The Power of Failure

This title could easily have been something like ‘How to be a Daring Leader’ or ‘Being a Change Agent’ or some other inspirational phrase, but I decided to focus on what so many of us deeply fear - failure. It’s the F-word nobody likes, except failure is powerful. Failure teaches us how to be resilient and how to deal with adversity. So often we look to success to help chart our paths forward, but there are many ways to get to an outcome. Rarely is the path to success easy or without hardship, so how do we turn our fear of failure into the fuel that pushes us forward into success?

It’s all about mindset, so change the way you look at failure. Easier said than done, right? We have a choice when we hit adversity - either focus on the victim mindset (life happens to me, it’s someone else’s fault, etc) or focus on the observer mindset (what is being done for me, what can I choose to do, etc). By shifting your perspective even a little bit, you take back control and can use failure to your advantage. Failure is not necessarily defeat when you can learn and grow.

Here is another tool for your toolkit. A phrase that comes to mind when I think of failure is ‘never fail alone’. Acknowledging the power of failure asks us to be humble and vulnerable, but there’s also power in leaning on other people for help. If you seek to fail alone, you’re the lone wolf who couldn’t ask for help and tried to do work in a silo. If you seek to fail as a member of a team, the team will celebrate the progress made and use that momentum to keep delivering. The ultimate way to build trust is to have the humility to ask for help when you need it. 

A third tool is to name the scariest part of failure. If we need failure to learn and grow, then we need to also need to understand why failure is so scary to begin with. For me, I’m afraid of losing face. I like being the dependable person, the one you can count on to do what I say I'm going to do. Failure means I might not live up to this high bar I’ve set for myself. The reality though is that if I can be up front with when things are off the rails before real disaster strikes, I’m actually working to mitigate or reduce the impact of failure. That’s a pretty big win if you ask me. 

Choosing how to show up in challenging times is how we make progress to be the person we want to be. I wish there was a simple checklist we could leverage to make us all stronger and more resilient, but it does take some sweat equity along the journey. Frankly if there really was a checklist, there would be no market for motivational speakers or self help books! Each person’s journey is as unique as they are, but everyone will face hardships and failures. We have the opportunity to take advantage, to learn, and to grow when so many others give up. How will you harness the power of failure? 

#thoughtleaders #failure #mindset #growthmindset #leadership #selfcare #learning