Last week was about choosing how to use failure. This week is about failure and having bounce back plans.
I have an important presentation to give later today. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. As good as I am and as confident as I am in my skills, I know that there is a 100% chance that I’m going to fall short somewhere. I am 100% confident that someone will make a comment or ask a question that I won’t necessarily have the best answer for. It’s inevitable.
On one hand, this is scary. On the other hand, this clarity gives me something. It gives me the ability to focus on having a bounce back plan. Bounce back plans are things I put in place to help when things go sideways. In this case, the bounce back plan will likely look something like: “Clarify the question. Share current perspective. Acknowledge the gap. Align on follow-up plan to close the gap. Pivot back to the key objectives of the presentation and move forward.” I have drilled this in my head over and over and over again, so when I do stumble, this will take over and I’ll bounce back like muscle memory.
Let’s connect some dots. We talk about embracing failure a lot. We talk about dusting ourselves off after failure a lot. We often don’t talk about HOW we get back up after failure. We don’t talk about what dusting yourself off looks like. We don’t talk about the actions we take to reorient situations when they go sideways. Since we don’t talk or think about these, it’s easy to get caught flat footed when failure occurs. By spending a little time anticipating that failure will occur and having a plan to help you bounce back, we can spend less time knocked down and more time getting up and moving again.
The challenge: What is your bounce back plan for failure?
Have a jolly good day,
Andrew Embry
Striking Matches 