Tag Archives: failure

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Fear, Failure and Anxiety

By my desk I have a card from a coaching friend that says, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”    It is fairly standard coaching question.  It is also a good question. I think about it from time to time and occasionally am motivated to step out and do something even though failure could be an option.

This week I am doing something I’ve never done before.  The problem is I don’t know if I will fail or not.   I think a real growth question is: “What are you doing that might result in failure?”   That takes it into the real world.  There are lots of things I’d do if I knew I could not fail.   In fact, the guarantee of success makes it pretty easy.

Doing something with an unknown outcome is a challenge. The best part is in a few days I’ll be on the other side of it.  Fear, failure and anxiety will all be replaced with the inevitable growth that comes from doing something new, stretching myself and learning from the after action review.

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Honesty – no matter how humiliating – is still the best policy.

Honesty – no matter how humiliating – is still the best policy.

A quote I read today said, “Warning: 100% honesty can make you feel 100% dysfunctional.”  Isn’t’ that the truth? And isn’t that why we find honesty so difficult.  It is humbling or should I say humiliating when we mess up and people find out we are not perfect.

A lot has been said in the past months about Tiger Woods and the way his people have handled his domestic melt down. I’m sure that in some cases saying nothing has been an effective strategy for handling the media.  And dealing with a crisis that is going to play out on the global stage is certainly full of nuances that most of us don’t encounter in our personal and professional lives.  Still, we all have those situations where the truth about the situation is rather nasty and we feel vulnerable about being found out. How do we handle it?

I believe honesty no matter what is still the best policy. A focused conversation where you  admit you made a mistake, explain how you are trying to handle it and as I’ve said before, apologize if necessary.  Don’t try and candy coat it.  Keep away from spin if possible.  In this world of twitter and facebook status updates someone is always ready to tell it for you.  The safest thing is to tell the truth.

But Your Truth Does.