How To Embrace Failure and Get Back Up Again: 5 Tips for Staying Resilient in an Unpredictable Market
It is natural to have a fear of failure. Most of us have experienced it, after all. Still, there is one trait that successful people have in common when it comes to failure: the ability to embrace and overcome failure.
If you want to learn how to stay resilient in the face of failure, read ahead.
Finding Success in an Unpredictable Market
The path to success is first through failure. If you want to find success, you have to walk down a few dead ends, pick yourself up, and try again.
“Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things differently from everybody else,” says Sara Blakely, CEO of SPANX.
You can be resilient and thrive on the journey, or you can let it crush you. If resilience is what you want, then follow these five tips:
1. Let Your Team Fail
There is a difference between setting your team up to fail and allowing your team to fail — and the former should be avoided at all costs. You can easily set your team up to fail if you provide incorrect or too little information, make goals that are out of reach, or set impossible deadlines.
“Greatness is rarely achieved on the first attempt. Instead, you’ll need to experience countless failures and missteps. Of course, you don’t always see that part of the process in interviews and memoirs,” mentions Brianna Bitton, Co-Founder of O Positiv.
Allowing your team to fail is a different story. When you allow for failure, you get better outcomes. It empowers your staff to reach outside the box and get creative. Failures may occur, but this is how great ideas are born.
2. How To Lead Post-Failure
After your team experiences a failure, you need to be vigilant in the steps you take next. You want to avoid punishing your team by broadcasting their failure in a negative light. This is how you discourage risk-taking in the future.
“A great leader can identify a failure swiftly, address what went wrong, and strategize how to move past it,” explains Miles Beckett, Co-Founder and CEO of Flossy.
Don’t dwell on the mistakes that were made. Instead, identify what worked, what didn’t, and how your team can learn from the experience. Then, move on.
Help Your Team Learn From Their Mistakes
You need to look at failure as a learning opportunity. This is what will refine your processes for the future. If you don’t allow failures to be teachable moments, your team may continue to make the same mistakes.
“Mistakes are inevitable if you want to grow as a business. You have to look at them as tools that are uniquely curated to help drive your team forward,” says Daniel Osman, Head of Sales and Operations at Balance.
When someone learns from their mistakes, they become better equipped to handle future situations. This is important to help take your business and staff to new heights.
Have a Growth-Mindset
When you embrace failure, you are likelier to operate with a growth mindset. This mindset helps to make the bounce back controlled and quick. Essentially, the more your team fails, the better they will be at bouncing back. This may not happen immediately, but it will be common practice over time — and help you out in the long run.
“The more you fail, the better you get at it. Failing successfully is a skill that the best leaders have mastered,” shares Alia Bedi, General Manager of L’Evate You.
Once you have mastered the art of failure, you will start to see the growth mindset’s positive effects. This will allow you to stay ahead of competitors so you and your team can continue to grow.
How To Boost Morale After a Failure
Team morale will likely be lower than usual after a failure or misstep. Instead of launching the next project immediately, allow your team to take the time they need to evaluate the issues that occurred during the failure. You want to ensure that everyone feels prepared to take on another big project, especially if they were heavily involved in the one that failed.
“As a leader, your team will look to you for a reaction when things go wrong. Your reaction can either boost or kill morale. Be smart about which emotions you show to your team during these times,” advises Christy Pyrz, Chief Marketing Officer of Paradigm Peptides.
Give your employees space to grieve a failure. It is also wise not to be overly positive and motivated during this time. Ignoring negative emotions won’t make them go away. When the dust has settled, talk about lessons learned and move past it.
3. Taking Accountability
It’s important to find a way to hold responsible parties accountable without finger-pointing or placing blame. Some failures are a product of an external issue where something simply didn’t work in practice. Still, some failures stem from human error, which is itself inevitable.
“Own your failures, and embrace them. Too many successful people want to bury their long climb to success. You should be proud of the adversity you’ve overcome and let people know that you’re human,” explains Ryan Rottman, Co-Founder and CEO of OSDB.
When addressing a failure from human error, focus on finding the root cause. Humans make mistakes. There is not much that can be done about that. However, the person who caused the error should be vigilant in taking accountability. If that person was you, you need to step up and let it be known.
Why Accountability Is Important
You never want to appear as if you are too big to fail. This will not only reflect poorly on you, but your team, business partners, or investors will not likely take kindly to this attitude. Furthermore, trying to push the failure off onto someone else on your team will cause resentment and could even result in you losing your position.
“Accountability is how you gain respect as a leader. No one is expected to be perfect. You can expect managers to acknowledge when they’ve made a mistake — yourself included,” says Brian Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Arena Club.
Although you may not realize it, pushing off your mistakes to others is usually pretty obvious to anyone involved. Don’t be someone who cannot take accountability when they’ve made a misstep.
4. Semantics
Language is an incredibly powerful tool. While you may not put much thought into the words you use when referring to a failure, how you talk about these mistakes will influence the people around you.
“Try to create positive outcomes from failures to keep the ideas flowing. Your words and actions will determine how comfortable your team is with bringing new concepts to the table after a major project fails,” shares Chris Thompson, CEO of Sober Sidekick.
It’s simple semantics, really. Instead of saying “what we did wrong,” try “what we would change.” It may not seem like much, but the people you communicate with will take notice of the language and tone surrounding a failure.
Redefine Failure
Use language and tone to redefine what failure is. You can do this in many ways if you put thought behind your words. For example, instead of expecting success, say you are striving for success. You didn’t cause a failure; you made an unsuccessful attempt. You didn’t waste your efforts; you engaged in a learning experience.
“Don’t dwell too much on your shortcomings. These moments are going to be part of your origin story when you are at the peak of your success,” suggests Matt Masiello, Chief Marketing Officer of BabyBuddha.
Also, consider the tone you use when speaking about failure. Use a matter-of-fact tone rather than a grave and depressing one. Don’t be overly cheery or positive, either. That is not likely to be any better received than doom and gloom.
5. Don’t Take Risks You Can’t Afford
Failure is an inevitable part of business that you should be able to embrace. However, you also need to be smart about the risks you take. As a leader, you need to be able to identify when it is safe to take risks and when you should play it safe.
“Allow yourself to make mistakes when you can, but also be ready to dial it back if things get too risky,” says Justin Soleimani, Co-Founder of Tumble.
Finances will play a big role in the chances you can take. If you are at risk of losing your business or going bankrupt, then you’d be wise to play it safe.
Embracing Failure
Embracing failure is often easier said than done. Still, to progress in the business world, you must learn to get comfortable with failure.
As Caroline Cummings, CEO of Varo Ventures, once said, “The comfort zone is a nice place, but nothing grows there.”
Stepping out of your comfort zone to embrace failure will make you a successful business owner, manager, employee, or CEO. It will all be worth it when those failures turn into successes. Follow some of these tips and tricks for dealing with failure to stay resilient and take on an ever-changing market.
McClatchy newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
