The Benefit of Failure in Your Career or Business

Sep 3, 2020

In last week’s post, I shook the trees a bit. I acknowledged that many of us are struggling and that part of this is we’re not cutting ourselves a break. Now is the perfect time to strengthen our failure resiliency muscles, to ensure we’re in a failure resilient context, or both.

This week and next week I’d like to share four podcast episodes that take a dive deep into this.  Some you may have missed, or some time has passed and they might be even more relevant now to go back and have a listen. This week is business and career focused. Next week is a life and wellbeing focus.

Lessons from Failing

How can failing actually fuel greatness in our businesses and careers? Well, in four very unique ways.

1. Failure Lowers the Waterline to Reveal (and Fix) the Cracks

On Speaker Coach, Jane Atkinson’s podcast The Wealthy Speaker Show, we got real about how we’ve both experienced many challenges in business as a result of COVID. At first, it felt like the sky was falling. Then, we realized that the pandemic forced us to take a good hard and honest look at our businesses. We noticed, addressed and improved things that would have remained hidden (or we could have ignored) otherwise. If you feel your business has taken a hit (or it’s made you gunshy to go out on your own), tune in. Here’s some highlights:

• Finding your identity through COVID.  [2:00]
• When the distribution channel dries up.  [7:45]
• Riding the “mental rollercoaster”.  [10:30]
• Keeping your routine in uncertain times.  [15:00]
• Finding cracks in the foundation.  [18:15]
• Look for the positive and cut yourself a break.  [21:15]
• Shifting your business model to adapt to change.  [29:00]
• Tips for writing your book.  [33:00]

2. Failure is a Strategy for Peak Performance

Dr. Cindra Kamphoff knows a little bit about peak performance. As the performance coach for the Minnesota Vikings, she helps athletes at the top of their game surpass their limits. Join us as we chat about what the great Canadians in Sarah’s book and Cindra’s experience with top athletes have in common. Ultimately, if you’re not willing to fail on the short-term in your career, you’re not going to win as big on the long-term. Here are key points in our conversation:

• How Sarah defines failure.  [9:53] 
• What is the flip side of failure.  [12:09] 
• How people can praise themselves.  [15:29] 
• A story where Sarah failed, what she learned from it and how she used the flip.  [19:56]
• A story where Cindra failed and what she learned.  [27:38]
• Why we need to fail.  [32:15]
• Talking about deflate, elevate, mitigate.  [39:14]
• How to adapt a high performers mindset of always looking for failure.  [43:23]
• How expectation connects with our belief that we failed and not having a failure resistant mindset.  [49:29]
• Failure resistant mindset.  [55:21]

3. Failure Encourages you to Consider What Else is Possible

Elfie Czerny and Dominik Godat are internationally renowned solution-focused practitioners. In our interview, we dive into a solution-centric lens to failure; although we often see failing as a problem, we can also leverage it as an opportunity to consider what else is possible (a key tenant in a solution-focused approach.) Although this interview took place last year, the interview is still relevant given how we’ve thrown the status quo right out the window. Since we don’t have a choice but to reinvent, why not do it on our terms? Here are key points in our conversation:

• recognition of greatness when working with teams
• how people handle failing
• solution focused questions refocus and elevate
• redefining the stories we tell each other and ourselves
• being involved in the community or how Sarah started and has grown her business
• The Challenge of the week: Think of a label you give yourself, decide if it is working for you, and if no, allow yourself to envision a different possibility and a more helpful description

4. Failure Can’t Be Avoided in Creativity

Through the lens of authorship. publishing expert and writing coach Mark Leslie Lefebvre of the Stark Reflections Podcast explores how failure is an inevitable part of the creative process. Mark’s experience is that authors – first time or serial authors – don’t expect failure, resist it, and sometimes let roadblocks stifle versus invigorate their creative process. Sometimes it stops or seriously delays authorship. Sarah shares, ironically, the many failed attempts before Flip Side of Failing to write the book, but that it was a much better book as a result of those failures.

Similarly, my conversation with Bruce Outridge on Cashing in on Creativity Podcast explored how failure is true of every creative profession; illustrators, designers, musicians, dancers, etc; all ameteur and professional artists experience many roadblocks on their way to the success on the canvas or stage. We debunk the “overnight success story” myth, and encourage artists to lean into their struggles versus let it be seen as a sign they’re on the wrong track.

If you know someone who would benefit from listening to one of these podcasts, please forward this to them and say, “you are worth seeing the value I see in you.” We are #inthistogether as we find the #flipsideoffailing.

To find even more benefits to failing, check out these other blog posts:

• Why Transitions are Hard (Even Afterward) 
• If You Lose, Don’t Lose the Lesson
• The Genuine Human Connection: Authentic Meaningful Conversations