The F word has been cropping up a lot lately. Failure. (Just what word did you think I was referring to?) As John C. Maxwell says, “Mistakes can often be our best teachers.” Here are a few tips from Maxwell, Richard Branson, Lewis Schiff and more to help you not only embrace failure, but indeed learn from it.
- Failing better
Failure is so inevitable that there was even an entire volume published to help you fail better. “The right kind of failure instructs, refines, and improves ideas, work products, skills, capacities, and teamwork,” writes Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn in Fail Better. “By taking time to evaluate and embed the learning we are not only able to learn and grow, but simply put we can save ourselves wasted time by not duplicating past mistakes.” What’s one way to do this? Create a project timeline to see how things evolved over time and where you went awry. - You’re in good company
Unlike the middle class, most self-made millionaires not only embrace failure, but believe that it’s a necessary component to success. Whew. Let’s take a minute to process this. Surprising, isn’t it? This finding even astonished Lewis Schiff, author of Business Brilliant, who said it was perhaps “the most important finding our survey has uncovered.” “When polled for the book, 7 out of 10 middle class respondents agreed that perseverance was important to long-term success, but only 2 out of 10 believed that failure was also important.” Why? Probably because “for most middle-class people, failure is something they have experienced either never or just once.” To put it another way, failure is a part of the game. Get used to it. - Been there, done that
In The Virgin Way, Richard Branson advocates talking to someone who has been there. “Seek mentors who have done the kind of work you are looking to do, people who have succeeded but also people who have failed – their stories will be enlightening and quite insightful.” In my experience they’re usually only too happy to pass on their expertise. - No encores
“There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes,” John C. Maxwell reminds us in Sometimes You Win—Sometimes You Learn, “but some people respond with encores.” “A mistake simply shows you something you didn’t know. Once you make the mistake, then you know it.” Make sure you learn enough from your failure so that you don’t repeat it again in the future. Make new mistakes instead, mistakes that will help you continue to evolve and grow.
How has failure helped you to grow and evolve?
