Do you master failure or success?

In my coaching sessions I often use a very simple, pragmatic approach to show my clients their perception on a goal. I will share it with you based on two basic scenarios. Let’s assume you are working on achieving something that’s planned to be completed on a specific date.

Now, I will place a paper in front of you with that date. While doing this I will ask you to place yourself in that date and run a lessons learned session about your goal, starting by questioning why you didn’t achieve you goal. Why everything went so poorly?

While you provide the reasons, I am writing them down. When completed, we make a pause, withdrawing the paper.

Let’s start again, doing a lessons learned session to understand why everything went so well and you achieved your goal with success! And will do until exhaust all the arguments.

At this point, I will count all the reasons for both positive and negative scenarios. How many do you have from each? Let’s assume you come with more unhappy faces. This means that today you are better positioned to have success or to fail? I would say you master failure and know exactly everything that can go wrong. If it’s so, start working to understand and identify all possible reasons why it could be a success!!