Monday after this year’s Super Bowl, I attempted to answer the question ESPN asked – who was to blame for the 49er’s loss.
The coach – the buck stops there!
Not everyone agreed, and that’s okay. But I felt like something was missing from the initial answer and the discussion.
- Failure is okay – this is how we learn
- Taking responsibility for failure is freeing – it gives us the ability to make changes.
The Bottom Line Here Is: There Is Freedom It Taking Responsibility For Your Team And Their Failures
Leaders we often think if their team fails, that they failed. As leaders, we think we need to take responsibility for it and live under the guise of the failure. We need to fix it right away and never make a mistake again. The ideas we consider can be daunting and keep us from moving forward.
Yes, we need to take responsibility, but that doesn’t mean we need to lose sleep, fire people, change entire processes, or panic.
But It is an opportunity for growth.
Failure is painful because it forces us to look inside first. It forces us to assess what we are doing and ways to do it better.
But failure is also freeing.
Knowing you can make change is freeing.
There’s a saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Think of some of the biggest names who have failed at something – the 1980 Russian Olympic hockey team, Joe Paterno and the Jerry Sandusky case, the 2004 US Olympic Basketball Team, or Mel Gibson.
What these examples have in common is that there was at one time very high expectation for them, based on their own levels of success and minimal failures. They also didn’t always know how to handle their failures.
This is important because everyone fails, everyone makes a mistake.
I worry about those who never do. They’re hiding something, or failure is coming and they won’t know what to do.
We learn to deal with failure, by failing and getting back up and doing it again. Trying new pathways and pushing our team to improve. But we can only do that if we believe we can do that.
Success makes us rich for a time, failure makes us strong for a lifetime.
Yes, you will fail, and it will hurt. But use it as a learning experience, and a chance to grow the team of people around you.
If you spend time blame others, you take away your ability to make changes. There’s no freedom there.
To put this into action you should
- Accept responsibility for your failure
- Evaluate what went wrong
- Make adjustments
Keep doing that!
Oh, one more thing. This article is just the tip of the iceberg on embracing your scars! This coaching program “Label Breakers” gives you the rest of the story and a whole lot more. Grab it here: http://LabelBreakersCourse.com