Find Courage to Face Failure
— by Jerome Fogel
Coaches are fired every NFL season. But why do some make it back and thrive while others seem to fall away?
As someone who enjoys the strategy behind building an organization and its personnel, there seems to be a common denominator in the NFL coaching carousel I have observed that can explain this phenomenon.
There seem to me two types of coaches, but it’s not those who fail and those who succeed. Rather, it’s those who defend against painful self-awareness after failure, and those who find the courage to face failure. One group has the courage for a growth mindset, and the other is afraid to change and so stagnates.
If you watch press coverage during the NFL season, you can see this play itself out. Coaches who become defensive when pressed about a questionable decision or their job status, seem to me to miss something. In the incredible adversity and challenge they are facing is an invitation to change, an invitation to become a better person, leader, and coach.
It’s not that I have this down. Far from it. But in my study of leadership while writing the book, The Gauntlet: Five Keys for Unlocking Success in Leadership, I noticed a pattern in successful coaches in football. Nearly all had been fired at one point in their careers, and they returned to coaching with a new process, perspective, and mindset. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll come to mind. Coach Belichick was fired by the Cleveland Browns before winning 6 Super Bowls with the Patriots; Coach Carroll was fired in the NFL before winning championships with USC Football and then returning to the NFL to win a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks. This doesn’t just apply to football. For example, Abraham Lincoln had failed businesses and experienced bankruptcy before becoming president. Colonel Sanders was an aged, failing businessman, rejected over 1000 times before selling his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. The list goes on.
As an entrepreneur, failure is going to happen over and over again. Courage in this context is primarily about facing yourself and not blaming others for these failures. When we face ourselves, we open up to God’s process of transformation. God is conforming us to the image of his Son and forming Christ within us (Romans 8:29; Galatians 4:19). To do that, he often uses the challenging circumstances in business—cash flow concerns, market changes, regulatory issues, personnel problems, and the like. And as faith-driven entrepreneurs, we can have confidence that this courage is not something we generate, but rather our boldness comes from and belongs to God.
So whatever failure you just went through, or you are facing now, one key to success is to find the courage to face yourself during failure. On the other side of this can be success and hope for a transformed life—your own.
Jerome Fogel helps build leaders and their companies. He is known as a leader among leaders, receiving accolades for his work developing business for Fortune 500 companies such as GE Capital, serving and developing leaders at nonprofits Oasis Church and Pepperdine University, and cofounding law firm Fogel & Potamianos LLP that helps companies lead in today's market. He currently serves as a general counsel to companies and leadership coach to CEOs and executives. He is also the author of the recently published book, The Gauntlet: Five Keys for Unlocking Success in Leadership. Jerome lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sheri.
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[ Photo by Oleksii Hlembotskyi on Unsplash ]
“Hurt is going to happen.” With those five words, I was reminded once again of why we so separately need Jesus. We’re all going to fail. And sometimes, it’ll be big. And every time it will hurt.