I have a piece of steel on my desk engraved with the sentence
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
Today I am wondering if that is the correct question… or perhaps if it’s the best question to ask myself. It may be too easy to brush away as impossible or improbable.
Today I’m wondering what I can change if instead, I ask myself:
What would you attempt to do if your failures wouldn’t impact the final outcome?
In her book Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership, Colleen Stanley says, “If failure is our greatest teacher, why isn’t there some kind of wall devoted to listing the failures and the many valuable lessons learned that helped the company grow and improve?” (pg 133)
Here is what I’m going to suggest you do for yourself AND have anyone on your team do for themselves as well.
- Pick a time period: look back over the past 3 months… 6 months… 12 months (you decide).
- What is the FIRST failure that comes to mind?
- What are THREE lessons you learned from the failure?
- write
- them
- down
- Describe the POSITIVE outcome of those lessons!
In your next sales meeting, share the positive outcome FIRST… then what failure it took for you to achieve it.
Still learning perfection isn’t the goal,
Lynn