A Powerful Strategy For Turning Failure Into Success

If we seek to grow–as people and as professionals–we pursue desired ends. We challenge ourselves with the goals we set. Those inspire us, push us, to become more than we are at present. With those challenges comes uncertainty. Success is not guaranteed. The loftier our goals, the more likely it is that we will encounter failure.

The successful person is not the person who never fails. The successful person is the one who can transform failure into success.

In the recent post on appreciative inquiry, I talked about a corrosive pattern that prevents people from moving past setbacks. When they fall short of their goals, they turn on themselves. In an important sense, they engage in depreciative inquiry: they transform the frustration over failure into self-directed frustration.

It is the single most destructive pattern I observe among skilled professionals–especially those in competitive fields such as finance. They hate losing and turn that into hating themselves for losing. Emotionally, they transform the experience of failure into experiencing themselves as failures.

Not every perfectionist outwardly berates themselves. Depreciative inquiry occurs when failure leads to negative self-analysis: Why do I always fall short? Do I have a kind a hidden wish for failure? What is wrong with me? Such inquiry masquerades as constructive analysis, when in fact it is an intellectualized way of venting anger at the self.

The power of appreciative inquiry is that it makes use of failure to leverage strengths. Falling short triggers an examination of those occasions in which we actually achieve goals. The ability to make the transition from frustration to appreciation is the single most powerful strategy I’ve found for turning failure into success.

How do we make such transitions?

The Appreciating People group describes the 5D’s as a strengths-based development process. The 5D’s consist of: 

• Definition – Identifying the challenge at hand
• Discovery – Targeting the strengths relevant to the challenge
• Dream – Visioning the possibilities leveraging our strengths
• Design – Defining specific ways for turning strengths into possibilities
• Delivery – Acting on plans to leverage relevant strengths.

The key to the 5D’s is making the gear shift from challenge focus to strengths focus. This can occur with a single inquiry: