Anyone who speaks, either professionally or for one’s job, experiences a failure of the attempted communication at least occasionally. The audience isn’t right for the speaker, the topic isn’t right for the audience, the audience was having a bad day, the speaker was having a bad day, mercury was in retrograde – there are an endless set of possible reasons why things can go less than perfectly. The 80\20 rule surely applies – whether it’s 80 percent of the audience or 80 percent of the talk, or 80 percent of something else – speaking, like any other human endeavor, doesn’t always reach 100 percent.
The relevant question is how do you deal with failure when it occurs? As a recovering perfectionist, I have a number of options. I can stress out and ruminate endlessly on what went wrong. I can beat myself up for my part in the debacle. I can try to pretend that nothing happened. I’ve tried each of these over the years, and a few more besides, and I can tell you that they don’t work – of course they don’t. And yet, many of us respond these ways over and over again, trapped by our perfectionism. What you need to do instead is to understand what went wrong, as dispassionately as possible, decide what to do differently the next time, and move on. If apologies are in order, make them heartfelt and timely.
The key here is that part about moving on. If you don’t process the failures cleanly, you’ll find yourself like a ship with its hull covered in barnacles, moving slower and slower, unable to navigate gracefully through the waters ahead.
Worse, the next time you’re speaking, and the moment looks weirdly like the failure moment to your unconscious mind – which never forgets, especially pain – you will find yourself suddenly distracted at the very least by your brain saying, “Oh-oh! Things are about to go horribly wrong!” That will compound the agony, and matters will quickly get worse.
There are better ways. A study from a decade ago that I recently ran across finds that acceptance and self-compassion, positive reframing, and humor are the three most effective ways to deal with failure. These are techniques I can get behind, even though I’m not great at them.
Acceptance and self-compassion are the basics of moving on from failure. You will know best how to talk to yourself, but some form of acceptance and forgiveness of yourself as a unique, valuable, fabulous human being is what’s needed. There are many books, online courses, and psychologists out there ready to help. Do the work; it’s important. As the self-help cliché has it, the airplane safety talk is right: put on your own oxygen mask first.
Positive reframing can help make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The idea here is to find something, anything, that did go well or can be spun into a positive. Don’t fool yourself, but don’t overdo the doom and gloom in the first flush of failure, either. As a wise person (maybe on Facebook) shared with me once, it’s the broken places where the light comes in.
Humor is a great gift if you can summon it. Laughing at yourself is a great gift; lightness allows you to rise above the slough of despond and sail on serenely. Laughing at others’ pratfalls is something I leave to your discretion. The point is that once you can laugh at failure it is no longer terminal. You are ready to move on.
Failure is not fun, but if you can progress forward using one of these techniques you are much better placed to survive it, learn from it, and evolve into the being of light you are destined to become.
I really agree with the acceptance and the compassion, can I add something else.
Using 4% rule is also helpful (from Paul Gilbert’s work on compassion). So when something goes wrong, just take the 4% learning from it and leave the rest behind!
I got hired for a corporate training. The client wanted a slick presenter trainer, but I’m a hairy psychological trainer specialising in helping people with anxiety around public speaking. They just got me from being first in google for Bristol public speaking, I thought they wanted my training . No!
The first day of training was the hardest ever day! Nothing really worked. So at the end of the day, the CEO said “Don’t come back in tomorrow John, we haven’t learned anything today!” The worst thing that has ever been said to me as a trainer!
But I knew the 4% rule. I took the learning from the disaster.
1. I changed my website so it never happens again, I now say I talk about anxiety, fear and shame on my courses . I get far fewer corporate bookings which I don’t mind as I want to be authentic when I teach.
2. I will now interview any companies who want to hire me for a lot longer!
That’s it, that’s the learning. Two small changes to my business practice.
Of course it hurt, I had a couple of bad nights afterwards but not the 6 months of shame storm I would normally have
I also used acceptance, compassion and unhooking from problematic thoughts. The compassion piece was I said to myself “8000 people who I’ve trained like me and 7 people don’t.” That’s not a bad ratio.
I also didn’t charge them for the day which is part of my no quibble money back guarantee. I ended up shaking hands a week later wit the CEO when I went back to collect somethings I’d left behind! We both talked about our errors that had created the wrong training!
John, there’s so much wisdom in this comment. Thank you for your vulnerability in sharing this experience. I’d hire you any time!!
So many thought-provoking points here, Nick.
I don’t know if these are additions to those, or could be filed under reframing, but…
While it’s difficult to do in the moment, I take the “ouch” as reassurance I (1) am doing something that matters, and (2) will have the fuel to keep going. I also take comfort in a quick glance back at my life, which tells me everything I cherish is the direct result of having failed miserably at it (usually over and over) for a while.
My favorite adage on the subject goes something like, “You can’t be learning and looking cool at the same time.”
So true, Maureen. Always check that symptom, to see if it’s good hurting or bad!