Today I’m sharing a guest post from author, Bill Treasurer. Find out how you can win a free copy of his newest book Leaders Open Doors at the end of the post. Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of SPANX and the inventor of women’s shapewear, learned a powerful life lesson from her father at a young age. As she tells it, at the end of every week, her dad would ask her and her younger brother a simple but important question: What have you failed at this week?
Sara says that question has stayed with her throughout her career. The question taught her that extending oneself to the point of occasional failure is important to growth and development. When people make mistakes at SPANX, especially when those mistakes key the business onto some new insight, Sara says she is never disappointed. Instead, she goes up to the mistake-maker and gives them a big high-five.
Not all leaders are as evolved as Sara when it comes to how they handle mistakes. When a mistake is made, they rub the mistake-maker’s nose in the mistake, as if the person were an errant dog in need of punishment. They seem to revel in the role of punisher, as if their power were derived from their ability to render harsh judgments.
More evolved leaders view mistakes and failure as powerful learning opportunities. A good failure can be the best evidence that a person is stretching, experimenting, innovating…and more importantly, not stagnating.
Smart leaders convert failures into opportunities.A good example of how a failure can be transformed into an opportunity comes from the story of Steve, a project manager in a large construction company. Steve had enjoyed a successful career and was poised for a bright future. But when a project that he had led tanked and lost millions of dollars he suffered a crisis of confidence. There were a host of reasons the project went south, including misestimating the cost of the work and underbidding the project, performing the work in an entirely new market, and a fickle and unreasonable client. If anything, Steve’s leadership had prevented the project from being a bigger loss than it turned out to be. But he didn’t view it that way. He personalized the failure and he started to doubt himself. He became much more tentative and hesitant.
Fortunately, Steve worked for Wayne – a seasoned leader who understood the value of a good failure. Wayne had experienced enough failures along the way to know what Steve was going through. Wayne knew that after a failure it is tempting to scale back, become less visible, and take on smaller projects. Wayne also knew that if Steve allowed himself to shrink, he might get comfortable with a lower standard of achievement. Steve was capable and talented guy, despite the recent setback.
So what did Wayne do? He put Steve in charge of a large, complex project the company had just landed. The project was one of the largest in the company’s history, and a lot of money was at stake. Notice that what made Steve suited for the new opportunity was because of his recent failure and the need to overcome it. What Steve really needed was redemption—in the eyes of his company, and in his view of himself. Steve would never hold himself accountable to who he was capable of becoming as a professional if Wayne let him settle for becoming a smaller self. Leaders fail. It comes with the territory. Leading a big, hairy, complex job would be just what Steve needed to capitalize on the lessons he had learned from his prior failure.
Leaders fail. It comes with the territory.How do you handle it when an employee loses a client, gets the data wrong, comes in over budget, or drops the ball in some other way? Do you explode? Do you mentally write the person off for good and hold the mistake against him or her forever more? Do you stew with resentment? What kind of example are you setting for others by the way you handle (or mishandle) failures and mistakes?
Bill Treasurer is the author of Leaders Open Doors, which focuses on how leaders create growth through opportunity. Bill is also the author of Courage Goes to Work, an international bestselling book that introduces the concept of courage-building. He is also the author of Courageous Leadership: A Program for Using Courage to Transform the Workplace, an off-the-shelf training toolkit that organizations can use to build workplace courage. Bill has led courage-building workshops for, among others, NASA, Accenture, CNN, PNC Bank, SPANX, Hugo Boss, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. To inquire about having Bill work with your organization, contact info@giantleapconsulting.com.
I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to give away 5 FREE iTunes codes for Bill’s book Leaders Open Doors. Be one of the first five readers to share what you’ve learned from a failure in the comment section below and win. Be sure to include your email address in your comment and act fast! The codes expire June 22nd. Let’s not let them go to waste
