Taking that failure and listening to the feedback is where you find the solution in an obstacle.
As a wildland fire, Crewboss, I have asked 20 people to hike up a canyon in the middle of the wilderness and put out a forest fire with nothing but axes and a few chainsaws. To the ordinary person, that is just insane.
But leadership is getting those 20 people to do something inspiring to others and dangerous with a smile while laughing and enjoying every swing of their tool. Leadership isn’t natural; otherwise, everyone would do it. I am talking to you about leadership because I lost my direction for a while. I lost it when my best friend died because a part of me died too. But I found my leadership now, and I found my feedback, I found my purpose.
When we have a purpose, we can follow it and create results or listen to the reasons not to. We all have reasons, but we all want results, and you can’t have both. Reasons are excuses and letting our apologies own us isn’t leadership. Leadership is owning your results, whether they’re positive or negative.
When the feedback is negative, you regroup, become flexible, adapt, and try again with the same vigor as the last attempt. See, leadership isn’t always fun, happy, or secure. Most of the time, leadership takes dedication, flexibility, focus, and a strong sense of direction.
A strong sense of direction is knowing deep inside your heart and gut that you are right, even when everyone around you has doubts.
They have doubts because they doubt themselves and a leader has confidence, certainty, and clarity. Conviction to endstate, not the process or how to get there but the endstate. If you are stuck on the process, you will fail to adapt, and favorable results will fade away.
Focusing on the endstate, knowing the purpose and being proficient in the task, that’s leadership. Leadership is envisioning a world that no one else sees. Leadership is holding that vision and creating it at your best ability every single day.
So what’s your vision, what’s your endstate, whats your failed process that you haven’t been adapting with? You would want to follow a leader that owns their mistakes, right? Be that Leader!
How can you see your struggle as an opportunity? Where can you improve, create more conviction, and gain your confidence, certainty, and clarity again?