Normalising productive struggle
Organisations can't improve unless they consistently seek out and solve their problems. Yet many workplace cultures inadvertently suppress the very behaviours that enable problem solving, with difficulty seen as something to be avoided rather than essential to learning and innovation. Normalising productive struggle—the deliberate framing and acceptance of difficulty as a valued part of learning and problem solving—represents a critical dimension of high-performing, innovative teams and organisations.
Productive struggle: The flow triad
Csikszentmihalyi's decades-long research on flow identified that to enable productive struggle, individuals must pursue a triad of challenge, developing skill, and immediate feedback (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
The concept of “flow” refers to a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity and skill mastery, identified in the research of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
When any element of this triad is missing, struggle becomes counterproductive. Low challenge produces meaningless busywork. High challenge without skill development creates overwhelming anxiety. Challenge without feedback leads to ineffective repetition. Flow—and by extension, productive struggle—occurs when challenges are calibrated to match or slightly exceed an individual's current skill level (Csikszentmihalyi, 2009).
Normalising struggle does not equate to overstraining team members. Workplaces must distinguish between productive and destructive struggle. When challenges dramatically exceed capabilities or capacity, individuals experience anxiety and disengagement rather than productive learning. Normalising struggle requires simultaneous attention to skill development and creating a work environment with learning opportunities, workload and culture that enable them to grow toward the challenge.
Interpersonal climate and psychological safety
Research by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson demonstrates that when people feel safe taking interpersonal risks, they are more likely to engage in the learning behaviours essential for productive struggle and problem solving (Edmondson, 1999). Interpersonal risks are actions that could cause someone to be embarrassed or appear incompetent, such as admitting they don't know something, asking for help, or acknowledging failure. Normalising the process of learning and struggle requires creating a culture in which it’s okay to take interpersonal risks that could lead to appearing unknowledgeable in a given task or topic, delivering work that is acceptable but not commendable in the first instance, or failing to produce the desired outcome when taking on something new.
Psychological safety is not the absence of challenge or struggle; rather, it describes an environment where productive discomfort and learning by doing is understood as serving individual and organisational growth. Edmondson found that creating a climate in which all employees feel empowered to speak up for information or assistance, leads to fewer errors and better performing teams. Psychological safety and high standards operate synergistically, enabling accountability without fear (Edmondson, 2018).
Leadership behaviours
Modelling vulnerability becomes a direct mechanism through which leaders normalise struggle. When leaders openly demonstrate their own learning processes—including failure, mistakes, and uncertainty—they fundamentally shift organisational norms. Vulnerable leadership behaviours—such as admitting gaps in knowledge, seeking input from others and sharing lessons from past failures—provide the behavioural template for employees to do the same.
When leaders step back and resist the urge to immediately solve problems themselves, providing space for team members to attempt solutions through trial and error, they enable an exploratory approach to problem solving. The experience of being responsible for solving the problem facilitates experiential learning.
When a project is complete, leaders should ask not merely 'did we succeed?' but 'did we learn?' This reframing from outcome metrics to learning metrics fundamentally changes how team members respond to difficulties.
Systemic support
Normalisation of productive struggle requires systemic support beyond cultural messaging or individual leadership. It requires structures and processes designed to align team performance with learning and problem solving behaviours, including resources, recognition and coaching.
Enablers include:
- Performance metrics that measure learning over time
- Reward structures that recognise initiative and strategy, not only successful outcomes
- Distributed problem solving capability across teams and hierarchies through training in methodologies and tools
- Leadership training focused on inquiry-based coaching, where open-ended questions are used to help individuals discover answers rather than providing direct advice
- Structures and time for reflection—forums where team members can discuss issues or failures openly and get feedback to support understanding and agency
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2009. Flow. In Snyder, C.R. & Lopez, S.J. eds. Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press.
Edmondson, A.C. 2018. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.