Failure has been written and communicated about in recent years it’s almost a turn off for me. Not many new things are being said about it; just the same thing in different ways.
The bottom line: failure enables success if you know how to approach and manage it well. Thus failure can enable your success.
Since we don’t have failure to fear or worry about as much as we used to, because of all the great messages on failure, it means whatever we do we are going to succeed.
This changes the question whether we will succeed to, “How and why will our success be significant?”
The question is not, “Will you succeed?” but rather, “Will you matter?” – Seth Godin
The value of your success must be able to extend beyond your personal experience; it must be the epicentre of world change. We must think beyond what our failures and success mean for the world.
It is easy to be so self-cantered we forget to translate our experiences for impact in the world. We want to hear and are more passionate about success stories than we are of failure.
We should be creating a platform for sharing our failures. Not that we want to start a pity-party to wallow in our failure but share what we wanted to achieve and how we fail with the goal of asking two questions:
1. How do you think this failure enables me?
2. How can my failure serve you and the world at large?
How else can we build on our efforts? Exposing our failures strengthens us. Vulnerability with our failure illuminates and pushes others beyond us.
Our obsession to appear and be successful must not eclipse our ability to be open, honest, searching with our failures. The wealth of success or failure is in making it relevant to making a difference in the world and not mere trophies for our own cabinets.
The passion of every leader must be to make whatever they lead greater through both failure and success under their watch. They must see their failures and success as irrelevant and pointless if they are only for them and not, in the end, to serve others.
[image by: Dominic’s pics | cc]