[mont]

> 2. Give them a playground to fail - Offload any non-business critical tasks and let them make mistakes. No one I know ever learnt programming without making any mistakes. Immediately tell them about best practices and how to avoid such mistakes in future.

I think even more importantly is to encourage failure, or at least reporting it. How many times have you been ecstatic that you managed to get a program to crash differently? A lot of people are terrified of failure, but people probably learn better from their mistakes. And showing them that it's ok (even encouraged) to report what their stuck on to you means that they can potentially get a quicker solution, learn from you.

[yitchelle]

I have to second this comment. I think it is also important to stress the activities after the failure is also important. ie reporting it at earliest, proactive in helping to contain its impact, conducting a lesson learn etc.