Share your Failures – Gain Trust

When we think about Above & Beyond (this month’s theme) we usually think about positive actions, success and things that are well received.

Yet one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is the gift of sharing your failures.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

– Pablo Picasso

In the ever-elusive quest for each of us to define our own meaning of life and how to live it we have many ups and downs.  Why do we tend to only share the ups?  The successes?  The things that make us look ‘good’?

At NBG we share those ups AND the downs in the HUDDLEs and Strategic Collaboratives with each other. It is our collective experiences that provide the power of the community and our willingness to share those experiences with the members – all of us.

I had a guest (who is now a member) ask me the other day, “If we bring our challenges to the group, they will see that we are ‘not all that’ and possibly not have faith and trust in our abilities to do our job well which may result in lower referrals and collaborations.  How does that exactly work to help me grow my business?”

I shared with him that it is actually the reason why our members’ businesses grow, and referrals are plentiful.  We are open, honest and rely on each other through the tough stuff and celebrate with each other when things are great.

By sharing knowledge, experience, and ideas we build stronger relationships and trusted partnerships with other members. Sharing failures as well as successes brings a new level of understanding and bonds that are not easily broken.

If we are always just putting our best foot forward, we can seem too perfect, unapproachable, and that can be a hard standard to live up to! We want to work with others like us. We want to surround ourselves with people who not only have failures but are willing to share them and apply the knowledge they learned to the greater good of the community.

Here is what happens when you share your failures (and what you learned from them).  You learn to:

Trust Yourself more fully.  To own your mistakes and not shift blame (if you shift blame to someone else and I get involved in a business relationship with you that goes south – chances are you will shift blame to me…no thanks!)

We learn to represent our failures accurately and are able to articulate what went wrong, what we learned, and what others can do differently to not fall into the same mistakes.

Trust Others.  When we share our experiences, our knowledge, our failures and even our successes we put trust in those we share it with to treat it with respect. When others share their failures and such with you, and then you with them, the trust factor is strengthened.  When trust is strong great things come from the relationships built.

We become open to receive. As the relationships that are built on trust flourish, we can feel confident that we are not in this alone.  That there are others in the same boat, and they are willing to pick up an oar and row with us. This boost our confidence in ourselves and our ability to be successful at our endeavors.

The best advice I have ever received in business and in life has been from someone who has been there – done that. They can share what worked, what didn’t, what they would do differently and what they would keep the same.  Priceless.

There are few things in this crazy business, professional and entrepreneurial world that has not been done or tried before, and the best way to avoid history repeating itself is to listen to those that have traveled the road before us.

“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”

– Robert T. Kiyosaki

So, share, listen, receive, give, and learn from each other.  HUDDLEs and Strategic Collaboratives are a great (and safe) place to start…see you there!

BTW – Member only HUDDLEs will be EVERY Tuesday morning at 9 am on ZOOM in 2022. We welcome our members to bring a guest. There is a HUDDLE at Tabbris Innovation center open to the public on the last Thursday of each month at 11:30 am. You can register at NetworkBuildGrow.com/Huddles