Chapter 79.
Forget About Failure

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

—George Bernard Shaw

Managers, especially at the beginning of their careers, often obsess about failure. They take a bad conversation with a problem employee very personally. They get hurt. They get depressed. They get angry and start hating their profession.

But soon they see that failure is just an outcome. It is not bad or good, just neutral. It can be turned into something good if it’s studied for the wisdom to be gained from it. And it can be turned into something bad if it is made into something personal.

The great professor of linguistics S.I. Hayakawa used to say that there were basically two kinds of people: the kind of person who fails at something and says, “I failed at that” and the person who fails at something and says, “I’m a failure.”

The first person is in touch with the truth, and the second person is not.

“I’m a failure!”

That claim doesn’t always appear to the outsider to be a lie. It can look like a sad form of self-acceptance. In fact, we can even associate such exaggerating with truthful confession: “Why not admit it? I’m a failure.”

But in psychological terms, what we’re hearing is the voice of fear. It’s the opposite of a voice of purpose; it is a voice of surrender, of internal defeat, of quitting before I begin. (Defeat and failure on the external can actually be refreshing and rejuvenating. The great football coach Woody Hayes used to say after his team lost a game, “Nothing cleanses the soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”)

As you lead people today, always keep in mind this one true fact: there is nothing wrong with them. They have it inside themselves to prosper and excel as professionals. Get connected to that truth and show your people how to leave all their “I’m a failure” thoughts in the trash where they belong.