Failure is just one of the many steps on the path to success, and is a prerequisite for strong corporate leadership and business acumen in the digital age. Many influential business leaders have remarked on their ability to overcome hurdles in their corporate life and the fact that they have had to fail multiple times to finally reach their end goals. Never taking risks is the safe option; you never fail, but you never really learn or grow. This is the antithesis of being successful in business as you need to fail, learn, and gain new knowledge to forge a great career.
Unfortunately, many people still shy away from failure due to our success-driven society. They live in fear of making mistakes and consider failing to be a deficiency in character. According to author Kathryn Schulz, this mindset holds people back and prevents them from prospering in business and other aspects of their life: “Of all the things we are wrong regarding, this idea of error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: we have a tendency to ar wrong regarding what it means that to be wrong. Far from being a proof of intellectual inferiority, the capability to err is crucial to human knowledge.” a number of the foremost ineradicable school leaders have embraced failure throughout their careers and used it as a springboard for future endeavors and successes in business.
Steve Jobs is a classic example of how to learn from missteps, failure, and crushing defeats. He was forced to leave his own company during the 1980s, but came back stronger over a decade later with an incredible vision for the future of desktops, laptops, and connected devices. Jobs is now synonymous with the Apple brand. This wouldn’t have been feasible if he hadn’t gone through the pain of previous failures. These experiences lend themselves to the two essential aspects of being a success in business: tenacity and resilience. Bill Gates and Stephen King are two other leading figures that exercised perseverance in order to achieve greatness in their respective fields.
Business failure acts as a galvanizing force as it plays a key role in strengthening a person’s character and giving them additional motivation to succeed in the future. Black Umbrella founder and CEO Catherine Hooper used adversities in her private life as a means to succeeding in the competitive world of business. The Madoff scandal put her directly in the media spotlight and could have ended her aspirations, but a commitment to thinking big enabled her to create a new venture that aims to build practical and efficient safety plans for families affected by major disasters. Learning from setbacks was key to Hooper’s success.
Easing into a fearless mindset and embracing failure could enable you to finally reach your potential and prosper in your business career. The most successful tech and corporate leaders are delivering risky, edgy, and important plans and strategies everyday, and they are doing so without fear of rejection or punishment. Failure is a necessary rung on the ladder towards success for everyone in business.
