As a leader, are you maximizing your growth potential will be determined by how comfortable or stretched do you feel in your current role? People act and work differently based on their culture, thinking, upbringing, personality, competency, and of course genes etc. At the same time education and practice continue to have an impact on intellect. Myth: IQ for an individual is fixed. Most experts now agree that it is not the case and genes require input from environment to develop properly for development of IQ. As a leader, how do you handle failure? Do you enjoy a challenge, does it drive you or does it pull you down? Do you get excited to see a challenge or does it instil a fear of failure? While handling a challenge, do you think you are failing or do you view it as a learning opportunity? Your perspective on taking up a challenge will determine both the outcome of the task as well as your own personal development as a leader.
If you are not stretching yourself, should you expect to grow? But unfortunately that is not how society views failure. And this varies from one country to the other, one culture to another and one organization to another. This in fact starts from the primary school itself, when we can either encourage our kids to accept challenges & embrace failure or alternately propagate the safe confines of succeeding at all costs. And that is the reason why people who start the smartest may not necessarily end the smartest. To become the person you desire to be, your psychology makes a big difference. We see repeatedly in classrooms, careers, and relationships that people want to look smart, they want to succeed at all costs, dislike losing and fear failure. And we as organizations and society perpetuate this thinking. How do you as a Leader view failure and is your organization encouraging failure?
The Business plan on Entrepreneurial Leader Change Organization Leadership
... challenge the experts on the executive team with conviction. There are leaders-in-waiting in every organization. ... organization.11. Same old horses, same old glue. Failure to form a talented, diverse team ... teaching. They have a teachable point of view about running, streamlining the business, as ... smart ideas and getting them implemented well. The present chairman and owner of our organization, ...
This is primarily going to determine if you will be able to foster a culture of innovation in the organization and in your team. Considering that the generally accepted percentage of failure for a new idea can be as high as 95%, is the organizational culture one of appreciation or avoidance? Passion to stretch is the tenet of growth. It may appear that a failure springs up as a direct result of one’s competence and you start thinking negative, even to the extent of giving up. However as a leader, you ought to be viewing it only a small set back and an opportunity to learn and try harder. It is an opportunity to improve and you would gear up to cope up with the fresh demand. Like in sports, playing with better players is a step towards winning, even if you lose in the beginning.
When you play with better players, better companies, better opponents, you learn and develop. We know the phrase, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, it is so relevant. Risk and effort are linked for people who eventually grow in their life. The love of challenge, resilience and growth helps you to stay positive, it makes the difference between giving up vs. desire to learn, where you are not caught up with success, but more about developing yourself, where failure is not about rejection, rather about being smart, it is more about building yourself. I would propound that success is more about learning than about proving to the world that you are smart. Babies do not worry about humiliation because of failure. For a baby, simple acts that we take for granted as adults such as Walking & talking are enormous, but a child is not deterred by failure, and goes on to eventually master both skills.
The Essay on Failure vs Success
Without failures, how can one improve? I’m still making mistakes, still learning and bound to face new challenges. Everyone is a key to their own success. In the process of succeeding mistakes are made and failure sometimes occurs. Failure can lead to success in relationships, managing companies and being an employee. First, failure leads to success in relationships. Failed relationships make you ...
But as adults, why does it have to change, where the fear of failure stops people from taking up new challenges. To say that smart people always succeed, will be a misnomer. It is rather only by stretching, not being fixed with what you have. We view CEO’s as demigods, as perfect leaders, always making the right decisions, never falling. The need is to change this mindset to be willing to accept the failures of the CEO in pursuit of the long term objective. As a leader are you surrounding yourself with people who protect you, or should you keep trying to be qualified for the job. Because the easier way as a safe alternative would be to stay focused on the quarterly profits and demonstrate success in the short term. Leadership is taking up the challenge and when you are done, to be able to say that you took on challenges and did not cruise, sometimes stretching so far that one can actually accomplish the impossible. The recent success stories of Flipkart, Makemytrip or Indigo Airline are good examples of stretching the brief.
