Failure is a strange thing. Many of us have been taught to avoid failure during our careers as well as during our education years. However, moments of failure will pop up during our careers. Sometimes we can’t avoid it. Failure can even help us out, if you master how to view it as a learning experience and move forward with the development actions. It’s important to know how we can work with failure, especially if we care about our own professional impact and how our teams are performing. What, if anything, is going to make us feel better about it? Here’s seven top tips on how to deal better with failure.
Is it personal?…Yes, it’s good to acknowledge if you could have approached something a bit differently. It's also courageous to accept responsibility for when things go wrong. Many of us will know of colleagues or ex-colleagues who aren't comfortable in accepting this responsibility. Just because something went wrong or didn’t turn out as you’d hoped doesn’t mean this is solely down to you. There could be all kinds of reasons. Sometimes we’re too hard on ourselves and assume failure is all about us. Identify what caused the failure or mistake so these failures can be avoided in the future. Share your honest learnings with others in your team.
Speak to someone you trust…At times when things feel things are going upside down, it’s good to chat it through with a friend, trusted colleague, coach or mentor. Sometimes you need to share how you felt about failure; it could be anger, disappointment, regret or just frustration. Discussing this situation can also provide you with another perspective and help you to assess the impact.
Accept that success can take a while to grow…We all want to be successful in our own roles and careers. Success takes time and it’s important to accept that failures are part of any success journey. As a business coach with over 20 years of experience in my field, I know first hand how success is rarely a smooth ride. People who are successful often have to experience failures, rejection, challenges or pitfalls along the way.
Don’t let past failures stop you from giving things a go…The failure feeling can really hold you back. It can really dent our professional confidence levels, so don’t assume things will turn out the same way next time.
Ask others about how they have dealt with failures before…Learn from others’ experiences. Ask why something didn’t feel smooth-running for them? What did they learn from it? How do they pick themselves up after any mistakes or bad decisions? Having coached senior leadership teams, directors and CEOs over the last 12 months, many of my amazing clients agree that strong leaders are those who are happy to speak about their own failures.
Stay away from failure shame…Remember that everyone, yes everyone, experiences failure at some point. You don’t need to keep any failures a secret. It is normal and people may even respect you more for being open and sharing the positives from a situation or experience. Over the last 10 years, I have seen leaders of organisations being more open to discussing how things could be better or they can learn from difficult economic challenges.
Your mistakes may surprise you as they can even inspire you…When something doesn’t go to plan, it might even provide some innovation, inspiration or ideas. Things that have not gone as well as planned may teach you about what’s important to you. Failures are here to stay, in whatever shape or form they appear in our careers or businesses.
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Sunita is currently working with a diverse range of corporate companies, law firms and organisations when providing:
Tailored coaching programmes for talent and new joiners across your business
Practical and engaging online skills development workshops / lunch and learns
Inclusion strategy development, roll-out of diversity and inclusion workshops and equipping leaders and teams with inclusive leadership skills
Panellist and speaker appearances for a number of professional growth, inclusion, mental health, flexible working, women in business and career management topics.
