How do you harness failure, use it to make you a stronger and more competent person? In his May 19 article for Forbes, John Baldoni opens with a quote from Jill Abramson. The recently departed executive editor of the New York Times says “You know the sting of losing. When that happens, show what you are made of,” a powerful mantra for anyone getting back on their feet. The rest of Baldoni’s article discusses resilience, how to stand strong in the face of defeat. To go a step further, how does one not only stand strong but move forward? How do you turn defeat into victory? Failure can be a great asset if you know how to make the most of it.

1.  Build on your weaknesses, and play to your strengths
Defeat lays all your best and worst assets naked before you. In times of failure it’s impossible to overlook what worked against you and to separate that from your successes. Baldoni touches on this point when he encourages his readers to ask “What can I do better next time?” Examining your shortcomings may be daunting, but it lets you become laser-focused on your strengths. Lead with those in your next endeavor, and you can be assured of high performance. Not only that, but you are free to take your weaknesses out of the equation and hone them until they become strengths. The more you continue this cycle of self-improvement, the better your performance will become over time. Such clarity is possible through defeat.
 
2.  Cultivate humility
Baldoni correctly notes that when one accepts only perfection, it “poisons their relations with others, in particular colleagues who must put up with it, and subordinates who must suffer from unrealistic expectations.” Everyone fails at one time or another, and most people have the experience a number of times in their lives. Use this as common ground. Embracing failure increases the empathy others can feel for you, and bringing it into the feedback you give others helps build effective teaching moments. In short, failure builds camaraderie because it’s a human universal. What’s an example of something that’s not a human universal? Perfection.
 
3.  Don’t be afraid to take the plunge
Failure is scary. So scary that it stops people from following their dreams or setting high goals because no one wants to fall short. Then, when you do fail, you realize it’s not so bad. Life goes on, and you often perform far better in the future because you’ve played to your strengths and cultivated humility. One defeat doesn’t derail you from your ultimate ambitions, and often it’s quite the opposite. What the first failure does do, is it makes subsequent ones much less frightening. When you’ve bounced back—and then some—once, you know you can do it again. Such experience emboldens a wise person to break the pattern of paralysis and make leaps toward their goals. Embrace your failures, and use them to make yourself more tenacious than you previously thought possible.

Defeat is not something you need to get over—it should be worked into your DNA. Every defeat makes you more capable of victory. Perfectionism is misleading. People aren’t perfect, and welcoming that makes them more likely to achieve greatness.
 
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—The Velocity Gurus @ Workboard