Your Failures in the Service of Others

People are so not interested in your success. In fact, many people are anxious and overwhelmed by the ways you excel. Being around you just makes them feel like an imposter. They have trouble relating to you. 

People want to hear about your failures on the way to success. Now THAT is something relatable. They can see themselves in that journey. In fact, they love to hear about the ways that you, as a successful person, still struggle and fail. It gives them hope for themselves.

Stories are transformative. They describe the challenges and obstacles - internal and external - you had to overcome, the decisions you made, and the outcome of those decisions. These are the stories that empower. We are all the heroes of our own story. 

A few years ago, I was working to become a leadership trainer and coach. I offered free training to friends and colleagues as a chance to practice and get feedback. My own mentor (David Mensah of WAVE Training) - someone who has created enormous success - observed the training. He had instructed me in the skills of coach facilitation, where brief coaching dialogues with participants resulted in immediate impact for everyone in the room, and he wanted to see how well his instruction was landing with me. Coach facilitation is a tough skill to learn and requires lots of failure. 

In one coaching dialogue, someone objected to having to be there at all. She felt that her time was wasted in the training. Rather than lean in to learn more about her objection and what she truly wanted by attending the session at all, I got defensive and pushed back. She was furious. Other participants responded similarly. They considered my reaction to her to be misogynistic. 

My mentor was also unimpressed. After the training, he offered direct feedback. I’ll never forget his words: “If you want to call yourself a coach, you had better learn how to coach.”

I was embarrassed and discouraged. He urged me to sit with that feeling and not quit and run away from it. He was coaching me to sit with the pain of failure until I realized that I could indeed tolerate the sting. Soon, the embarrassment subsided and a new conviction emerged. 

I made a decision. I signed up for the most rigorous coach training program I could find. It required a significant financial sacrifice. The program itself took a full year to complete the training, mentoring, and practice coaching. At the end, two master coaches observed me coaching and decreed that I had passed the training. Within three weeks, I was certified by the International Coaching Federation. 

Today, I have a coach facilitation practice with clients across the country. I train leaders to use their own stories in the service of others, and that includes the stories of their own failures. True leaders are willing to fail. They use those stories in the service of others, helping them to tolerate the sting and find their next course of action. 

Oh, and I’m now an affiliate coach in my mentor’s practice! 

If you want to hear more about how coach facilitation can galvanize a team to fail their way to success, reach out. Every company, organization, and coalition benefits from leadership training, especially when it is presented in coach facilitation style.  doug@d-degree.com, www.d-degree.com.