Five leadership lessons to learn from failure
Image courtesy of Brett Jordan on Unsplash
The thought that one’s effort, energy and expectations could become a smouldering pile of rubble is both sobering and humbling. Yet, as strange as it seems, failure is probably the best proving ground for great leadership. Qualities such as courage, resilience and determination, emerge in the face of obstacles and adversity not in the face of plain sailing. In addition, learning from our failure creates footprints to inspire and empower others.
Against this backdrop, set out below are five leadership lessons to learn from failure.
1. Contextualise your experience
To contextualise your experience is to recognise that failure is a experience not a judgement. The greatest journeys of success often require a detour through deep frustration, disappointment and despair. The key leadership lesson here is that failure represents a potential gold-mine of opportunity through which to re-think, re-focus and re-double your efforts.
2. Confront your experience
People often want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and failure, but that is actually the worst possible thing that anyone can do. People run away or avoid the things that they are afraid of and fear of failure invariably results in an aversion to risk. The key leadership lesson here is: never let the possibility of doing something wrong, mean that you end up doing nothing right.
3. Evaluate your experience
It’s easy to forget that if you cannot learn from experience, you are destined to relive that experience. Let’s be real, self-critique is one of the hardest things for anyone to do, not least because the act of poring over our own errors, exposes us to our own vulnerabilities and shortcomings. The key leadership lesson here is that learning from failure is one of the surest routes to achieving success.
4. Be prepared to try again, but know when to try something different
‘If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again’ right? Well yes and no. Clearly, you need to use good judgement when assessing and evaluating failure. In many instances you may find that a change in attitude and more resolute application will produce the desired results. However, at other times the best thing to do is to call it quits and move on to something completely different. The key leadership lesson here is that learning from failure should make you wise, not stupid.
5. Surround yourself with the right people
The impact of those that we surround ourselves with can often be seen in character traits that we develop. Nothing will equip you to overcome failure more than the words and actions of those whose company you keep. The right friends and relationships will encourage, inspire and empower you, whilst the wrong ones will hold you back. The key leadership lesson here is that the people we hang around with are also our most important ‘investors’. If you want to be the recipient of good investments, you need to surround yourself with the right ‘investors’.
The extent to which we learn from failure has much to do with each person’s attitude to experience. To make the most of failure, you must first see every experience (no-matter how difficult) as an opportunity to learn.
