Post: Failure (Not What You Think)
One of the lessons learned from blogging in 2011 was how hard it is to produce regular content all by yourself so… here’s the first guest post of 2012! Darian Kovacs is hard to describe and I continue to find out new things he does and people he’s connected to. If you had to define him in a few sentences something like “a highly creative and results-driven non-profit management professional with entrepreneurial passion, drive, and vision. More than 15 years experience and expertise in Project Direction, Fundraising, Grant Writing, Web Strategies and Leadership Development.” Here Darian shares on failure. Enjoy!
We grow in four ways: through success, in community, from experience, and finally and most importantly, through failure.
JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, used her address at the Harvard University Commencement a few years ago to talk about the need for failure. “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending that I was anything but what I was,” she says. “Failure taught me things about myself that I could’ve learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I expected.”
It’s easy to have blindness to the fact that we’re wrong. Unless you have benchmarks and set goals, you won’t know. So make your goals and expectations as clear as possible.
Here are some more reasons why failure is ok (which the video above demonstrates):It shows that you’re a real person.
- It creates drama, a story to draw people in.
- It often results in the unexpected.
- You learn lessons and share them with others.
- You reach a new audience and it can go viral.
- It’s out of the ordinary and adds humour.
For more on success through failure, check out this great TED Talk from Slate writer Katheryn Schulz. And a fun little story in addition:
I worked for a conference where they hired a lot of youth to organize and execute the activities and budget.
The main leader was Jessica who gave us each task to carry out. She gave Tommy the job of purchasing t-shirts for the conference.
When Tommy showed up one night to show us the t-shirts he ordered we were all so excited. We had just over 300 people attending the conference and we were stoked to see what they’d all be wearing. Tommy opened up the box and pulled out the first shirt. Not only was the shirt an ugly mauve colour, it had the same design as the previous year. Jamie liked it so much that he thought they should re-use the design. Only one problem: he forgot to edit out the year and put on the new year of the conference. Instead of it saying 1998 it said 1997. Oops.
That cost our budget over $3,500. Tommy was so embarrassed he left the meeting immediately. Jessica said she’d take care of it and find room in the budget somewhere.
Two weeks later we were all at another meeting when Tommy showed up. We met and talked and planned and then Tommy had to leave early. Once the door was shut we all looked at Jessica. Someone asked… “How is he not fired?!?”
Jessica said, “I just invested over $3,500 into Tommy’s leadership. I am not going to let that guy go.”
I still remember that story to this day. And it worked too: I’ve kept in touch with Tommy and he has grown into a confident leader thanks to the lesson he learned through failure.
You can follow Darian on Twitter here. For more on failure, read “4 Things I Learned From Failing”.
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