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3-31-09

 

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
John F. Kennedy

 

The Gift of Failure

 

Excerpt from J.K. Rollings, author of the Harry Potter series, Harvard Commencement Address (6-5-08)

 

“… What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.  At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

 

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak.  Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

 

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.  You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.  Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

 

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.  So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.  An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.  The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

 

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.  That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution.  I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

 

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure?  Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.  I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.  Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.  I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.  And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

 

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.  It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

 

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.  Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.  I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

 

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.  You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.  Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

 

Given a time machine, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.  Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.”

 

 

LESSONS FOR US AS LEADERS:

 

“Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.”  For us as leaders, failure is the ultimate teacher and invites us to become the ultimate student in its presence.  We must balance the humility of knowing that much is outside our control with the confidence in ourselves to tackle what others may see as impossible.  Wisdom is the residue of failure for those whose vision is sharp enough to see it and whose character is bold enough to embrace it.

 

J.K. Rollings fell down in her life – over and over.  But she refused to stay down, eventually ignoring the soothsayers of doom and committing herself to a course of action that she had a passion for.  It was a decision that would lead her to become one of the most successful authors in the world.  Adversity did not limit her it empowered her; it did not slow her it accelerated her; it did not deter her it inspired her.  These are the lessons of failure and the insights we need as leaders.

 

Courage is fearing the consequences of your inaction more than you fear the potential failure of your own actions.  Leaders don’t let the fear of failure paralyze them; they know failure is a constant companion of those who push the limits of what is possible.  To the shallow, uncommitted cynic, failure is falling down; to a leader, failure is not standing back up.  Adversity is the forge life uses to toughen our mettle but only if we do not fear the flames.

 

In our own work, how often do we avoid taking action because we fear failing?  The pressure to succeed in our culture is so great that it actually limits our success.  Today, we must win, win now and win every time or we are labeled a failure – often and ironically, by those who do not even participate in the process.  As leaders, we need to ensure our team does not choose the path of least resistance over the best course of action because they fear falling short.  What messages do we convey about how we tolerate failure?  How do we reinforce the right effort even if it is occasionally not the right answer?

 

J.K. Rollings found a magic in Harry Potter that set the world ablaze with imagination.  But as she herself reminds us, the real magic was not in transforming a young wizard into a champion of good over evil but rather in transforming the author from a victim of adversity into its master.  It’s a true-life story that’s better than the fiction; one that shows us all the gift of failure when we embrace its lessons and accept its challenges. 

 

 

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Christopher Novak is an author, international speaker and leadership coach whose signature book and keynote, Conquering Adversity, has inspired tens of thousands of people.  To learn more about his speaking services or to sign-up to receive more inspirational emails (if you were lucky enough to have someone forward this to you), visit his website, www.ConqueringAdversity-speaker.com.

 

 

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