Latest / SisterSmart Leadership / 31: How Senior Leaders Bounce Back From Failure

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31: How Senior Leaders Bounce Back From Failure · SisterSmart Leadership

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  If I fail, I will be marked forever from that failure, and no one will
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  see me as anything more than that.
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  This is a common fear that women can hold, and for good reason.
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  Women are criticized for not taking enough risk and being held back
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  from further success because of it.
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  A lot of this has to do with the way that we are raised, because there can be little
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  latitude for anything besides perfection.
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  And this follows us into our careers, creating more caution than we need.
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  But it's not true.
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  Women can fail and recover from it.
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  This episode, we are talking about how to prepare for the inevitable
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  failure that you will face if you're going to be a senior leader.
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  And we'll talk about how to bounce back once you've had a failure.
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  Maybe you've had a failure that you're still recovering from, or maybe you've
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  kept yourself safely secure until now.
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  Either way, you're going to want to listen skillset.
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  Jill Avey: I'm Jill Avey, a career success coach, and this is Sister
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  Smart Leadership, the show that explores how women can rise from
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  director to vice president and beyond by fully leaning into their feminine
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  energy as their biggest advantage.
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  Let's get you one step closer to the recognition and promotion you deserve.
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  Sally Krawcheck is a great example of how women can rise up, get
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  knocked down, and rise up again.
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  She was considered the most powerful woman on Wall Street, with more than
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  30,000 people reporting to her as CEO of Citi Wealth Management and as CEO
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  of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
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  She was let go from both roles in public exits and has bounced back to launch
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  an incredibly successful new venture.
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  I'm grateful that she's openly shared about her failures,
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  because by breaking through that taboo, she can inspire us all.
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  When she was asked in an interview, what was it like to open the Wall Street
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  Journal and see that you've been fired?
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  She said, My view in life is that you can do one of two things when
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  you've been fired on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
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  One is to say, this is so humiliating and embarrassing and awful, poor me.
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  And the other is to say, score!
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  I'm on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
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  If you had told me when I was a young girl growing up in Charleston, South Carolina,
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  and said, The second to the last to be chosen for all these sports teams that
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  anything I would do would be anywhere on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
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  I would have done black flips down the hallway.
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  I think basically it's means of recognizing my privilege to have had
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  the opportunity to do something that would get you that kind of recognition.
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  So how can you prepare yourself to have that same attitude as Sally?
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  Let's start with some pre planning.
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  So you want to work before a failure happens.
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  First you want to socialize that risk.
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  You want to tell people.
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  Especially senior leaders, but really people at all levels, you want to
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  take their pulse and make sure that you build allies should it go wrong?
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  You want to talk about how you've analyzed the situation, who else is behind you,
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  why the risk is important to take and how you're protecting the downsides.
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  My biggest failure came when I worked at a company called Clarisonic and we
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  made a skincare brush and we wanted to do an infomercial to sell this product.
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  And so our ad agency had this really incredible idea it was a little
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  different take on infomercials.
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  So this is where the risk came in was we knew we were breaking the mold of
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  traditionally how an infomercial was built, but it was a really interesting
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  idea and myself and the senior leadership team, we all decided together that
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  this was either going to be wildly successful or fail spectacularly.
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  But senior management wanted to take that risk.
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  This wasn't the 1 that I, you know, I would not have done this on my own, but I
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  had full backing of the management team.
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  And so we went ahead.
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  And so we had this idea that we would.
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  Give the product to the Pacific Northwest Ballet for a couple of weeks and have
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  them try the product and then talk about how incredible it was for their
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  skin because they wear this really heavy makeup and they have terrible
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  skin problems from this makeup.
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  And we were able to create this really beautiful story about what
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  it's like to be a ballet dancer and how hard the lifestyle is and how
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  this little product would help them.
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  And so while it was a really interesting story and people really
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  loved watching it, it didn't sell.
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  And in the first day, the stats were so bad, we yanked it immediately and
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  didn't spend any more money on media.
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  So.
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  It was just a complete bomb.
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  But what I did write in that situation was I had the full
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  backing of the leadership team.
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  We talked about that.
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  This was a big risk that we were taking.
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  We talked about how exciting it could be.
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  And then we talked about that.
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  We knew that it might not work.
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  And that way, when it didn't work, it wasn't a big surprise.
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  It wasn't some big scandal.
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  It just, okay.
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  We tried something that didn't work and we moved on.
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  So when the failure happens, let's talk about what we don't want to do first.
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  First off, we don't want to pretend it didn't happen, hope it will blow
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  over or sweep it under the rug, because the thing is that people
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  are still going to talk about it.
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  They're just going to talk about it behind your back.
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  And the other thing that you don't want to do is blame it on someone
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  else, because when you shift the blame and point fingers, now you're adding
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  integrity issues to that failure and you'll be marked with both of those.
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  So in our case in Clarisonic, we just talked about it in a management
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  meeting, we told the whole staff what happened and that we tried it
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  and it didn't work and we pulled it.
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  And so everybody could see that we did the right things by not spending more
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  money on it and, not giving it too much time or, We just did what we could.
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  And so when we explained all that really, the thing just went away.
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  That's the way that you stop people from gossiping about it and really,
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  you know, kind of keeping it alive.
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  So instead, what we want to do is a no excuses, a hundred
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  percent ownership approach.
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  So dealing with the failure.
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  is part emotional work and part political work.
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  There's a lot bigger failures than you can have than the one I just talked about.
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  So the first thing that you want to do is this emotional work first.
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  I want to think about what was my part in this.
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  And so in our program, we talk about the locus of control.
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  And so we have an internal locus of control and an external locus of control.
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  And often women are applying too much internal locus of control
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  and blaming more on the failure than it was actually their part.
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  We have a tool that helps you see where you're at on this.
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  And what we want to do is take a healthy amount of internal locus of
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  control, and then also understand the external forces that are at play
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  too, because there's always both.
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  There's always something you could have done better.
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  And there's always some things that were outside of your control
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  that were environmental forces like the economy or competitors
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  or, you know, things like that.
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  as we take a look at what was my part and what was not my part, then we
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  can really apply self compassion and empathy and forgiveness to yourself.
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  This is really important because without doing that first, it's going
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  to be really hard to stay positive.
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  and this is very important.
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  You want to really be able to stay positive about the failure
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  and not let this get you down.
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  You need to show maturity around it and that courage to be able to talk
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  about it and to be able to stand up there and say, score like Sally did.
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  That is really going to take you a long ways because it will really
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  start to reduce the gossip mill.
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  And Krawcheck said that I recognized that there were going to be other
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  opportunities to be successful.
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  And that there are many opportunities on every given day, I just don't see them.
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  So many things can go right past me and I don't see them and take advantage of them.
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  So success might look like something that was different.
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  And by definition, I was not supposed to be in that job from which I was fired.
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  So if you're being fired, you're not supposed to be in that job.
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  It may be your fault.
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  It may be somebody else's fault, but by definition, I was leaving
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  a bad situation and opening up opportunities to do better things.
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  That's the kind of emotional courage that we want to have in this situation.
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  So the next thing is to cover yourself politically.
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  So you want to take control of the narrative.
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  And this is why we don't want to try to sweep it under the rug,
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  because you want to control what's being said about this issue.
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  And what you want to do is focus everybody on the learning.
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  And so you really want to debrief this and you want to report
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  out what you learned from it.
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  And so Going back to my example, we focused on the learning of,
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  you know, Hey, don't break the mold when you do an infomercial.
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  There's a reason why they run the way they do.
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  And you've got to use that format and that's why they work.
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  And that there's a lot of people out there that have spent a lot of
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  time and money figuring this out.
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  We weren't going to create something new.
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  Next, you want to focus on what you've done well in a situation
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  and also maybe what you've done previously well around this area.
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  And you want to make sure to talk about that a lot because you want to
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  focus people on what you've done well.
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  What was good about the situation and that is your learnings and also where you
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  showcased things that you did Well, you want to enlist your allies in supporting
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  you on this message And so hopefully you can pull everybody together and do
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  a good post mortem And have everybody really face the facts and look at what
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  happened look at how you prepare Look at what happened and what you've learned
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  and what you're taking forward from this.
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  So I also want to make sure that you listen to episode 33 and 34 coming up in
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  this season on how to develop allies if you don't have those already because your
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  allies are going to be really important for you in this situation because
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  they're going to be hopefully in those conversations where you're not and they
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  can stand up for you and have your back so you're not getting taken down by this.
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  Of course, we've had failures with some of the leaders in our
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  sisters in leadership community.
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  And we've even had a couple of people who have had employees complain
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  about them, and this was something that they took very seriously.
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  This has happened a couple of times, and this is a situation that
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  is important to take seriously.
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  It's a place where your boss can lose faith in you.
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  If you have employees complaining because your boss is, you know, potentially
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  listening to them more than you, but it didn't happen for these two people
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  because of how well they handled it.
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  So one brought her whole team together and openly talked about what was
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  happening and they worked together to build a different way of being
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  a different way of working together.
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  And the way that she handled it was so impressive to her boss.
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  She invited her boss to this meeting as well.
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  that it's really elevated her and it's not taken her down at all.
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  And because of this healthy conflict.
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  They've come together stronger than ever.
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  And in the other later situation, The way that she handled it and the maturity
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  that she brought to the situation, it ended up for her that she was actually
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  taken away from that team and given a promotion to run another team.
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  So it worked out to be actually a really beneficial situation for her as well.
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  So if you want to lead at the higher levels, chances are you are going
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  to fail and maybe even publicly.
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  Krawcheck reminds us that failure is not fatal.
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  She quoted Reshma Sujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, who
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  says, boys are taught to be brave and girls are taught to be perfect.
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  In other words, boys have been taught that failure is okay.
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  While girls are taught that failure is embarrassing and we have to
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  overcome those harmful messages.
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  So some things that you can do today to prepare yourself
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  for the inevitable failure.
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  I always like to give you three shifts that you can make
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  at the end of every episode.
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  So first, establish your allies.
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  And again, stay tuned for a couple of episodes coming up in the future for
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  how to do that if you haven't already.
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  And two, reflect on a failure that you've had and see what locus of
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  control you approach that from.
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  And this might even help you to heal further from that failure if
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  you were taking too much locus of control internally versus externally.
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  And three, do you have a failure in your life that you
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  need to forgive yourself for?
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  Most of us have something that we're still hanging on to and don't you deserve
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  to make mistakes like the rest of us?
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  What could you do to give yourself that grace and let go?
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  So now that you have a game plan in case you have a failure of your own,
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  or hopefully when you have a failure in your own, because I want you to be
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  pushing forward with that kind of risk taking, let us know what you're taking
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  away from this episode in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube.
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  Was there something that surprised you that you learned?
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  We'd love to hear.
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  Would you like to take your career to the next level?
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  I invite you to check out my seven step passport to promotion, private
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  podcast, where I go through the process that we use with our clients to put
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  them on their path to promotion.
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  You can find the seven step passport to promotion at sistersmart.
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  com and I'll put a link in the show notes for you.
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  So if you want to dive deeper into women's leadership and
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  how to move up in your career.
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  subscribe either on YouTube or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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  I'm in a mission to help women get into leadership and stay there.
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  And if that's aligned with you, I'd love for you to be part of this community
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  and tune into more episodes on sister smart leadership that will support you in
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  becoming the leader that you want to be.
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  to see how women are rising up without playing by the old rules that built these
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  male dominated industries and systems.