[Mentor Insight] How to Deal with Failure

I am so excited!

I just recorded an awesome Mentor Interview with Tiffany Kirkwood who is the Executive Manager at Hastings Deering, a privately owned business within Caterpillar.

Tiffany reports directly to the CEO and knows a thing or two about working in male dominated environments, having a successful 25-year career working in the construction industry.

(You’ll get access to the full interview – and many other awesome interviews too – in our upcoming podcast – I am so excited… more to come on that very soon!)

Tiffany was talking about dealing successfully with failure,

“It was that moment I realised that the product we had been developing for the last 3 years wasn’t going to work.

And we kept passing certain gates… where you can’t go back. We decided to talk to the Board and told them we shouldn’t move into Stage 4.

You’ve got to believe in yourself and that you’re making the right decision. The product was canned and we found new roles for all 25 people involved.

But you’ve got to just get out there and give it a go. And if it fails, it fails. Be honest and transparent about that failure. You’ll always learn from it.

And you have to learn not to say, ‘Yes’ all the time… sometimes you need to say, ‘No’.”

Biting the bullet and backing your own decision-making can be tricky.

It takes honesty, bravery and self-trust.

But often, making those difficult decisions… (like this one, where millions and millions of dollars were at stake… not to mention the futures of 25 people) can be the absolute best course of action.

What difficult decisions have you had to make?

Rebecca x

Rebecca Allen is a Career Success Coach for professional women seeking more from their lives and careers. She has worked with female managers and early leaders from ANZ, Deloitte, EY, Pfizer, Apple and Origin Energy (to name a few) to help them get promoted and paid their worth.