Sometimes you fail...Part 1

Recently I was faced with this realization in a big way and was forced to come to grips with the fall-out of such failure. Reality is, everyone will fail, and fail more than once.  All leaders, no doubt, face failure or perception of failure by most of the public as a daily occurrence.

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure,”

Colin Powell.

So, sometimes you fail.  As I sat in a Maximum Impact simulcast, listening to Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and admittedly, my mind had wandered. Then, he answered a question of Henry Cloud with this simple answer…”Sometimes you fail…” At that moment, I was re-engaged and all of the sudden the realization of my recent failure hit me, but not in the same way it had over the past two weeks. That still small voice inside finished the statement. Sometimes you fail, then what? Here’s the “then what” I am learning from my recent failure and wondered if it would be helpful to other leaders who sometimes fail.

1. Sometimes you fail…then admit where you failed. Only one person whose feet have touched this earth is perfect and it ain’t me! So, I failed. Where did I fail? Be specific. Write them down. That’s how we learn.
2. Sometimes you fail…then find the successes within the failure. They DO exist. Any project, task, job, or initiative has successes. Even a multi-year project that has to be scrapped and is not completed, even THAT includes successes. You just need to look for them and celebrate.
3. Sometimes you fail…then what will I learn from it? We have already talked about your willingness, as a leader, to be teachable. So, allow yourself to be teachable and learn from the parts [did you catch that?] parts of your failure. What failed? Why did that piece fail? What could have been done differently? 

Stay tuned for the rest of the learnings...