The Risk Of Not Sharing Your Failures

Everything is wonderful and rosy. 

We all know this type of person.

Everything is wonderful.  Nothing ever goes wrong for them.  Everything they touch...turns to gold.  Yeah, right.

How do you feel about those people?  Even if most of what they say is true, how do you really feel?  If you are like me, they make my skin crawl.  I want to get away from them as quickly as possible.  Take me to reality and people who are real.  

It's not that these individuals are boastful.  Many times they are not.  It's just that they only share their successes and never their failures or shortcomings.  We see right through that facade because we know that's simply not true. We know that every rose has thorns, so we put up our "BS" protection and turn them off. Admit it, you do it, after all, I do too.

What if that person is you?   Maybe as a leader or manager, or business owner, you feel that it is not good to share with your employees or others some of the failures, or at least some "not optimal outcomes" that you have experienced in your business life.  Would that help or hurt your relationship with those individuals?

As it turns out, if you haven't already figured out the point of this post, sharing some of your failures and poor outcomes demonstrates humility to those who work with and for you.  The benefit of humility in those relationships is powerful.

A recent Harvard study looked at the responses of several hundred people to various fictional biographies and then audio recordings.  The written and recorded items were divided between those which were all positive, and others which had both positive -and negative- stories about their lives.

Bottom line? Simple.  Those biographies and audio recordings which painted both success - and failures - of the individual were judged to be far more honest and approachable.  The malicious envy that can develop from pure positive presentations was far less in the mixed information.

What's the real benefit of sharing your failures?

Again, simple.  For those leaders who shared successes and failures, it's likely jealousy, envy or even disdain will be far less.  This can result in employees seeing you more as an approachable and honest individual, resulting in better communication and less employee turnover.  Being more honest can result in reduced theft and embezzlement risk.  Last, it can just result in a better and more productive work environment.  

In short, it's in your best interest to present yourself in a balanced way.  Be proud of your successes, but also share your failures in a way that demonstrates that you are human, and use those to help teach others both resiliency as well as ways of preventing those same mistakes.

WhiteCoat Risk Management provides these articles to help improve general risk awareness in all aspects of your life.  It is not responsible for any actions you take or fail to take regarding any aspect of your financial planning or risk management.  This article is provided for information purposes and is not intended to provide individualized advice. You alone are responsible for your financial and risk management decisions.  

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