Notes from the road June 16th 2021

I want to share a failure with you all. I totally missed it with a client. I mean… Missed. It. I got feedback today that I intruded too much with a client. She told me that when she had an insight or an understanding of something, I would then intrude and break her thoughts. She felt that she was not getting value from the coaching. Ouch.  I heard her completely, thanked her for her feedback, and acknowledged her straight forwardness and courage. And ouch!

The thing that was really new for me here, is that it’s hard to be in so much context switching. It used to be that I only coached on certain days, and I would be in that zone. That’s not the case anymore, as I drive a company and scale our programs, which clearly has an impact. This was a new place to fail that I previously hadn’t had experience with. I am leaning out here to share this failure with you, not so anyone can tell me it’s okay, but mostly so that I can help us all be more failure resilient, and willing to share those epic failures and grow from them. 

We will mess up. Sometimes it is because we ask too much from the people we work with or ourselves. Sometimes it is just that we had an off day. Our job is not to BE perfect every time.  Our job is to love fiercely,  do our best work, model how imperfect people can do great things, and make amends when we fall short. We need to forgive ourselves, brush off the dust, learn what we can, and move on. 

I ask that you take a moment to share a failure you’ve had recently and how it has made you more failure resilient.  The people around you will thank you.