Sharing My Failures and Recovering from Them

Last week I wrote about the gift of failure and how we can help retain Millennials by showing them the benefits of failure and by showing them how to work through failure. This week, I’m going to share a recent failure of mine and how it helped me, and how it can help younger folks on your team learn too.

As many of you know, my work journey has been transitioning to national keynote and conference breakout presentations. This transition has gone well, but it hasn’t been perfect nor smooth. In reality, it’s the first time in about seven or eight years where I’ve actually had to market. Prior to that, the work coming into my office was all word of mouth.

So, I’m back to cold calls, making connections and applying to speak at conferences. This fall I applied to two huge national conferences and was rejected for both. The conference coordinators graciously shared the reviewers’ comments.

Much of what I read stung just a little. However, what they said was true and all of it was stuff I could easily fix, like, “This topic could be interesting, but as is, it isn’t cutting edge,” and “Interesting title, wish the description kept that level of interest going.”

In the following weeks, as I mulled over the comments, I had lunch with a friend who mentioned having listened to a podcast on celebrating failure because if you failed, it meant you tried something new. If you aren’t failing, you likely aren’t trying anything new or challenging. I realized I was glad I failed, and glad I can learn from the failure.

It was my own lesson on the power of failure. The benefit I have over someone who hasn’t experience failure before is knowing I will recover from failure. I’ll look back in 3 months, then a year, then 5 years and I will survive. That’s the benefit of maturing. You get the long-term perspective.

If we can help younger people on our teams see the long-term and couple that with examples of our own failure, we have a winning formula for helping everyone move forward.

This week, I challenge you to discuss a recent failing with someone and what you learned from failing. If you can’t think of something, find something to try. At best you succeed. At worst, you learn. It’s win-win!

Keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant, Sarah Gibson, helps organizations leverage the power of communication, teamwork and diversity to improve engagement and transform teams. To buy her book or inquire about her speaking programs, please visit www.sarahjgibson.com.