet.’ We recommend that they don’t think, ‘I have to score today.’ Instead they think, ‘Today I can have an impact by doing X.’”

Reframe failure as a chance to learn
Adults can redefine failure as a growth opportunity by talking about times when they tried something that didn’t go well and naming what they learned. For example, they can talk about a project at work that didn’t go well and what they’d do differently next time.

If your girl tells you about a mistake she made, you can help her find the win by asking, “What did you learn?” says Samantha. “I taught my daughter that sometimes the mistakes are the best part of the journey, because wisdom comes from them.”

These conversations underscore that mistakes happen to everyone and aren’t the end of the world. In the same spirit, Gray tells the girls she coaches that slipups are utterly normal: “I always say, ‘Soccer is a game of mistakes.’”

FOR MORE: Check out the “Reframing Failure” session of our Lean In Girls program

Give them tools to rebound quickly from mistakes
If girls have techniques to quickly bounce back from missteps, these moments can sting less, making girls less likely to avoid them. “I teach girls to create a reset ritual to help them recover from a mistake in the moment,” says Gray. “You choose a phrase to say to yourself, then take a deep breath. And you combine that with a physical cue, like fixing your hair.”

Research shows that if a reset cue like this becomes a habit, it can quiet negative thoughts and help a girl to bring her best self to whatever happens next.

Encourage positive risks — while staying realistic
We often think of teens as taking risks with reckless abandon. But when it comes to many positive risks—such as taking a tough class—teens can be quite risk averse.⁵ However, these experiences are crucial for young people to establish their identities, discover their passions, and learn new skills.⁶ 

Given girls’ elevated fear of failure, adults should help them feel safe taking positive risks. Parents can encourage them to focus on the positives of risk-taking by simply asking, “Can you tell me what could go right?”

FOR MORE: Check out the “What Could Go Right? Activity in  the  “Embrace Risk-Taking session of our Lean In Girls program.

When Sophie was 11, she became increasingly anxious during the COVID pandemic. To help address this, her mother came up with a year-long challenge, a list of positive risks called “100 Brave and Bold Things.” It included items like speaking up first when out with her family, organizing events with friends, or making s'mores over a bonfire. “The one hundred things helped," Samantha said. “Since then she’s really leaned in to new areas like languages, writing, and gymnastics.”

Help teens choose the right level of risk
It’s important not to gloss over the reality: messing up, by definition, has downsides as well as benefits. This makes it important for parents to stay involved and help girls calibrate the risks they take, so they don’t attempt something that would have too much downside. “Parents should keep up a dialogue about risk and help kids navigate it,” says Natasha Duell, a professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an expert on teens and risk. “But the reality is that to succeed, you need to risk some types of failure.”

If you found this article helpful, take a look at two of our Lean In Girls sessions, “Reframe Failure” and “Embrace Risk-Taking.” In these one-hour meetings, you can take a small group of girls through empowering activities that provide them with more tools to redefine failure and benefit from taking positive risks.