I am not a girl who loves to just hang out at home or in the olden days, hanging out at the mall. I have always been the deliberate choice type. That’s not to say I don’t get distracted by competing priorities or curiosities.
Sometimes my myopic focus acts like blinders… Sometimes I get so invested in my original pursuit, I downplay and ignore my current reality. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to give up my pursuits. I want to leave a mark! A good mark… the kind of mark that leaves my friendships or clubs or work – leaves them happy about our relationships.
Occasionally, like most people, I find myself in a moment of raging personal crisis.
It’s nearly always a brutal realization because I downplayed or ignored the warning signs. As a result, I find I am ready to throw myself off the proverbial ledge!
With my back to the wall, mounting anxiety, sweating… so beyond perspiration…my toes curled over the edge…. the mad voice in my head says, “Why should I put myself through this? You are an idiot! QUIT ALREADY!”
Really! What insane person wants to carry the burden of leadership on their shoulders and be constantly rebuked for their efforts?
Evidently, that’s me!
I just keep butting my head against the wall. OMG there are so many walls and they all have names: the walls of false accusations, dis-information, destructive manipulations, obsessive-compulsive egos, smear campaigns… but the worst is the wall of lack of acknowledgements for the stuff which does go right!
In my case, my Toastmaster husband is my crisis intervention team; he tries to talk me down. When is he going to learn that he needs to wear body armor? He’s dealing with a short-fused, thermo nuclear, emotional warhead. In fact, the correct tactical response would just be for my husband to call in a drone strike, end the crisis quickly and limit the collateral damage… which will inevitably include him!
What options could I possibly have?
Evaluating Options
As leaders, we can get stuck in a delusion in which we convince ourselves that somehow things will sort themselves out. It’s that middle ground between quitting and trying to entirely reinvent the organization. After all the organization has made it this far. Right? Leave well enough alone!
A Natural Law
In life, nothing stays the same. It’s not possible. There are always forces in play.
Another Natural Law
In life, our creations only continue to exist to the extent we take action to ensure their survival.
Success can’t magically appear.
We prefer to be stuck in the delusion of things will sort themselves out because we are paralyzed by our personal fear of failure.
The danger of failure is self-concocted. We are oblivious to the fact that our own inactions are the catalysts which ignite crises. We don’t realize that doing nothing, or doing some small incremental thing, will lead to a failure to make progress.
On the other side of the ledger, we imagine that taking initiative, making changes, will probably result in some spectacular, epic failure.
Action paralysis dissipates as we rise above the embers of failure and re-orient ourselves with our original mission. It’s only as we regain sight of our primary objective, that we can sift through, recognize our options and
worry less about failure.
Clear evaluation begets courage.
Understanding that failure exists in both the choice to let things sort themselves out and the choice to do something different helps us embrace courage.
Embracing courage
Courage is simply a willingness and openness toward failure.
Enter Toastmasters!
This is the one place where spectacular, epic failure is okay!
Toastmasters needn’t fear epic failures because the mission of every Toastmasters club is: To provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills, resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.
This kind of culture encourages everyone to learn and to fail spectacularly; so that we learn to hone our skills in a safe environment.
Courage breeds innovation and change.
Both within and beyond a club, creating an organizational culture that embraces failure requires talking about what you learn from your own failures.
Forward progress fails when the aftermath of initiative is met with denigration, derogation, defamation, and diminishment.
Self-confidence and personal growth are bred in an environment which is fun and safe, so everyone can really believe they’ll be in a better spot for getting up and trying something new or something bold, even if they don’t quite succeed.
It’s incumbent on leaders to break out of their comfort zones and face their own inner fears. Leaders must face their own demons whether it is fear of failing or fear that someone else might lead the way to innovation and success.
It’s up to leadership to find their own courage to be successful. Within that mental outlook, epic failures are revealed as opportunities to learn.
The Big Reveal
I’m grateful my husband’s a Toastmaster. He knew to encourage me, to embrace my challenges, and as a result he helped me muster the courage to evaluate and discover that I was growing through lessons learned from my epic meltdown. I found valuable collateral gifts, rather than so much collateral damage.
· Leadership Survival Skills– Feeling smacked-down is what we make of it: Pity-Party or Opportunity. Confronting the good, bad and the ugly of the runway which led to an epic fail can be a moment of discovery revealing a treasure trove of skill sets born out of coping with adversity. These are the “go to” survival skills of leadership.
· Gaining Future Perspective – Going eyes wide-open after failure can reshape what we once thought to be important. With a new perspective we can appreciate the success we did have which shapes our leadership potential and guides us in future initiatives.
· Emotional Vulnerability– In a supportive atmosphere, failure creates a potential for forging new relationships. Be willing to be personally vulnerable, communicate, reach out and discover. As leaders, this emotional vulnerability allows people to care about you and builds a culture of trust.
· Connecting to Purpose – Being open to experiencing failure and being committed to keep going, requires conviction that our endeavors really matter to us. Failures tend to remind us why we get so engaged We reconnect with our fundamental purpose. Simply put, we want to help.
· Discovering Possibility – When the path from “A” to “B” is not a straight line, and instead we find ourselves diverted over, under, around or through, we have the chance to discover all the ways there are to achieve what we want and possibly a few bonuses along the way.
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