Coaching Tip: Failing Like a Pro Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant-garde writer, once famously wrote, Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. Failure is the condition from which we learn new things. It is part of the process of elimination, part of experience that clarifies our journey towards success. So how do you know when youve failed? It seems like a strange question, but how many of our efforts simply wilt away or fade or provide only middling results which dont exactly resemble success or failure? What can we learn from something which tells us nothing? Seth Godin has written on the topic of failure and how to make sure it teaches us. In his article, How to Fail he provides six ideas that will help you fail better, more often, and with an inevitably positive upside: 1. Whenever possible, take on specific projects. 2. Make detailed promises about what success looks like and when it will occur. 3. Engage others in your projects. If you fail, they should be involved and know that they will fail with you. 4. Be really clear about what the true risks are. Ignore the vivid, unlikely and ultimately non-fatal risks that take so much of our focus away. 5. Concentrate your energy and will on the elements of the project that you have influence on, ignore external events that you cant avoid or change. 6. When you fail (and you will) be clear about it, call it by name and outline specifically what you learned so you wont make the same mistake twice. People who blame others for failure will never be good at failing, because theyve never done it. sethgodin.typepad/seths_blog/2011/04/how-to-fai.html Are you integrating any of these ideas already? Can you think of a project that didnt succeed or fail, but might have taught you more if you had started with these rules in mind? -- [ Originally featured in the TuesdayTactics newsletter by Oakley Signs & Graphics. Enjoy this article? Supporting us by making your next sign purchase with Oakley: bit.ly/ZlZDSg ]
Posted on: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 18:46:39 +0000
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