Three Steps to Transform Your Relationship With Failure (So You’re a Better Leader)

Welcome to Leading Disruption, a weekly letter about disruptive leadership in a transforming world. Every week we’ll discover how the best leaders set strategy, build culture, and manage uncertainty all in service of driving disruptive, transformative growth.

Don Shula, the winningest coach in NFL history, had an interesting rule: The Miami Dolphins had 24 hours to brood about a loss or a failure. 

That’s it. 24 hours. Then, they moved on.

For a lot of us, dealing with failure isn’t that easy. We spend weeks, months, even years dwelling on our failures. We’re absolutely devastated when things don’t work out, so we try our damnedest to avoid failure at all costs.

But failure is inevitable. Disruptors accept this and intentionally create habits, rituals, routines, and mindsets that not only help them deal with failure but emerge from the rubble stronger than ever.

On Tuesday’s livestream, I talked about three steps every leader can take to transform their relationship with failure.

First up:

1. Acknowledge the failure.

Yes, failure doesn't feel great, but one of the healthiest things we can do is acknowledge it.

Lean into the hard, uncomfortable emotions – the sooner you recognize the emotions and accept them, the sooner you can get back on your feet and try again. 

Remembering these three things will make it easier:

• Don’t swallow your emotions. How do you feel: embarrassed, sad, disappointed, angry, ashamed? Try naming your emotions and saying, “I'm disappointed” or “I'm sad that didn't work out.” Naming your emotions helps you deal with them and move on quicker without allowing the crappy feelings to fester. 
• Don’t take it personally. Sure, it didn’t work out, but you tried your best. YOU are not a failure (even if your confidence and self-esteem took a hit). The project failed. It’s difficult to separate your identity from the failure, but recognize that there are many reasons for the failure including maybe your actions – but your actions are not you.   
• Don’t seek approval from others. It’s easy to think, “Wow, I look really bad. People are going to think less of me.” But you can’t control what other people think; you can only control your reaction to the failure. Do your best to stop judging yourself and worrying what others think. 

Once you’ve acknowledged the failure, the next step is to:

2. Learn from every failure.

Set those emotions you just named aside so you approach each and every failure with clarity of mind and creativity of heart. 

Use these steps to help you see the truth and uncover the lessons:

• Get curious. Instead of thinking about failure as something that's fixed, view it as something that gets you closer to success. Ask yourself: What worked? What didn't work? What could have been different? What did we miss completely? What's the plan going forward? 
• Take responsibility. This isn’t about blaming yourself; it’s about understanding how the actions you took led to this failure. It’s saying, “How can I improve myself? How can I remove that blind spot? How can I motivate my team in a different way?” Improving the future and the outcome begins with taking responsibility and leading by example.
• Create a failure resume. We all have a resume that highlights our successes, but do you keep a list of your failures? If not, I encourage you to start! Inevitably, you’re going to have an epic failure, but your failure resume is a reminder that you are resilient, strong, and capable of recovering from this setback. You’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again.

After you assess what worked and what didn’t, it’s time to:

3. Make a plan to move forward.

Now that you’ve accepted your failure and absorbed its lessons, you can confidently say, “This didn’t work, but I’m willing to change things up and keep moving.” 

So many leaders struggle with this. They’re afraid that admitting their mistake makes them look weak or wishy-washy: “Well, I made this decision and now I’m changing my mind. I’m flip-flopping.”

But it’s critical that you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and head in a new direction, effectively removing the negative connotations around failure and showing your team that that failure is not something to fear – it’s a natural part of taking a risk. 

Here’s how to move forward intentionally:

• Make a different decision. I’ve said it before: 99% of the decisions we make are reversible. You can always do things in a different way. So now that you know what *not* to do, what decision will you make?
• Adjust your plan. Your first attempt didn’t work – no big deal. Using what you’ve learned, how can you tweak your plan to move in a new direction? What do you need to do differently? 
• Act ASAP. Implement your plan as soon as you can. Don’t try to make it perfect – some things are going to work, some things aren’t. The faster you take action and figure those things out, the faster you’ll make progress on your goals.

It’s normal to feel a little raw from a failure. But don’t let that make you cautious, let it embolden you! Because here’s the bottom line: You survived. You’re still here. Setbacks aren’t the end of the world. 

If we never fail, we're not taking enough risks and we’re certainly not growing. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of: We need failure to stretch us and propel us forward. It’s time that we reset our relationship with failure and embrace it rather than do everything to avoid it. 

Join me next Tuesday, September 14 at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET for a conversation on “future-proofing your organization.” I’ll be sharing how to see the future – and some steps you can take to get ready. No crystal ball required! Hope to see you there.

Your Turn

What’s something you’ve learned from a failure? What have you taken away from failure and incorporated into your life? How do you lead differently and better because of the relationship you have with failure? Please share what you’ve learned from failure so we can all learn from it! I’ll go first. 😊