How Your Team Can Learn From Failures

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

Winning teams have the ability to fail and not take it personally. They keep moving forward despite failures. The following are some characteristics of teams that learn from their failures.

They Reject Rejections

Teams that learn from their failures are those teams that keep on trying despite setbacks. They do not base their self worth on their performance, but have an internally based self esteem. To learn from your failures, it is important that you never call yourself a failure, but rather say that you made a mistake. Teams that achieve, keep the right perspective, take responsibility for their actions and they never take failure personally.

They See Failure as Temporary

Teams that personalize failure experience the problem as a big hole in which they are stuck. Teams that achieve see the problem as only temporary. For a team to succeed, they need to keep trying and believe in their potential.

See Failures as Isolated Incidents

Winning teams see failures as momentary events and not life long epidemics. They do not take the failure personally and do not allow a single event to influence their view of themselves.

They Keep Their Expectations Realistic

The greater the team goal, the greater the need for mental preparation and overcoming obstacles and persevering. It takes time, effort and ability to overcome setbacks. Your team must approach the day with reasonable expectations, but not get their feelings hurt when the day does not turn out perfectly.

They Focus on Their Strengths

Winning teams keep from personalizing failure by focusing on their strengths. They concentrate more on what they can do, then on what they can’t do. Teams become stronger by developing and maximizing their strengths.

They Vary Their Approaches

Winning teams try various approaches to solve a problem. They do not allow the comments of others to make them feel like failures.

They Bounce Back

Teams that achieve, have the common ability of bouncing back after a failure. If the result is not what they wanted, they find what the mistake was and they make sure they don’t make the same mistake again. Winning teams keep moving forward no matter what happens, knowing that failure does not make them failures.

Source: Failing Forward, John C. Maxwell