Failure can be analyzed from many different perspectives, especially at the workplace. The underperformance of an employee may be deemed satisfactory for him but completely unacceptable for his boss. When a new project falls apart, there are numerous fingers that are pointed and the leadership fails to bring the team on one page. There are disagreements, reactions, and negative feedback that becomes problematic for healthy workplace culture to thrive. So how you can respond to failure in a positive way as a leader or a team member to determine your career success, let’s find out.
Acceptance Is The First Step
As a leader, failure is one of the most powerful tools that teach you about subsistence, endurance, reclamation, and recreating yourself as an individual, as a leader, and as a professional. The stronger the leader, the great failures he has endured in his life. And if you want to evaluate someone’s character as an employee, talk to them about their biggest failures and how they overcame them. At a workplace, failure enables you to come up with new ways and course-corrects when your earlier strategies are not useful. And that is only possible if you accept your defeat rather than masking it, ignoring it, or blaming it on someone else.
Take Responsibility For Your Mistake
When a person owns his mistake and its outcome, there is nothing that sounds more driven and responsible than it. And when you are held accountable for your failure, that is when you get an opportunity to do it a different way. Although in the corporate sector, accountability is usually the stick method to hold someone responsible for the failure with external pressure, it’s better to take the responsibility so that no one can put it on your face. So what happens when you take responsibility, it cultivates a positive mindset in you, it gives you a sense of duty, an intrinsic peace of mind, and purpose to learn from it and move forward in your career.
Never Doubt Your Gut
Experiencing a failure can be really daunting especially if the repercussion is adverse. In the business world, anything and everything can go wrong. A huge investment may go down the hill, the bank loans may pile up, your new dearly-won setup can turn to dust. But make sure these failures only make you a better decision-maker and wiser in your job rather than making you fearful and doubtful of your actions. Everyone gets a second chance, make sure you embark on your new ventures with the utmost confidence in yourself and your team. And your mistakes enable you to navigate your future projects with more focus and clarity.
Cultivate Self Awareness After Experiencing Failure
Self-awareness helps you in dealing with personal failure or the failure of others. People can get easily distressed, lose faith, and become a victim of anxiety when they are unable to meet their ambitious personal or professional goals. To maximize your management skills, self-awareness is the prime tool. It can help us discover opportunities and platforms that can induce our personal growth and professional development. Our habits, needs, values, emotions, and personality drive our daily behavior and any drastic failure may attempt to disturb the equilibrium. Make sure you work on the key areas of self-awareness and self-reflection and keep going.
The organizations are built with high-performance teams, cultures, and shrewd leadership. Failing in any of these elements may stir up the balance of both the company and the individuals. But if someone gives failure a thought, they would have realized that when it occurs, it comes with many learning and rewarding opportunities.