How Failure Can Fuel Your Success: Real-Life Examples and Tips

(*This blog post was first issued as a Top Tips newsletter on Friday 12th June 2024, emphasising the importance of using failure as fuel for future success. Obviously we didn't win the final. Again)

Okay, we're in the final. The actual final of the Euros 2020. There is a very real chance that we're able to finally taste glory in a final and that football really might be coming home.

And like a few other people, I'm more than a tad excited about the prospect.

So you won't be surprised that we're using an element of the England story as our Top Tips theme this week. We’re looking around failure and specifically at how useful ‘failure’ can be.

And just to clarify, I'm talking about past failures. Sunday is going to be a glorious success I'm sure.

Failure

Most of you will probably know the Gareth Southgate story. He played for Crystal Palace and Aston Villa in the 1990s and he was one of England's most solid defenders. A real steady Eddie.

Well, that's the collective memory but it overlooks the fact that he had a fire that burned and was courageous. 

Football hard man Roy Keane famously stamped on Southgate during a match, later reasoning "Gareth tried to cut me in half with a tackle. . . He only got a yellow card whereas now he would probably get two months in prison." 

It's a great line but the point for me is that you've got to have guts to tackle Roy Keane in that manner. It shows that Southgate wasn't afraid of challenges.

Mostly, though, it's fair to say Southgate was a steady as you go teammate, someone to put in a shift while others could do the more glamorous stuff. Gareth was one of the workers you could always rely on. 

Except of course when taking penalties. 

He took the sixth penalty in the semi final of the 1996 Euros. His shot was soft and saved easily. The Germans scored the next penalty and England were out of the competition.

Taking Responsibility

Why did Southgate take that penalty though? He'd only ever taken one penalty before (for Crystal Palace against Ipswich - and he hit the post!). He didn't normally take penalties so no-one should have had to rely on him to take a penalty. Especially not in the semi finals of the Euros. Against the Germans. Ah, well.

The question not often asked is who else should have taken the sixth penalty? 

Other players with more goalscoring experience (and whose job on the pitch was to actually score goals) could have taken that sixth penalty but they didn't volunteer. Southgate stepped up when others didn't.

So that's a perspective point about 'failure'. Most people view Southgate's penalty miss as a failure. It's important to recognise another view. By not being brave when it mattered you could say that players like Steve McManaman, Paul Ince, Tony Adams or Darren Anderton failed. Maybe they were overcome by the occasion and were too worried about defeat. Did they fear failure? Did they lack the resilience required. 

In contrast Southgate showed bravery, courage, honesty and grit. He missed the chance to score but he didn’t fail.

It’s a perspective that can help to reframe the situation and how you look at failure.

Can Failure Lead You Forwards?

Missing that penalty opened Southgate to years of abuse. Officially no one blamed him for the England team’s exit but if you spoke to anyone that watches football they all wonder why he hit it so tamely.

Southgate's mother Barbara probably spoke for the nation when she said to her son "Why didn't you just belt it?" Ouch!

Forward wind twenty five years to now and it is Gareth Southgate that has formed, in fact reformed, this current England squad into a group of players that are (mostly) exciting to watch on it and (mostly) admirable off it. 

They speak openly, honestly, coherently and seem to have a struck a chord with fans. Perhaps because they come across as fans themselves, albeit lucky and talented enough to be on the pitch.

Southgate, it seems, has moulded this young group of footballers in his own shape. They appear to be brave, courageous, honest and determined. They seem likeable.

In football terms he's been as low as you can go and come through the other side. That failure must have taught him much about mental strength and how to get up and go again. Go again but better. Be calm and adopt a mindset that embraces failure as a stepping stone to success. Stick to your values. Pick yourself up, learn from the errors and go again.

He has been able to move forward. To get over the disappointment and no longer dwell on what when wrong.

It's a proper skill to learn from our mistakes and turn setbacks into stepping stones. To use failure as a learning point and eventually (and hopefully next Sunday) as a catalyst for success. This is what successful people do. They do not define themselves by mistakes. They decide that failure is never permanent and that it's simply part of your journey that can provide valuable lessons for personal growth.

Setbacks Give You Insight

Personally I'm a big fan of learning from failure. Which is lucky because I fail an awful lot!

Every now and again I actually put myself on to the path of certain failure simply because I know it's the easiest and quickest way of learning. It's horrible while it happens but I find it the quickest way to learn. It just saves time when you want to progress.

Other times it just happens because I've overreached or underprepared or misjudged a situation or made a mistake. 

Either way if I have an embarrassing failure I sure as hell make sure it’s going to reward me in some way or other and I'm not just left with the embarrassing bit.

Fail Hard

One major failure that I count as my most useful was my very first experience delivering training, which taught me to use failure as a resource. 

I'd moved out of teaching, retrained as a coach but hadn't delivered any proper training. Hadn't particularly thought of it to be honest. Then someone asked me to deliver a session about Time Management at a business meeting in Surrey.

I knew the content really well and thought 'Yeah, why not?' I’d stood up in front of classes plenty of times; how hard could training a group of adults be? 

It went wrong. It was awful. No, strike that, I was awful. I lost the audience from minute one and it went downhill from there. It was only twenty minutes, the shortest slot I’ve ever delivered but it felt like the longest of my career. 

I was reading from slides. I died on my feet. Awful, awful, awful. I’m surprised they didn’t boo or turn off the lights. I failed big time. 

Failure, Then Success 

A couple of days later I went for coffee with a friend and there and then I decided to be really pleased about it. My take away was that there are going to be rubbish experiences but that I shouldn't let them define me. I decided that it was good to have my first bad training event out of the way early.

I also decided that I was going to learn how to be a really good trainer. I had the perfect blueprint after all - simply do the exact opposite of what I'd just done. And learn, learn, learn. 

That horrible experience was the perfect motivator to ensure I made the most of opportunities for growth and turned up next time better equipped. I realised I was going to have to be able to learn from the experience and boy were there lessons learned. 

I said to myself "Iain, adjust your approach. Pause. Take what you've learned and be more constructive. Innovate. Build a bigger toolbox. Get used to trial and error. It's early days but don't worry, achievement is just around the corner. Take it one step at a time. In the meantime, get used to rejection!"

These days I deliver loads of courses and get consistently great feedback. I’m proud to say that. It’s not me saying I’m good. It’s other people saying I’m good. They even write it down!

Of course sometimes I mess up but nowadays I view failures as part of life. I'm not aiming for perfectionism and it doesn't knock my self-esteem. 

These days I even deliver a course called Secrets Of Presenting about how to deliver training either online or in person. I deliver a Train The Trainer course to new or wannabe presenters too. 

And I’m even more pleased that deep down I know it’s all because I died on my arse delivering a dreary, stodgy, uninspiring presentation at Surrey National Golf Club.

In my head that’s the very definition of turning a failure into success.

Nothing Is Insurmountable

One of my very first coaching clients in 2007 or 2008 was a lady who had lost her confidence. She was talented, clever and ambitious but she’d just lost her mojo for some reason. We worked hard together and rediscovered it. It’s a rewarding job.

I bumped into her not so long ago and she told me that something I'd said to her had always stuck. "Just because you experience failure doesn't mean you are one."

Woah, deep! I don't remember saying that but hey, it's really good isn’t it?! She remembered it over a decade later.

Failure Provides Motivation To Succeed

Just one final thought to leave you with.

Sometime, sooner or later, you will fail.

It might not be on a football pitch in the glare of the world’s sporting media.

It might not be in front of a hundred bored looking suits at a golf club in Surrey.

But it will happen. 

So when it does how will you react?

Here’s a radical idea. Reject your fear of failure. Let go and instead decide that it's a good thing.

Choose right now how you’re going to feel when you do screw up. Decide to soak up the embarrassment, hold your hands up, and quickly move on; remembering that failure can fuel your growth. 

Then get right down to the good stuff; learning what you can from the precious lesson and recognise that it's okay that it didn't work. Then get excited about how it’s going to help you come back stronger, better, wiser and happier. You're going to use it as fuel for success. Good luck!

(*This blog post was first issued as a Top Tips newsletter on Friday 12th June 2024, emphasising the importance of using failure as fuel for future success. Obviously we didn't win the final. Again)