Get Knocked Down, Get Up Again

Daniel isn’t hitting his targets at work and doesn’t know what to do to recover.

Amanda led a large project and it didn’t go well. There was a lot of turnover, the client was really angry, and got poor ratings.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has a time when they fail. The trick is to be accountable and learn from it. Don’t blame everyone else for your mistakes, it’s not a good look.

How do you fail and come back from it?

1. Cover your bases. What did you do to try to prevent the failure from happening? Anything?

2. Do you know where you went wrong? This is important. You can’t fix the problem if you’re not sure what it was. If you really don’t know, ask for feedback from people who were involved.

3. Take steps to ensure it won’t happen again. Do your homework to show you want to learn from it. Ask for help, create new tools, whatever it takes to improve your outcome.

4. Celebrate the failure. You took a risk. You went out of your comfort zone. You experienced something you probably hadn’t before. That’s actually a win because most people would’ve been scared out of their mind to do that.

Know you are not the only person who has ever messed up. Mistakes are what help you grow and turn into a better person. It can be therapeutic to hear what didn’t work for other people and also help you avoid making the same mistakes they did. People love a good comeback. It also shows people that you are human and don’t think you’re perfect which allows them to trust you.

Speaking of trust, how do you trust someone who fails?

It can be hard to let a failure go. Give second chances and allow the person to prove they can do things better the next time. It’s fair to ask them what they learned from the previous experience. Also be willing to help them succeed. If you only tear them down when they’re trying to be better you’re becoming part of the problem. That said, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

When did you last fail? Did you celebrate it?