If you ask me, striving for “success” above all else is not the most highly advisable goal for those in leadership. We’ve all heard the old saying, “Nothing breeds failure quite like success!” And it’s true. What are the reasons for this “success-breeds-failure” paradox?
- Fixating on success makes you fearful.
- Focusing on success draws our attention to things that we cannot control.
The reason people grow, and the reason companies and organizations grow, is that they stretch themselves. They try new things. They risk uncertainty. If success is your goal, then you cannot afford to be stretched. The very things that make an enterprise great are the things that people do at the risk of failure.
Famous is the football or soccer team, or the golf player, who gains a lead, switches to a defensive posture (out of fear of losing their lead), and then loses their lead. If you want to make real gains (I am paraphrasing an ancient text here), it is necessary to risk losing everything. If we are only allowed to succeed, then we become afraid, defensive, controlling, and small. Fixating on success makes you fearful.
Personal behaviors and actions that can be controlled are things like punctuality, courteousness, diligence, calling everybody on the sales list, completing assignments excellently, doing what you promise, following up according to the best practices you were taught, and always pressing yourself to do your best work even when no one is looking. In short, we can set many measurable goals to be excellent in all of our activities, and we can control the behaviors that comprise excellence. That is to say, we can decide to do what excellence demands.
Famous is the winning sports franchise that knows how to build a lead, that keeps its eyes off the scoreboard, and that sticks to the fundamentals, play by play by play until the final bell sounds. Such teams know that getting ahead – and then starting to watch the scoreboard – is fatal. Instead, they banish their thoughts of score, and they stay grounded in fundamental disciplines. And they win.
In short, winning begins with the knowledge that you must do the things you are in control of, and that fixation on success is the first step to failure.
One of the leadership and management practices we love to teach is, “Allow mistakes and learning.” This training module is part of the Serving Leader Action called Upend the Pyramid. It is such a paradox, but absolutely true: Cultivating a culture in which we may fail (without being damned), and in which learning is prized more than perfection, is cultivating a culture that produces more wins than losses.
Can you imagine a child ever learning to walk if she was never allowed to fall? Learning to walk requires falling down, as a matter of fact. And this is true of any human endeavor. In our pursuit of excellence, we practice the fundamentals. Our eye isn’t on success, but rather on growth and improvement. The people we manage cannot afford to get better if we are intolerant of their mistakes. Rather, we must provide an environment that empowers our people to learn from their mistakes and be a part of the solution to make things better.
Paradoxically, we achieve successes in life, but precisely at those times when we’re focusing on other things – like service, excellence, diligence, and integrity. And failure is stitched all the way through our greatest endeavors. We learn, recover, and get stronger with every step as we trip, fall, and fail all the way to success.