Featured by UpJourney alongside other coaches, I shared my perspective on answering this tough interview question, “Tell Me About a Time You Failed.”
Me: “So, you want me to tell you about the time I failed?”
Recruiter: “Yes.”
Me: “Well, how about I tell you about a time when I overcame massive adversity and what it taught me about myself and how I treat others as a leader?”
Recruiter: “Yes, please tell me more.”
Failure is a manmade word that only has meaning if you allow it to define good and bad. Failure is not a failure if you have the right mindset; it is a learning opportunity to spur growth, emotional intelligence, and awareness.
Coaching clients, I help them understand that they did not fail; simply, they did not reach their desired outcome with the effort involved in trying to get to the end goal. When people step off the failure ledge, they clearly see that there are multiple ways to achieve the desired outcome, and they can regroup, re-learn, and re-strategize.
Out of this, leadership capacity is built.
Leaders leverage teachable moments to teach themselves what they need to learn, where they need to focus, and where they need to divert their resources, in the form of time, to study, learn, network, and listen in order not to repeat the same lesson, twice.
