Fear of failure undermines potential
The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.
When Warren Tampert called us for help, he was 41 and had been an advisor for five years. He was troubled by the wild fluctuations in his business. He had closed a number of large deals in his career, but after each, his career slipped into a slump. He was tired of riding a roller-coaster revenue curve and relying on an unpredictable business. Furthermore, the slumps drained him and put a strain on both family and business relationships.
When we first met Warren, his charisma impressed us. He was exceptionally intelligent, professional, and personable, but he was visibly distressed by the critical state of his business. A few months earlier, he had closed a multi-million-dollar account. To celebrate, he and his wife bought a bigger house, upgraded their cars, and toured Europe. Since returning home, Warren had barely closed any business.
We asked him why he spent so much money and took so much time off after the big deal.
He answered that he thought things had finally turned around. They felt they had earned and deserved a better life.
“What happened when you got back?”
Things had changed by then, he said. The momentum had worn off of some other deals he’d been working on. And, generally, things had just slowed down.
We asked him, “In hindsight, do you think it was a good thing to buy a new house, and go away?”
He thought not.
“Would things be different if you had stayed around to finish up your other deals and then do all those things at a more appropriate time?”
He agreed.
We explained to him that many advisors do what he did – spend money and take time off after a big deal. But not top performers.
To encourage Warren to think more critically about his behaviour we told him a story about Norm Trainor, founder and CEO of The Covenant Group.
Early in his book, The 8 Best Practices of High-Performing Salespeople, as a way of exploring the importance of getting clear about what you want, Norm tells the story of his struggle with fear of success and fear of failure. In the story, he focuses on the time in his life when he brought his family to the brink of financial ruin. Prior to his troubles, he had been doing exceptionally well. Years of hard work had begun to pay off. But strangely, insidiously, and unwittingly, he had initiated a plan to systematically sabotage his success. Fortunately, he woke up to what he was doing in time to turn things around.
The experience, though harrowing, exposed his deep-seated fears of success and failure, fears that lay behind the many ups and downs in my life. He realized that his father and grandfather both taught him to be afraid of success and terrified of failure. As a child he listened to their stories of successful men turning rotten and dying young; and watched them suffer business failure and bankruptcy and never quite recover. He grew up believing that he shouldn’t try and that if he tried and were unlucky enough to find success, he would have to unravel it to avoid an early end.
Before his book came out, he worried that he had gotten too personal, but the hundreds of calls and letters that have since come in demonstrated that he had struck a chord with his community.
After we finished the story, Warren fell silent.
After a while, Warren began to tell us about his own background. His father had worked in a company for many years, but was never satisfied – he wanted to start his own business. He put everything on the line for the new venture; but it failed, and he fell into a depression, withdrawing from the family. He was never the same. Consequently, Warren has identified failure in business with failure of the self.
I explained to Warren that sales, with its potential for great success and failure on a daily basis, attracts people who harbour fears of success and failure. For them, sales is a forum to test themselves and grow.
We explained, “Let’s revisit your behaviour after the big deal.”
After the discussion, Warren was able to consider his own situation more insightfully. He explained that closing the big deal was like taking a drug. He’d felt like superman. All his friends and associates treated him like a hero. But then he crashed. Suddenly he had no confidence. He began to feel that the big deal was a fluke, that he couldn’t do it again. On Sunday nights, anxious about the week, a feeling of dread would paralyze him. He’d go to the office, but only to push paper around and fuss over administrative details. He did everything he could to avoid calling prospects and clients.
“The large deals you’ve had weren’t lucky. You closed them because you worked hard, and are good at what you do. There’s no reason why you can’t sustain a high level of success. Unfortunately, every time you take your business to the next level you pull back.”
Warren interjected, “Because I’m afraid that if I try to sustain that success, I’ll fail. I’ll become like my father.”
One way to deal with that fear is to reframe how you think about failure. Fear is a false prophet -- it takes the truth and exaggerates it. Once in a while, failing will lead to a catastrophe, but in a vast majority of cases it is an opportunity to learn and grow. Phobias are exaggerations. Some people are afraid to walk in the rain because they’re afraid lightening will strike them. The odds of that are 1 in 300,000. It rarely happens, but people with a phobia believe it will happen to them. It is the same in business. When a client says no, we have to see that as part of the experience of being in business, as part of walking in the rain, not as the thunderbolt that strikes us down. But it’s easy to let our fears get the better of us if we take a client’s no personally -- if we confuse a no with our own self-worth, or if we feel it will put us in a position we’ve seen to be destructive, such as your father’s.
We have to ignore what fear tells us. We have to see that the possible outcomes of trying are positive; we have to make them positive. If someone says no, what does that really mean? It means you weren’t able to close that deal at that time; it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be able to close another deal again. Perhaps the no is a necessary first step, and if you can come back with a better solution, they’ll say yes. But even if you don’t get a second chance with that prospect, you can examine why they said no and apply your learnings with other clients.
There is another important aspect of failure. Failure is a perception. Often what we perceive to be a failure one day turns out to be the best thing that could have ever happened. I recently read a touching story about a man who went to a dance and asked a young woman to join him on the floor. She said no, so he asked the woman next to her. They recently celebrated their 54 th wedding anniversary. Did the first no mean he was a failure with women? Often failure is followed by success.
Our meeting energized Warren. He was eager to apply the necessary discipline in his business. We worked together over the next few months. Occasionally despair would threaten to get hold of Warren, but he stuck with his plan to make his calls on a regular basis. And the effort paid off. In the last three months, among other business, Warren closed five large deals, proving to himself that he can keep the success going.
Lessons Learned
The number of entrepreneurs who have issues around fear of success and fear of failure constantly amazes us. With its potential for great success and great failure, our industry attracts people who have a need to work out their fears, who want to rise above the limitations others have put on them, above even the limitations they put on themselves.
Warren learned what all top performers have learned -- that courage is not the absence of fear; but the willingness to face their fears. To control fear in business, you have to have a disciplined approach, which means making your calls, and learning and improving no matter what the outcome of those calls. One aspect of this discipline is that top performers don’t run off on spending sprees the second a big case lands. They don’t want to jeopardize their success. They plan their spending and their vacations, and take them at appropriate times, after ensuring that their business can handle their temporary absence.
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The Covenant Group is referred to by many as where entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and authors of the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High-Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.