Last week I asked the question, “Do you seek to learn?” This week I want to ask a follow-up question:
“Do you learn when you lose?”
No one likes to lose. But I think leaders especially don’t like to lose.
Try as we might to keep our egos out of our leadership, it hurts our pride when we experience failure. As leaders, we’re “supposed to” be successful. We’re “supposed to” have it all together. We’re not supposed to lose.
But we all lose sometime. Renowned author and leadership expert John Maxwell wrote about this in a blog post several years ago adapted from his book, Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. Maxwell states,
“If you’re going to lose—and you are because everyone does—then why not turn it into a gain? How do you do that? By learning from it. A loss isn’t totally a loss if you learn something as a result of it.”
As Maxwell explains, when you experience a loss or failure, you can choose to change, grow, and learn from it. While this is much easier said than done, it is possible! And learning from your loss makes it less of a loss… and more of a win.
So how about you? Do you learn when you lose? I’d love to hear about a positive lesson you learned or change you made as a result of a loss or failure!
“If you see things the right way, losses are opportunities to change and improve.” – John Maxwell
