What most often happens when we lose, when projects fail, when agreements fail, when we do not achieve the desired results, when we simply fail? Whether it is a business, sports or some other team, every time we find ourselves in such a situation, what unfortunately follows as a consequence is the loss of communication.
We retreat behind our defensive walls, make excuses, shift responsibility to other people or circumstances, and play the favorite sport in our culture – pointing fingers. We no longer see any way forward, we begin to doubt everything that has been achieved, we give up and demand radical changes, cuts…
And what should a leader do to get their team back on track? Just when it’s the hardest, when we’d rather be somewhere else, when it’s difficult to get words out, that’s when we need to gather everyone, stand in front of them and say what no one wants to admit, let alone own: “Yes, we made a mistake!” But this is just an introduction to the speech that the leader should give and in which they should remind us of what holds us together as a team, what is the vision we share, what is the path we build, what is the purpose through which each individual in the team feels accomplished and is the reason they’re part of that particular team, in that particular organization and not somewhere else.
When we remind our team of what holds it together, then it is time to turn the failure that happened to us into something that is useful for further development and achieving better results. How? The precondition for this is to accept the mistake that occurred as its own, common, collective, and to not point fingers at anyone in particular. Recently, a photo of Elon Musk looking at the sky with a radiant face became viral, and this is exactly the emotion that most people want to feel. That was the moment when the first Falcon Heavy rocket was successfully launched and when the whole world paid homage to the achievement of Musk and his team. But what we’ve all forgotten is how many times before that Musk and his team failed, how many mistakes there were, how many failed launches. What is it that kept these people together around a seemingly insane and unfeasible idea? How did a man with a vision, whom few trusted, manage to gather people around him to follow and contribute to a path that was initially full of mistakes and success seemed quite distant and uncertain? Musk’s attitude towards mistakes was crucial and an integral part of the path to realizing his vision.
What can failure in life do for us? Nothing if we are not ready to accept the downs as an integral part of success, and if we are not ready to analyse it and look at it as a learning process that will encourage us to do better next time. Failure shows us where we can work more efficiently, how we can deal with problems more deftly and what we can better prepare ourselves for in order to come up with specific guidelines that we can successfully apply in the new game of life and avoid repeating mistakes so that we can make progress.
Failure is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of what our foundations are made of, what are strong areas are and what makes us unique. It often goes without saying, we don’t talk about it and we forget about it, so in situations like this it seems as though it doesn’t even exist. That is why the leader’s speech in a time of “defeat” is crucial. Timely and authentic communication that speaks to the purpose and vision can then truly be decisive in the team’s “to be or not to be”. The leader will invite other team members to re-communicate, share frustrations, grievances, emotions, but also ideas for progress. Such speech will hold us together and when we feel down or pessimistic, it will bring us together, restore a constructive atmosphere and get us back on the path to success.
And the question that needs to be answered together is: “What have we learned from this failure?” Only if we are ready to become a learning organization can we be a constant in a world of change, can we take risks, which is the very essence of entrepreneurship, can we achieve success and record failures as steps on our path.