My niece Nikki has three sons and one of whom, Audrey, is very athletic. His team made it all the way to the state Little League Championship games in North Carolina. Trying to be a supportive aunt, but knowing really nothing about Little League, I drove to the town hosting this championship to watch the games. That’s where I saw something awe inspiring.
Around the fourth inning our team was in the outfield. The opponent’s batter hit a fly ball to the left field. The player caught the ball then promptly dropped it. The crowd went from cheers to moans in a matter of seconds. The player recovered and threw the ball into the infield but not before a runner scored.
The player with the error was devastated. In fact, he collapsed in the grass, face down, crying hysterically. That’s when it happened.
All the other boys, opponents included, went down on one knee. At first I didn’t understand. ”Why are they doing that?” I wondered. That’s when I realized it was a show of respect for their comrade who was in pain. They stayed on their knee until the outfielder got up, wiped his face, received a pat on the butt from the coach, and went back into ready position.
This moment I had witnessed went round and round in my head for several days. What was it about this tradition that garnered such thought? Then it dawned on me…I had not witnessed someone acknowledging their failure, experiencing the appropriate suffering, and the team members and opponents alike respecting his turmoil in like…ever. Yea, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that.
As adults, we don’t allow ourselves to break-down and if we did it would certainly be in private. My expectation is the competitor would kick me when I’m down, not respect me. As a result of handling failures by hiding them, I don’t really ever get over them. So they are left as vivid memories that erode confidence or worse yet, I stop trying.
What are the alternatives? What if I allowed myself that brief moment of face down in the grass bawling? It would certainly feel good but would it help? Possibly. Depends on if you learned something.
For almost two decades I have witnessed new salespeople attempt to launch a career. Turns out that how they deal with failure is a key to the success of their business. The response to a negative event goes one of two ways: they either blame it on someone else or vow never to do that activity again OR they ask themselves what they learned and how they will implement it that learning.
Because of this observation I put a question in some surveys of real estate salespeople. This survey revealed that the successful ones allowed themselves on average two hours to wallow in the failure, consider how to prevent it from happening again; then shook it off.
That seems to be the key…acknowledge the failure, feel it, decide how to prevent it from happening again, shake it off. BUT unlike the players, don’t let your competitor see it.
Think about it.