Source: http://www.twitip.com
Early this morning I just happened to catch the tail end of an interview with Richard Branson. He spoke a bit on ‘failure’. This has long-been a point of thought for me, being a perfectionist and not allowing failure to be an option and when it does come, which it always does, not to let it get the best of me. (That could have been a better sentence – LOL).
Like most successful and happy people, failure is not seen as a greater negative than a positive. Granted, there are failures that should probably not happen but the fact of the matter is, we all will fail at one time or another but what we need to draw from it is a fantastic learning experience. For example, most of us have heard the infamous quote attributed to Thomas A. Edison – “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
As managers we need to allow our people to fail AND learn from those failures. Too often we break peoples spirits by only pointing out their failures and not praising their successes. In addition, I find so many employees what resort to lying and cover-up because if they ‘fail’ they have a very real fear that they will get fired.
As parents, we use failure to help our children grow and learn. We don’t, hopefully, punish them for failing.
As humans we need to ‘allow’ ourselves to fail, and like I’ve said, learn from it. Self-punishment won’t get you anything except a deeper emotional hole from which to dig yourself out of.
Here’s a short video with Seth Godin and Richard Branson. Hope you enjoy it.
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Update: Here is another fantastic video that speaks to this very subject- at Ted.com – http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66
November 12, 2009 at 4:14 pm
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