How You Should Respond to Defeat and Failure

No leader wants to experience crushing failure. That’s understandable. But the psychological apprehension we have towards the idea that our best efforts might lead to stinging defeat has blinded us to the concept of defeat stewardship as well as the necessity of embracing backwards-mapping.

The aversion we feel towards failure has to be reconciled with the real world, especially the hyper-competitive world of business. We don’t like focusing on the possibility of defeat, but a few common sense questions might help us understand why it’s so important to study.

A) According to the Gallup Business Journal, about 50% of businesses fail within the first five years of operation. If an entrepreneur falls victim to this statistic, how should they respond to such a crushing defeat?

B) Does your company land every contract or project they make a bid for? How does your company respond when confronted with failure? As a leader, do you claim sole victory when a contract is won, while claiming no responsibility and shifting blame when confronted with defeat?

C) Despite your team’s talent, dedication, and hard work, what happens when honest mistakes or unforeseen problems lead to project failure?

Going back to President Roosevelt’s brilliant insight into leadership, few successful business leaders rise to the top without their faces being marred by sweat, dust, and blood. While no one likes defeat and failure, perhaps what separates these leaders from the pack is their understanding that defeats often present us with our greatest learning opportunities.

If a leader embraces the philosophy of backwards-mapping, they understand that defeats are case studies that provide invaluable organizational R&D for future success. Far from taking it personally or blaming their staff (especially if they know their staff is talented, hardworking, and motivated), defeats are actually the cornerstones to permanent and sustainable growth and profitability.

Failure gives you the chance to evaluate both your team and organization from head to toe. The hierarchical, top-down approach to leadership that is so often glorified in corporate America (and which can often breed complacency and stagnation) is replaced by a loosely-knit but highly disciplined business model that stresses flexibility, adaptability, as well as an obsessive focus on innovation and fine-tuning profitable best practices.

In embracing this model, proven project and departmental leaders become battle-tested sergeants, and their jobs aren’t simply limited to leading their respective teams. Like any good sergeant, their job is to also keep their ear to the ground and create organizational feedback loops that are grounded upon emerging trends, competitive strategies, tweaking best practices (especially when those best practices confront situational failure), as well as ensuring that orders and directives issued by company officer are being properly enforced and synthesized throughout the entire organization.

When analyzing their sergeants’ leadership styles, a great question a company officer should ask themselves is, are they foxes or hedgehogs? Even better, what leadership style do you best resemble?