Could Failure Become the Trigger of Future Career Success?
What is the secret of success? Would you believe, knowing how to fail is the secret we all seek? You’re probably aware of the wonderful story of Thomas Alva Edison, who failed over 9,000 times to invent a working light bulb. According to the story, when asked how it felt to fail so many times, Edison responded, “I didn’t fail. I simply discovered over 9,000 ways a light bulb wouldn’t work.”
Hopefully, you won’t need to experience that level of failure to find your trigger to success. But, it has been proven over time that failure can generate success in business, just as it does in sports, education, research, and life.
Why Does Failure Typically Generate Success?
Think about most scientific or drug research tests. Most valid testing involves at least two groups of subjects. One group is given the element or drug, while the other group receives a placebo, an inert substance or drug that has no proven effect on group members.
If results show no measurable difference between the real and the sham, the study may be classified as a failure. However, even in these cases, the researchers have learned much. The failure delivers information about an option that does not work and displays valuable data on how success may be achieved by changing or substituting components.
The primary key is to identify and evaluate comparisons. This simple reality is equally important in sports and education. For example, all experienced athletic team coaches want even their best teams to experience defeat (not often, but at least once). Teams that only enjoy winning do not have losing to compare their efforts, results or psychological effects.
Author Suzanne Lucas, an experienced HR professional, addressed this subject with the article, “Why Failure is the Secret of Your Success,” in 2011 for the CBS Interactive Business Network. Referencing Paul Tough, reporting for the New York Times, she states that he found that experienced educators fear for those students that have experienced nothing but success. They simply do not know how to fail, or how to learn valuable information from failure.
The learning experience from failure is more important than constant success. Learning how not to do something—and the consequences thereof—can be more significant than succeeding. Understanding how to succeed, what it takes and the lessons delivered from failure can be critical to your career.
How to Learn From Failure to Accelerate to High Performance
You may have “helicopter parents,” who have been involved, since you were young, pulling strings and taking action to prevent you from failing at anything. While their intent is laudable, the results are often disastrous. Their children seldom, if ever, experience anything but success. This makes it impossible for them to understand the difference between success and failure. Unfortunately, only when you know the difference, can you focus, dedicate and target success properly.
Even if you have consistently achieved success, without the extraneous help of your parents or other involved people, do not worry about a failure or two. You will learn more from on the job failure than you will from superiority.
Facing failure or disappointment can be compared to a person with high metabolism and a good diet, keeping them trim and another that works out hard to stay slim, while getting into better physical shape by exercising regularly. Which one has achieved more success? Obviously, the hard worker, since they understand the "price" of success.
The world of business is a constant cycle of success and failure. Understand that these cycles will occur, whether you want them to or not. On a personal level, you will probably experience similar career cycles. Use the failures to infuse new motivation, renewed enthusiasm and reestablished commitment to excel into your professional life.
You will be amazed at the energy you can transfer from success complacency to defeat rebound commitment. You will learn that recovering from failure is incredibly rewarding to your psyche—and your career.
For example, you receive your annual performance review and your manager explains that some of your results were deemed below what was expected. Be honest. If you believe these evaluations are warranted, take this information and build on it to improve and commit to making the changes.
Should you achieve your goal, you may be entralled at the personal satisfaction you get. You will also notice that management recognizes your workplace performance that typically leaps ahead of perceived benchmarks. You’ll also learn that failure is a more powerful motivator than any other workplace stimulus, including increased compensation or bonus potential, to generate renewed commitment to excel.
Use this motivational tool to accelerate your career, not create road blocks. While failure is, by definition, a negative, it can also be an amazingly powerful motivator of success. Further, when you achieve success after failure, your victory is much “sweeter” than consistent achievement.
This learning experience cannot be duplicated through any other method. You will not only learn the path to success, you understand other attractive paths that do not lead to success. Use failure as the fuel to energize your short- and long-term career success.