I have been to hundreds of conferences and heard the biggest and best of speakers try to lead and inspire. Still it surprises me that the one topic we need to hear more about, and one that the biggest minds and those with the biggest visions have, is the ability to rebound from loss.
Anyone with even a slight interest in sport, and the business around it, knows that we lose much more than we win. Thirty percent success in hitting a baseball puts you in the Hall of Fame. Yet there is always reticence in speaking publicly about getting knocked down, fired, furloughed and laid off, and what came out of it. Some reasons are obvious. We live in a world today where those in the public eye rarely get a break from it, and opening oneself up to see the warts makes those people even more vulnerable and maybe in the minds of some, less heroic or successful. It’s easy to talk about your greatness; it’s harder to show your frailty, so let’s inspire through successes and little wins not in loss.
I point this out as we are going through a time of undetermined loss; emotionally, physically, mentally, and while as we head toward June, the midpoint in what has been one of the most uncertain years in centuries, the need to explain loss and confront loss is going to be essential in healing and in innovation moving forward.
One of the smartest minds I know, Dr. Harvey Schiller, always points out that the greatest discoveries in science have come out of failed experiments; aluminum, the telephone, heck even Viagra (a failed heart medication) came from the unplanned, from listening and reworking a loss. Yet in sport, and in media and even entertainment business, the talk of loss is seen as a dark cloud.
On this Memorial Day, as we remember those who have made the greatest sacrifice, and those we have lost who have given all in service to others, maybe we should finally think about winning from losing…ask our best coaches, athletes, business leaders to talk more about loss and the lessons learned. Heck, maybe even some of the answers are I didn’t learn anything from losing, only that winning is better. It’s not that we have to accept loss and move on like it never happened. Denial is worse than anything. It’s the ability to pull some rainbows from rain and apply them to what is needed going forward that will help us heal and grow and prosper even more.
I raise this as I seem to have been hit with a growing number of inquiries from two groups…young people and those who realize that the business world they are going to return to is not going to be the one they left not that long ago…and they are all asking the same thing. What do you know, what can I do, who can you help me meet…to restart, or start a career as we turn the corner and move forward in the post COVID world.
The answer is not simple…but it does have to deal with the acceptance of loss and learning what a next step is going to be; assessing what you can bring to an organization, and showing skills that set you apart from the hundreds, or thousands, you will compete with going forward. What have you learned, how have you evolved, what is different today that gives you an edge; and that edge has probably been sharpened not by the trophies we receive, but by the bruises that heal from the road.
As those in the most senior of positions retrench and deal with an uncertain future, it would be great to learn and listen to more about the rebound from loss large and small; how they handled and what they learned, even if it shows vulnerability. Even as we move towards seeing more wins on the field, ice, pitch and court going forward, the losses will still mount, and pulling best practices and adoptions from the L column will gives us more W’s in our lives; and show even more how we are in this collective together.
In that vulnerability we get empathy, and empathy makes us relatable, in tough times as well as good ones, and I remain positive that the best days are ahead, even as we struggle to see them sometimes.
Also one more way to pull wins from losses, check out The Daily Uplift, a new platform launched by colleague Mandy Antoniacci, the link can be found here.
