Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. Denis Waitley
Failing in it self is not the end of a journey but merely a new start or beginning. You make the choice. If you stopped dead in your tracks after every failure then you would never learn and never progress towards anything.Take the example of a newborn child, it comes into the world not knowing how to talk or walk, but eventually, it learns to talk and eventually after many falls it learns to walk.
Just imagine if you didn’t learn to walk and talk. If you didn’t get up after the first fall you would still be crawling on your hands and knees. If you didn’t learn to talk and communicate you’d still be making gurgling noises!
Sometimes we forget what we’ve achieved as a human race; the progress we have made; the accomplishments; the advances in science, medicine, engineering, socio-economic and political reform. Just think what it was like five years ago, ten years ago and even fifty years ago!
The changes in mobile and computer technology in the last five years for example have been tremendous; lightweight laptops, video messaging and mobile Internet communication. It’s simply quite amazing what has been developed and all these things are still developing.
Progress never stops, have you?
Imagine if Thomas Edison gave up on producing the electric light bulb and Sir Alexander Fleming gave up his pursuit of finding a chemical (i.e. penicillin) to fight bacterial infections. We would still be using candlelight and still be dying from trivial wounds and minor infections.
Of course, all is not well in this world and this is a journey of experience, we need to go through the turmoil to understand the lesson. Leaders need to learn through turmoil, it is sometimes the only way to discover your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
The current perception I get from the evening news is that the world is dominated by human failure, crime, catastrophe, corruption, and tragedy. We are all tuning in to see how the human mind is evolving, but the media keeps hammering home the opposite, that the human mind is mired in darkness and folly. Deepak Chopra
If you reflect on your lives you will find a number of failures as well as successes. Why you failed and what made you succeed are issues that you don’t always consider. You may talk about your successes, but you cower away from telling people about your failures.
Why? Because you feel inadequate, ashamed, afraid of what people will say. As a leader you will need to manage all of those feelings, not to dismiss or ignore them but to understand them. Growing up we’ve all had feelings of inadequacy, whether it was at school, amongst family peers or even in our first job.
You must pass through this phase and grow, using these experiences to help others when they are need of support. You as leader must know how to serve your family your team, your department your organisation. Understanding and being able to deal with the feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment and low self-esteem will make you a better and stronger leader.
Your role is to lift, inspire and develop a highly charged group of souls who are ready and willing to rise to every challenge thrown at them. To do this they need to know that they’ve got you to catch them if they fall. They have the security that you’ll be there to protect them, nurture them and lead them.
On the other hand you must not smother them. It’s important to give them freedom and independence. They must be allowed to grow as individuals as, one day, they will be leaders too. It’s a difficult balance. I can equate it to bringing up a family, nurturing and developing, learning to let go when the time is right, allowing failure to take place without the fear of retribution.
This develops confidence, maturity and the development of the individual to become high performing individuals and future leaders.
Experiencing Failure
Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.
Henry Ford
There is one event in my life, which I remember very clearly It changed the course of my whole life. I had joined a prestigious company and it was the market leader in its field.
I had been with them for nearly five months when their annual conference came round. I had been asked to make a presentation about pricing to at least 100 regional MD’s and senior sales managers.
It was at our head office in Luxembourg. I was really excited at the prospect and my General Manager and I started preparations, as he was presenting with me.In reality I was still getting to grips on how the pricing worked, but of course my GM knew the pricing issues backwards and he put most of our presentation together.
I said to myself ‘I can do this, I’ve always wanted to present at a conference like this and show off my abilities’.
The moment came for the presentation. We were all in this huge oak-coloured auditorium. There were sunken ceiling lights, a huge screen on the stage for the PowerPoint presentations and a person controlling the slideshow sitting just in front of the lectern. There must have been at least 200 people sitting there waiting for our presentation. The atmosphere was stale and warm, there had been a number of very good presentations before us as we were at the end.
I had bought a new tie and shirt for the occasion and I looked ‘the business’, but as time went by and it came closer and closer to our presentation, I became more agitated and sweaty.Then before I knew it, it was coffee break and we were on straight afterwards. During the coffee break people were saying they were expecting a really swish performance from me based on my prior experience with their main competitor whom they respected very highly.
Strangely enough this didn’t make me nervous at all but, instead, boosted my self-confidence, and when we went back in, I was rearing to go. The president of the organisation made a short introduction and we were on.
My GM did the first part of the presentation, which went very well. Then he introduced me and I strutted towards the lectern like a peacock on heat. I stepped on to the stage, put my notes on the lectern, motioned to the PowerPoint controller to start the presentation and I began.
“Good afternoon everyone.”
I started well – but then I began to read my script. This was a mistake, I found I had trouble with my breathing, I was getting sweaty and I didn’t really understand what I was presenting!
I seemed to be getting away with it until there was a ripple of murmurs from the audience. I heard someone say “I can’t see anything, it’s too small”.
I turned my head around and saw the slide show the numbers were just too small, even on a large screen. I was completely thrown off my balance. I remembered this slide; at the time of creating the presentation I also felt this could be just too small, but my GM said it was OK, so I went it.
The reality was quite different. I stood there motionless for a what seemed like ages with my head completely blank. My instinct was to pick up the microphone and get down from the stage and talk the chart through, but I was frozen I couldn’t move and all these faces were staring at me, the new boy, the wiz kid from the competitor they poached. What do they think of me now!
I looked back at my notes and fumbled through towards the end. They politely clapped at the end, but I knew from the looks I got it was a disaster. I thought my career had just ended!
The feeling of embarrassment, inadequacy and failure, were all present at the same time. When I got home I analysed every moment I was on stage and what I should have done. It lived with me for months and I vowed never ever to be in a position like this again.
The lessons I learnt were:
1.Know your stuff,
2.Follow your instinct
3.Practise, practise and practise.
As a result of my personal disaster I hired a voice coach and a business coach and I never looked back. Fortunately my arsenal of talents (other than screwing up on stage) still allowed me to develop my career and I moved on to better things. I did present again and I was applauded genuinely this time for the value I had given.
If you don’t fail, how will you learn? I urge everyone to fail well and then you will learn well! The more experiences of failure you have the more you will learn, so take that step, volunteer for that role you know nothing about; start that project you’ve putting off and stand up and be counted. That’s what leaders do.
What are you going to fail at?
Ravi Arora
MD
Leadiology Worldwide Limited
“The Burnout Specialist”
“Making you feel good on the inside
and great on the outside”
Mob :+ 44 (0) 7723 082 866
Tel :+ 44 (0) 20 7043 7332
Web :www.leadiology.com
email :raviarora@leadiology.com
